Family stories we may never know
Epigenetic studies show that memories can be passed on through fourteen generations. This means we may be carrying in our physical experience of life the experiences of those who lived generations before us.
My paternal great-grandmother was crazy, according to family lore. I always heard this story as one of blame and judgment. My interpretation was different. I imagined a woman who had to be strong, who lived life on her terms, and who took steps to ensure a future for her son, my grandfather. She was working as a servant girl in an aristocratic household in Leiden, the Netherlands, in the early 1900s when she became pregnant. I don’t know how old she was. I can find no genealogical records. Someone paid for this impoverished girl to give birth at a private hospital in Antwerp, Belgium. There were rumours that a member of the royal family was a frequent visitor to this Leiden home, someone with a reputation for illicit liaisons. I expect our family story was really one of unwanted sexual advances and possibly rape.
Our family often jokingly spoke of having royal blood. When I got my DNA profile from Ancestry, it did not reveal any links to royalty. There was another family story of a ruined castle in France where ancestors of my paternal grandmother had lived. I also do not have any French heritage.
Generational resilience streams through my blood
Those stories filled the dreams of a young girl who fancied castles and princes. The stories I became captivated with as I got older were of the generational resilience that streams through my blood. Epigenetic studies show that memories can be passed on through fourteen generations. This means we may be carrying in our physical experience of life the experiences of those who lived generations before us. I like to think my resilience is a strength passed down through generations of women.
I wish I knew more about these women, but the stories have disappeared over the years. I only have an envelope of old photos - no diaries, journals, or letters. My grandmothers are long gone. My mother was never one to talk about the past except for a handful of safe stories told the same way, over and over again. My only memories gathered from eavesdropping on snatches of conversation spoken between my mother and her mother but never shared with me. I don’t even know how accurate these memories are.
At the age of eleven, I asked my mother about her birth story, having realized my grandparents had only been married for four months when she was born. My question was dismissed. I received the same response from my grandmother. I have vivid memories of my grandparents fighting. They did not seem to like each other very much. And I remember my grandmother once saying if she had to do it all over again, she would never have married. There is a story there, a story I will never know.
This grandmother volunteered for the Dutch resistance. One evening she was in the crawl space listening to the news on a forbidden radio when she heard the heavy tread of boots on the kitchen floor. She was terrified of the consequences of having a radio. It was my grandfather, dressed in a Nazi uniform, returning home from a rescue mission. My grandmother worked in a local hospital during the war years. Patients, like most Dutch citizens, were close to starvation. Nazi headquarters were next door to the hospital. In the story I remember hearing, my grandmother snuck into the kitchen next door and threw mothballs into the soup, making it inedible. The soup was given to the hospital and though tasting horrible, provided much-needed nourishment.
I remember her as a mother, a wife, a grandmother. I shelled peas with her as a young girl, we picked strawberries from the back garden, and I rode on the back of her bike to the grocery store. She was a no-nonsense woman who liked being right. When we moved to Canada she scrawled me long letters on thin blue vellum paper. She wore giant cotton underwear and drank a glass of gin with sugar every night. I find it difficult to picture her as a resistance fighter, risking her own life, and the lives of her children. I wonder now, how much sadness was there in her life? How much heartbreak? How much joy? Did she have hope for the future? I will never know.
Filling the silence of our lineage
I fill the silence of my lineage with stories of my own, embellishing memories in an attempt to keep the stories alive.
I am fascinated by Jamie Figueroa’s essay, The Stories I Haven’t Been Told. Her beautiful words tell a story of trauma and how stories are remembered across generations.
My mother’s story is also my story, as are the stories of my grandparents. The handful of explicit details, often strange and incoherent—lost, found, lost—are assembled and reassembled. And, of course, there are all the blanks…First, second, and third generations have the scars, the same pattern of teeth marks and claw marks, found in the original generation who suffered the direct harm. Memory will shape-shift with age and time and perspective. Its fins become wings, wings become hide; legs, tail, and horns emerge. It seems to control you, not the other way around. - Jamie Figueroa
I expect there are family stories you may never know. Here are some questions to nudge your memories as you reflect on your family stories.
How does who we think we are impact who we become?
How is our life story shaped by the stories we believe about our family of origin?
How do myth, reality, perception, and meaning influence the way we consciously and unconsciously frame and enact our life story?
Does understanding our past give meaning to our future?