The Loss of Micro-Histories

A while ago I was telling my kiddos a story about when I was a child. There was a season when my family moved back to my birth town, when we stayed with my grandmother (my dad’s mom). The house she lived in was the homestead of her mother and father. There were interesting stories [to me at least] of how the little house had been the school house in the village down the road, and how when that school merged with the local elementary, they had purchased it and hauled it to its present location using teams of horses and log rollers and then set on its current foundation. My grandma’s house was also a treasure trove of family history, with trunks of old post cards, old clothing and hand crocheted doilies, darning eggs, an old violin in a case (which I still have and can play), letters, and old family photos (even tin-types). There was a singer treadle machine full of my great-grandmother’s sewing notions, and old, hand-made quilts on the beds, and in the cedar chests. As I told the story to them, it occurred to me that in this digital age, we are losing our personal histories. When my children clean out my house, there won’t be old letters and post cards, photos, and personal effects because so much communication is now done digitally. They won’t have my musings on motherhood or the hard season when I was in the hospital with a NICU baby.
This caused me great grief, but also some firm resolve. Resolve to capture these normal days of my life, because they are tied up in my history, their histories, the history of our family and us as people and as God’s children. Knowing my history gave me a strong sense of self and identity. Knowing of my great-grandmother’s character, what a loving woman she was, yet how strong, hardworking, and devoted to her husband and family, in some ways helped to mold me into the person I am. If I HAD been able to meet her, I would have wanted to work alongside her–wanted her to show me how to make raisin filled cookies, how to use her treadle machine, and stories of her own childhood. While a journal isn’t a big deal, what we write in them is a reflection of our lives and will live on, in a way, after we are called into eternity. A simple journal chronicling our lives gives a certain clarity to life and the identity of our descendants. It’s my small way of valuing the past, capturing the present, and preserving what I can for the future.

By Laura Ayars from The Threshing Floor