The Stories

I have a strong recollection of my grandmother telling me that she was a fur coat model when she met my grandfather. She said my grandfather used to come into the shop and she wouldn't give him the time of day.

I have no idea now if my memory is true. I don't question whether my grandmother was confused or got the details wrong because she pretty much always had her faculties but I do wonder if I misremember our conversation because to everyone else, she was a shoe model!

Clearly, the moral here is to write everything down or get it on tape. My grandmother isn't here to back me up and quite frankly, my word doesn't count for much! I'm notorious in our family for either not remembering something at all, or for remembering it wrong. Throw in the inevitably of my not hearing something correctly and my credibility is shot when it comes to family stories. I pretty much never get the benefit of the doubt.

As infuriating and annoying as that is, I get it, I really do!

Whether or not this is you, it still pays to write the stories down and have a record. These stories, these little details are what makes each family special and give each family it's place in history. Sometimes the stories are hard. The great-grandfather I was named after, he committed suicide. I wish I knew more about the circumstances but I never felt like I could ask my grandpa about it. I don't even know how I know about it, and right now, I'm not even certain that someone won't chime in to tell me that I've got all it wrong. Hindsight is 20/20 but when you're a teenager, hindsight is not even a concept that exists. If I knew then what I know now and all that jazz!

My great uncle Al was a meticulous note taker. He was also a record keeper and a hoarder. Thanks to him, we know so much about my mother's side of the family, enough to figure out a lot of the missing pieces through research. I was not as close to this side of the family growing up, so I love discovering fascinating details like my great grandmother being a caterer and the fact that my great grandfather left behind a whole other family (wife and kids!) in Lebanon when he came here. On the surface, these are details that are unique to our family but dig a little deeper and they become artifacts of history. My great grandmother's catering business was key to surviving the Great Depression, and she was part of an era in which people did whatever they needed to do to make a living. It was also fortunate that the family lived in a factory town, with jobs available during wartime, and between wars as well. The family that my great grandfather left behind is a clue to the emigration patterns of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Emigration to the US, from certain regions, was also an escape from something--usually oppression or economic depression.

All our individual stories can be threaded together to form a "big picture" view of our collective American history in a way that complements and deepens our understanding what we learn in history class. Understand history to make sense of the present and create a vision for the future. 

All this to say, become a record keeper and story writer. Your future selves will thank you. 

Legend.

There were many, many fascinating details I learned about France, Europe and the development of race as a social construct in Tom Reiss' new book, The Black Count but I really got hooked on the idea of Alex Dumas as a legend in his own time, even before his son, Alexandre Dumas, used him as the inspiration for The Count of Monte Cristo. Alex Dumas, born Thomas-Alexandre, was a legendary figure not just because he was a black man who achieved incredible military success at a time when policies were being enacted to dehumanize people of African descent. His story is the classic stuff of legend: born into dubious social standing, sold into slavery by his desperate father, reclaimed again by the same man and groomed for nobility, rising through the French social ladder. Everyone loves the triumph of the underdog, especially when he's good-looking!

And it got me thinking about how any of us could be legends in the making, without knowing it. Do you think Alex Dumas knew he would be immortalized in his son's novels? That books would be written about him? We don't have to be big legends and we don't have perform heroic acts but we can leave a mark on the world by sharing some part of ourselves for the good of humanity.

Every once in awhile I ask myself, "what is the point of me?" Don't get me wrong-- I place great value on my role as a mother and a keeper of the home but if you know me, you know that I totally buy into that woo-woo stuff about giving back to the universe. Some people call it karma but I think it's a mistake to actively court karma. Instead, you should send out to the universe what you hope to get back.

Not so long ago, the "point of me" was to share my knowledge and passion with teenagers in the South Bronx. I'm still very passionate about education. I don't have a lot of money but I do have time and energy, and that is how I've chosen to return the favor. Getting involved with Pathways Togo is an action that I feel good about, getting to the root of change-- education. The idea of education as a path to empowerment, to personal freedom, to personal success is something that I tried to instill in my students. I reminded them often that I was not in the classroom for them, they were not in the classroom for me. They were in the classroom for themselves, and so our time together would be whatever they made it be.

I try very hard to take my own advice: the quality of my time here is what I make it. When I imagine myself as an old lady, looking back on my life, I don't see myself as a legend, but as a small force that joined together with other small forces to create a powerful synergy in the universe that became an agent of change for the greater good.

Alexandre Dumas' works were heavily influenced by his father, also named Alexandre Dumas. In the biography The Black Count, author Tom Reiss tells how Dumas went from slavery to become the equivalent of a five star general in the French military. Join From Left to Write on October 11 as we discuss the The Black Count. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes. All links to the book are affiliate links. This means if you buy the book using the link, I get a cut.