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There is an old story about a family who served a ham every year at Easter. The grandmother always cut off the butt end of the ham and used it for another purpose. A curious granddaughter asked why she did that. The grandmother looked a little puzzled, and said, "I don't know, I've always done it that way - it's how my mother taught me!" The little girl asked her mother the same question, and received the exact same answer. The next day the three females went to the nursing home where the great grandmother was living and asked her. Her response was classic: "Well, I had this pan..." The ham never fit in the one pan she used to cook it. Her daughter just picked up the method and kept on doing it. It had been going down for three generations - and no one ever knew why!
Follow-up - the tradition continues, for no good reason, except it's the way it has been done for generations. (The story gets told every Easter.)
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Do you have some family traditions or rituals that don't make any sense? Don't you want to know where they come from? Is there something you'd like to know or share with the rest of your family?
This is the way to get that story out and memorialized.
Wouldn't you like to know where that piece of furniture came from, that piece of jewelry, that plate? You won't know unless you ask! Wouldn't it be fun to hear about some stories of mistakes, misspent youth, lapses in jugement? Better yet, let someone else ask and get it down.
How about finding out about their very first memory? I have had people walk away shaking their heads; their grandparents very first memory is eerily similar to their own. As we age, we begin to draw parallels and understand ourselves just a little bet better.
We are losing a lot of our American History now as the people born in the jazz age are aging. Think of everything that generation has seen and experienced! Don't you want to get it down - in their voice? Wouldn't it be a great gift for generations to come?
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I remember at my grandmother's house there was always a vase of gladiolas on the raised fire hearth. When she died it was the first thing I claimed. I treasured it through my own marriage; I had it for over 20 years when I broke it. I was heartbroken.
Thinking I had broken a family heirloom, I confessed to my mother, who didn't even remember the vase until I showed her a picture of it. "Oh, my heavens, that was just a cheap little glass vase I picked up one day to bring her some flowers when I was in high school. I think it cost me a dime.". To me it was priceless. I'm still heartbroken. I have a picture of me sitting next to it when I was about 5 years old.
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