untold stories

 Family anecdotes, we all have them. The only problem is in sharing them. Those stories are for those in the group, like a secret club. Just the immediate family members are privy to those memories. They are amusing to us because of that intimate knowledge of the situation that precipitated the incident. That knowledge is very difficult to explain to someone else and trying to do so just bores the listener. When the explanation is longer than the story your audience will lose interest. The humor is lost. But it isn't just humorous stuff, it can be other embarrassing incidents as well. Ah, their is nothing like those family memories. 

 Having lost my father, one brother and my only sister I find myself becoming more aware of what is being lost. Of course I miss them all, their smiles, their voices, and their teasing. The little insider things that they may say. My memories with them live within my heart. What I miss is the feedback. They are not here to dispute my memory, and so that memory will remain forever unchanged. On the surface that sounds like a good thing but I have always enjoyed hearing the modifications to a memory offered by another eye witness. I would spend hours talking with my sister only to discover we remember the same thing, differently. It's an amusement. Well it is years after the fact but often heavily disputed at the time, if you know what I mean. 

 My dad has been gone for thirty years now. He was just 65. I'm now 66 and think about him everyday. I have a number of anecdotes I could tell about him, but they are for other family members. These stories wouldn't put him in the best light and so that's why I keep them to myself. These stories by no means define his character, a character of his times. That's the difficult part, the part you really can't explain to someone else. The time and place were you were raised, what the social issues of the day were, and what the thinking was then. Actions taken then that were not unusual today being outrageous! In my youth having your dog chained to a tree in the backyard was a rather accepted thing. You put a dog house out there and made sure he had water. That was taking care of them. Driving your car with a can of beer between your legs, completely legal. Smoking a cigarette while grocery shopping, every day stuff. Spanking the kids was the standard disciplinary  measure. Verbal abuse hadn't even been invented yet! But all of that stuff is the background to these stories of our youth, the family stories. Normal and natural enough in our thinking, sometimes shocking to others.

 Dad has been gone the longest and I wish I had gotten to know him as a man. I left home when I was 18 to join the navy. The end result was I really only visited with him after that. I didn't live in the same house with him, the same town with him, or indeed the same state with him after that. He was just 47 when I left home, 47. I thought he was pretty old me being 18 and all. By the time I became a man, old enough to talk with him on that level if you know what I mean, he was gone. Sure would have liked to hear his side of some of those stories. My eldest brother I got to know a bit better. Still, like a lot of us seem to do we put things off. I should have visited with him far more often, he only lived twenty miles away but it was always maybe tomorrow. And now my sister is gone as well. I did spend hours talking and sharing with her. We did get to know one another as " grown ups " if that is the proper term. We weren't grown ups with each other, just brother and sister. And that is the beauty of that relationship, the way I will always remember her, my sister. Dad I remember as Dad, does that make sense? Brother Harold was a man though and we interacted with each other as men. Well the way we learned to be men. There wasn't a lot of hugging and sentimental words, that sort of thing. We didn't go around saying I love you to each other! That was just understood, no need to verbalize it. 

 Of course Mom is still with me. She lives in Georgia with my brother Dan. She is ninety now and I have to say I don't know her much better now than I did when I left home all those years ago. I'm hoping her and Dan talk and share with each other. I haven't seen either of them in about a year now. Oh, I call every now and again, check up on them. There is an awful lot of their lives I know nothing about. I have my stories about them as well. And to be fair, there is a lot they don't know about me. Time and distance have kept us apart. When we do meet it is a visit. People aren't the same when visiting. And when visiting with your family you enter with certain expectations. Really they are remembrances more than expectations. You expect them to remember. 

 Well I think I will write those anecdotes and stories down. They may prove interesting or amusing to others later on. I won't publish them. No, they will be kept private for now. I wouldn't want to embarrass anyone, or leave the wrong impression about anyone. The fact of the matter is, you will be viewed differently after you are gone. Let's just say people aren't as quick to judge. But I don't want those old family stories to be lost either, I'm assuming custody! I'm also very much aware that I don't know the whole story, there is much I wish I knew. It's unlikely I ever will. The stories of our families are often incomplete. And I'd say the best parts are the stories that go untold.