Me Thinks

I continue to sort through the boxes of keepsakes that I brought home from my parent's home.  There are pictures, cards, letters, family group sheets, etc., and it is an adventure every time I face it. I like the work.  I like what I am learning about my ancestors.  I have both a "bird's eye view" of my place in a large family with hundreds of relatives and my place in it, and I have a "frog's eye view" through letters telling what a person was thinking about and dealing with on a certain day. Both views have enlarged my life and made me feel gratitude. Here are a few things I have been happy to learn this month:

--My grandma loved my grandpa.  Well that sounds funny, doesn't it? It's just that in their later years, grandma did not demonstrate her love to him in the usual ways, so I wondered. As I have read the letters my grandma wrote to my mother over the course of many years, I hear in her words the expression of her love for her husband.  She is concerned when he has health problems. She supports him in his callings. She comments on all of his work in the yard and around the house.  I hear appreciation and love as I read her letters.

--My father was generous, even before he had a lot of money.  I read a letter from him in the 50's and learned of a contribution he made to someone that I had not known about. Of course I had not known about it, because this was before I was born.  He and my mom were renting a place in California at the time. They were both working and he had decided to change careers and go back to school. This was the time period during which the contribution(s) was made. I was touched by his generosity.

--Write feelings along with facts.  It is interesting to hear the daily routines of life in journals and letters, but I prize the feelings shared. Once in a while, someone writes a paragraph of testimony, or pens a few sentences about the meaning of life or a lesson learned, and those lines are gold!

--Each of us has our turn on earth, and then we depart. I know we all know this, but it has recently hit home to me. We each have one turn and we are given a "package" to deal with, and we have a chance to live and breathe, learn and reach out, and then we depart to another place. I am inspired to make the most of this estate, to not waste away my days but to make something of them.