When I wrote a letter to my cousin to let her know about the death of my Dad this past spring my only thought was that she would really want to know - and I just couldn't make any more phone calls. But that one letter has spurred on a flurry of letters back and forth, and the unfolding of some family history that has been a huge unexpected gift to me, my brother and sister.
The cousin I wrote to is, I guess, a second cousin to us since she was Dad's first cousin (is that how it works??), and though we saw her periodically during our growing up years, we never were extremely close. Peggy was married to a career Army man and so their travels and relocations were frequent and many.
But even with the very first letter she wrote back to me, I realized that she was a much larger part of Dad's youth than I ever knew - and she has beome our conduit to information about great and great great grandparents as well as family stories we never heard before.
My sister has been doing some genealogy research, and it has made us realize how little we ever knew about Dad's family, beyond his parents. I did know that my grandmother had Portuguese blood, but for whatever reason, we never heard family history stories - and never asked until it was almost too late.
Peggy's letters have filled in so many gaps, showed us brand new sides of our father through her memories of childhood pranks and fun - and opened up all kinds of new questions. Why didn't we ever get to know this side of the family? Why, when family was one of my Dad's highest priorities, did his earlier family drift apart and lose touch with one another? Why didn't we realize earlier what a precious gift it is to learn more about our roots and the people who came before us, shaping our destiny in ways that are still unfolding?
I'm not sure which of the stories is my favorite so far - the great grandfather who migrated to America from Portugal, and after his two sisters didn't survive the trip and he decided that New Orleans didn't suit him, walked - yes walked - all the way to Illinois over an uncertain length of time, stopping to work along the way.
Or the story about the same great grandfather who stopped by his future bride's family farm hunting for work, and ended up falling in love and volunteering to work for room and board just to be around her.
Or the story about my great grandmother who was in charge of herding the family cattle as they moved across the state to a new home when she was fifteen years old.
Or the stories of my Dad sharing a photo that Peggy sent to him while he was in Europe during World War 2 - and then the many letters she received from Dad's GI buddies.
Or hearing that the reason my grandmother's maiden name was Smith was that the great grandfather who migrated here changed his name to make sure people would just think of him as an American (this one just stabs my heart).
Next will be sending photocopies of some of the old family pictures to Peggy - so many of them are not marked, and all of us are holding our collective breath that Peggy can help us put names, faces, and context together. We know (or at least are pretty sure) that we have pictures of that family farm where our great grandparents met and fell in love, and are hoping that pictures of them are among the mystery ones.
What a gift that we almost missed out on receiving!
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