Instant Genealogy

By

Gerry Niskern

It’s that time of the year again; the holidays. Families will be criss crossing the country, going back home.

The truth is, there is something everyone will look forward to more than Grandma’s cooking.  That’s the sharing of family stories.

I recall as a toddler, standing around my Austrian grandma’s kitchen and listening to her chuckles and chatter with cousins visiting from Europe. They were having a good time reminiscing.  I couldn’t understand a word they were saying, except for my grandma’s one and only  English phrase,  “Damn right!”

Years later, I was a teenager when relatives visited my parents out here in Arizona. My first reaction was, “I don’t have time for these people. I don’t really know them anyway.” But before I knew it, I was hanging around the dining room table late into the evening laughing at the stories being recalled. I was amazed to learn that my very proper daddy had burned down the family garage when he was four years old…and he couldn’t tell his mother what he’d done because he still couldn’t talk.  After all, my aunt explained, “he was the baby of our family and he didn’t have to talk.”

Years later, after my husband’s parents were gone,  some cousins stopped at our house to visit. Our kids learned a thing or two about their dad’s childhood.  They couldn’t believe that when their daddy was about five years old he was allowed to go badger hunting with his older cousins and their pack of greyhounds in west Texas. According to the story, “he was talked into sitting on top of one badger hole and another little cousin was told to sit on another hole. That strategy was supposed to slow the badger down when it came out, and the older boys could shoot it. There was one problem. The badger just about scratched the gullible five year old to pieces trying to get away.”

Our nephews, who were always being lectured by their dad about the dangers of smoking, loved the story about their daddy caught sitting behind a chair puffing on his uncle’s cigar every chance he got, when he was only two years old

As the years go by, everyone, if we’re lucky, will have more and more of these family interludes in our life.  All these stories affirm that we are indeed a family connected and the laughter is the catalyst that holds the clan together. The kids take it all in and come to realize that when they were growing up, mom and dad weren’t perfect, in fact, even a little naughty sometimes. That’s good for everyone. It kind of levels the playing field a little, doesn’t it?