Friday, January 20, 2012

Christina's family is not so story-based

Cassie: I love both your family stories! The story of how your grandparents met is so just... adorable. And the holy water story is hilarious. They make me want to hear more family stories. :)

Alexandra: I totally understand not having much in the way of family stories, I point which I'll soon touch on...

Carlyn: Your story was funny and sweet! I also identify with it right now as I've been doing a lot of penny pinching (actually more like centime pinching) here in France as of late.

I alluded to the fact that my family doesn't have many stories, a hunch that I had when Cassie first announced this topic and which I now know after I struggled this week to think of stories to write about. We're pretty good on family history, I know where my grandparents came from, what they did, etc. But little family anecdotes? Not so much. There are a few little things I can think of, however, and I'll share those now.

-My mom used to play the cello when she was in high school and she likes to tell the little story of how, when her sisters and she were little (there are four of them total), they would get together, dress up like The Beatles, and pretend to put on a concert using their violins and cellos (they all played) as guitars. Pretty adorable, right? (Perhaps also a precursor to her daughter dressing up and pretending to be a student at Hogwarts... what?)

-My mom's mom (aka maternal grandmother, to use Cassie's wording!) raised four daughters at home, but also worked as a reporter for, I believe, The Hartford Courant. That may not be the paper, but it was one of the local Connecticut newspapers. She would go around town with my mom and aunts in tow, collecting stories, then write them up at home on a typewriter in between cooking and taking care of the kids (it was the 50s, so that housewife role was still in full force), and then hurry over to a bus stop where the driver would take her stories into town and deliver them by the deadline. My aunt has a newspaper clipping from when a story was written about her, showing her (with one of my aunts or my mom, I don't remember who) handing off an envelope full of stories to the bus driver. I never knew my maternal grandmother, so seeing that picture and hearing the story was really nice and helped me get more of a picture of her.

I have tried and failed to come up with a story from my dad's side of the family. There are little things like the fact that he was a very difficult child, something my grandma (his mom) would tell me a lot, but I never got any specific examples, just the general thought that he was difficult. The one story I can think of isn't the most happy. My dad is deaf in one ear and the story is of how he found out. They were doing those usual hearing tests at school and when he got home from school that day, he found his mom crying at the kitchen table because they'd called to tell her that he couldn't hear in one of his ears. Yupp, a real upper that story is. (He gets by just fine hearing out of his one ear, if you're wondering!)

I can not think of any other stories, so there we go for this week.

No comments:

Post a Comment