'Herstory'

I’ve been working on family genealogy–looking into the past, so history has been very much on my mind.

My husband’s  family takes their history very seriously.  Not textbook history, though his father was a huge Civil War buff and our house is decorated with various prints, books and antiques.  No, I’m talking family, immediate past generations sort of history.   My mother-in-law delighted in telling stories of growing up in a large, Irish Catholic family, as well as stories of my husband and his sisters while they were growing up.  Consequently, my children have been surrounded by physical pieces of their family history, but also stories of the generations that came before them.  

When they were assigned family trees in grade-school, each chose to trace my husband’s family back through the generations, one point to the next, straight lines all.  My husband’s parents got married, stayed married, and had three kids.  Their parents married and stayed married.  It went on and on, generation after generation of people who married and stayed together.

None of my kids ever chose to do that family tree for my side of the family.  There are no straight lines on my side of the family.  People got married but often didn’t stay married.  They got remarried instead.  I have generations of whole, half and step aunts, uncles and siblings, twisting and tangling, one person to the next.  Hence, my family history is a little less documented and a lot less easy to chart.  But I’m working trying to put together pieces of my family story for them.  They have a wealth of family history to hold onto from my husband’s side of the family, I want to leave them some of my herstory, too.

I’ve been encouraging my mother to declutter her house.  To pare things down.  To simplify.  She called the other day so happy that she was selling of some old silver spoons and my grandmother’s china.  I offered to buy it all on the spot.  “Don’t sell the family stuff,” I begged.  “I’ll buy it.  It’s your story.  My story.  It’s pieces of our collective pasts that I can give my kids.”

Someday we'll leave my children a wealth of my husband’s family’s things–the Santas their grandfather carved, the chest their great-grandfather kept his tools for building organs in, the Belleek china from their great-great aunts–they’ll inherit fewer, but just as important heirlooms from me.

That china will now be part of it.  Along with the ugly yellow teapot that sits in my dining room.  That one comes with a story, as well.  When we were growing up, my brothers and I spent our weekends at my grandmother’s.  And every Sunday she made a family dinner, with that ugly yellow Aladdin’s lamp teapot sitting on the corner of the table.  When we were little, she’d serve us tea, liberally cut with milk, at those Sunday dinners.  When I was in my early twenties and my husband was in college, we rented the upstairs apartment in her flat.   One day, out of the blue, she asked me what of her possessions I might want when she died.  Without thought or hesitation, I was able to answer–the teapot.   A few weeks later, I was in my kitchen and heard her scream, then start to sob loudly.  I grabbed the baby and toddler, and we all  ran down the backstairs into her kitchen.  I didn’t even need to ask why she was crying, it was there for me to see as we entered her apartment.  The teapot shattered on the kitchen floor.  She rarely, if ever, used it anymore and had decided to wash it and give it to me and after all those years of weekly service, she’d broken it.  

Losing that piece of our history hurt, but we both got over the teapot...for the most part.

Months later, my husband and I went to the opening of an antique show my parents were participating in.  We were college-and-young-kid poor, and it sounded like a nice, cheap night out.  And there, in a corner, I found it.  The teapot.  It wasn’t very expensive, and I had the amount in the checking account, but not much more.  That was all the money we had until the next payday, and there wasn’t much in the cupboard, but...  But there it was.  How could I pass it up?  I took it home, ran down to my grandmother’s and opened the wrappings slowly.  For history’s sake, she made a Sunday dinner, put the teapot on the trivet in the corner, and served us all a cup of tea.  It wasn’t quite the same as hers, but we both were delighted.  That yellow teapot has become part of my herstory for my children. 

    My family tree is as filled with people as my husband's.  It's just some of the people are related to me by blood.  My Grandpa Elmer was my step-grandmother's second husband, no blood relation by any stretch, but he was dear to me.  Same thing with Papa.  He was my grandmother's friend...they never married, never even said they were a couple, but he was there all those weekends we spent at her house.  And...well, my family tree is filled with people who are related and I never knew, as well as those who aren't related but are family in my heart. 

My family tree might be crazy and broken, but despite those twists and turns, it’s filled with love.  And though I won’t have as many tangible things to leave my children, I can pass reminders of that love down in a story or teapot, or the painting of my mother from her first grown-up job in D.C.   And my grandmother’s china. 

My herstory.  

It’s part of who I am.  It’s part of who my children are–twists, tangles and all.

  That's the idea behind UNEXPECTED GIFTS.  The characters have to discover for themselves what makes a family.  Is it blood, or is it something more?  

  Holly  PS.  My search of my family tree is filled with English branches.  The most recent was my great-great-grandmother, Louisa Bently, who came from Huddersfield in Yorkshire!   (Unexpected Gifts will be available here on eHarlequin next week--October 1--then on bookstore shelves in November.  I hope you all enjoy Eli and Zac's journey of discover--as they try to find out for themselves, just what makes a family.)

www.HollyJacobs.com

HOMECOMING DAY, SuperRomance, 12/10
A FATHER'S NAME, SuperRomance, 9/11