family history

Catching Rainfall in my Hands

September 24, 2014 by admin

Remember the movie Big Fish? It’s one of my favorites. For those who didn’t see it, Edward Bloom has lived a life filled with wonder. Problem is, his son Will has no idea what stories were true, and which were tall tales. Edward is dying, and Will wants to know the truth. The movie is a joyride through the vivid imagination of Edward Bloom, and Will discovers some surprises along the way as he works to reconcile with his father before it’s too late.

My great-grandfather, Hugh Stein, was a real-life Edward Bloom. Though I never met the man, I have been on a Big Fish-style discovery to sort out truth from fiction. As some of you know, this journey is about to take me to Scotland. In the interim, I took a side trip to Illinois to interview my parents. The more information I have, the more effective I’ll be with my research.

In order to start the conversation, we watched…you guessed it…Big Fish.

The next day, I went through popcorn tins and boxes filled with treasures. Included were letters from my great-great grandfather, who died in 1915, describing the early days of World War I. There were letters from my grandfather to my grandmother during World War II. My father even shared the many poems he’s written for my mother over the years — before now, I would see them hanging, unannounced, on the side of the refrigerator, but this time my dad offered them eagerly. In fact, he handed me the most recent one, saying, “I think this is one of my best.”

Who knew I had a great-great grandmother named Franziska Pokorney who would go on to marry several times? Who knew I had a female relative who was a wealthy, successful career woman in the 1920s, when women didn’t usually do that sort of thing?

I spent the bulk of the day scanning stacks of materials as relatives I never knew came to life.

We visited graves of relatives who lived in Hanover, Illinois. My sister drove us back home so Mom and I could sit in the back. So many details emerged, stories I’d never heard, about my parents, teenagers when they married, and how they built their family.

After 64 years of marriage, there are too many stories to tell in one sitting. Too many to tell no matter how many more times we get to talk. I am realizing how little I know, and time is fleeting. Gathering them, I feel like I’m trying to catch rainfall in my hands. It’s impossible. All the interviews, all the documents, and all the historical context cannot reconstruct a life, or generations of lives. And yet I continue, because something inside demands that I do so.

I cannot capture all the rainfall, but I will hold the drops I can.

Back to Work

August 18, 2014 by admin

It’s hard to believe that nine months have passed since my last blog post. I intended to take a short break, and it grew. I have kept in touch with some of you in the meantime on Facebook and blogs, but every now and then the still, small voice inside says, “When do we get to blog again?”

This morning, I knew: today is the day. I knew it as soon as I closed the last page of The Family: Three Journeys into the Heart of the Twentieth Century by David Laskin.

Laskin’s book came to me as part of a series of curious events, which I’ll write more about in a separate post. Let’s just say that adventure is afoot, and life has led me yet again down an extraordinary path. But today, I want to tell you about Laskin’s book, because it is incredible, and I want to sing its praises wherever I can.

Like me, Laskin’s quest to learn his family history started with bits and pieces of information that grew into a larger story. He knew, for example, that his great-aunt, Ida Rosenthal, founded the Maidenform Bra Company, an incredible achievement for an immigrant woman. As he went deeper, however, he learned of three separate family stories: the American immigrants, early Jewish settlers in pre-Israel Palestine, and, sadly, those relatives who stayed in Europe and endured Nazi atrocities.

Having seen the breathtaking beauty of Rosh Ha Nikra, where his relatives first entered Israel, I could almost picture their journey, though I could not imagine their hardships. Through Laskin’s book, I also gained greater understanding of the lives of Polish Jewry at the time my husband’s grandmother left for America…and a more personal sense of the Holocaust.

Prior to reading The Family, I had been reading a novel that just didn’t work for me, to the extent that I didn’t finish it. As a writer who wants to respect other writers, I usually muscle through and hope things will get better, but I finally had to give up. A few paragraphs into The Family, though, and my faith was restored. It is as exquisite, exciting, and gut-wrenching as any novel I have read, and I invite you to add it to your stack.

If anyone is still out there after my long absence, I would love to hear what you’re reading! As for me, I’ll try to not stay away so long.

The Book I Can’t Seem to Find

November 13, 2012 by admin

In the visual, nonverbal documentary Samsara, a group of Buddhist monks perform the painstaking task of creating an ornate sand painting. Late in the movie, true to the tradition, they destroy it in order to accept the notion of impermanence. Throughout the movie, this theme occurs over and over again in many forms.

For many of us, though, our desire for some sort of immortality drives us to achieve “something” in life. We don’t want to accept our impermanence, and we don’t want to embody a sand painting that disappears upon our deaths. We want to leave a legacy, something that shows the world that we were here after we are gone. We want the world to know that we were here.

I’m not a doctor who can point to lives saved, or a teacher who made a difference in a student’s life (remember Mr. Holland’s Opus?). I’m a writer, and I suppose that for me, the desire to connect with some number of readers through books, blogging, or other writings drives me to keep going. When I visited Orchard House last year, I touched the live of Louisa May Alcott, whose books touched me as a child and endure even now. I, too, want to leave something lasting behind.

I thought about this extensively when I edited my late mother-in-law’s writings to create Patchwork & Ornament: A Woman’s Journey of Life, Love and Art. Jenny Feldman had thought about it, too, and left plenty of evidence. She researched the Feldman family tree and uncovered not just names and dates, but stories of peoples’ lives. She also left her own detailed journals reflecting on her own life. She left stacks of artwork, and I have framed and hung many fine pieces that I found wrapped in kraft paper because she got tired of trying to sell her art, but never stopped creating it. She feared that her work would end up in a dumpster (I know this because she wrote about it), and I have done everything I can to ensure that it never does. She left us with the richness of story, her kind humor, and abundant creativity.

People who have read Patchwork have talked to me about what they want to leave behind for their families. There are rich stories left unwritten that may disappear into the sands of time, but many people don’t know how to begin.

Recently I started looking for a book that would point families in the right direction of leaving a legacy. For some, that means ensuring financial security for coming generations, and there are books about that. Some Christian authors have tackled the subject in terms of leaving a family of disciples. Books on career change may be useful for people who want to change direction and leave a legacy via their career. My own interest as a writer tends toward telling family stories, but legacy could mean anything meaningful, and that covers a broad range. How do we decide what we want to share? How do we go about doing so?

I have not found a book that handles this topic. What do you think? Have you found such a book that you could recommend? If not, is this a book you might read?