Exploring history – Page 2

Grandpa and Grandma Neighbor

It’s never too late to say thank you. Even when it might appear to be well overdue.

There are all kinds of ways to create families, to love others and to have a sense of belonging and connection. From a traditional perspective, I did not really have any kind of relationship with my natural grandparents; my fathers parents passed before I was 10, and although I have some pictures, they did not live nearby and we saw them rarely, especially after my parents separated. Today I know them probably better than anyone else alive – but through their letters, photos and diary, not my memories. My mother’s mother passed before I was born, and my mothers father remarried and live out of state; her economic and physical circumstances and own broken relation with him kept him farther away than the miles themselves.

With my paternal grandfather on the beach at their Oceanside home c. 1963

But looking back I can see that our neighbors in many ways filled the gap. Here, I do not share the names off the living, or their pictures – except in the case of myself, and occasionally my husband. In fact, sorting through my family records and the literally hundreds of photos from my parents, their parents and before, is going to be a very long term project. Still, when I ran across a portrait of our next door neighbors from my childhood, I feel that sharing their gifts to me might have meaning for you, distant readers. It’s my pleasure to introduce you to them, today.

We moved to our amazing all electric “Medallion home” in 1962 – there actually was a large gold emblem in the porch – it was one of the last sold. I was four, my brother 7, and my parents marriage would be over not long after. On one side, the Burchetts lived with two daughters, and across the street, the Millers with four children, three older than me – and these were not large homes. But next door, it was just the Milbrats. I had no idea of their age, of course – to me, they were just old. Even as I grew into my college years, I really didn’t know much about them, except that they had grown children – and that they were exceedingly kind. In some ways, they were angels in our lives.

Yes, that’s our then future president shilling Medallion Homes!

I remember, after my father left and we struggled financially, it was Mr. Milbrat rather than my Dad who taught me how to ride my bicycle, encouraging me. He lent us yard tools so that my older brother and I could try to keep up with all the work – they had a beautiful backyard, and a neatly trimmed lawn out front. But perhaps most importantly, they welcomed us into their home on very special occasions – to watch television. For most of my upbringing, due to broken TV tubes and limited funds, we did not have a functioning TV in our home, which definitely accentuated my sense of differentness from the families around us – no father, no car, no income really and – no TV!!! That was certainly a reason I rode to the library a lot.

This sure looks familiar … it took courage to climb aboard!

This was the era of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, preceded by Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom with your host, Marlin Perkins. The Milbrats welcomed us in every Sunday night to watch thrilling shows like Zorro and The Horse without a head, that I remember so clearly. And, at Christmas we would watch the specials – I particularly loved “The little drummer boy”, since we sang that song in my elementary district wide choir led by Mr. Farmer – that show, narrated by Greer Garson and animated by the famous Rankin Bass Studios, still moves me to this day. On New Years day, we would head over to watch the Rose Parade; and, historically, it was in front of the Milbrat’s tv that I saw the Apollo moon landing. Oh, but, we also had to endure neighbors gathering to watch slide shows of their travels, and weird documentaries like “If these walls could speak” hosted by Vincent Price, and of course – National Geographic specials featuring Jacques Cousteau, back when there were an astounding 7 channels on TV.

I still love watching this program, and hearing “One Star in the Night”

They were very involved in out local church as well, the Methodist church, where Mrs. Milbrat would donate her knitted goods and baked treats – always delicious! We would see them at the seasonal bazaaars, and annual Christmas nativity programs that we participated in, as well. Mrs. Milbrat was particularly sweet and kind – I remembers being fascinated by her stamp collection (yes, I was truly that nerdy) from I think her mother who had served as a postmistress decades before – I am sure it was quite valuable, even then. I think occasionally they would give us a lift to the doctor, but we mostly relied on taxis, or on my Dad’s weekly stopping by to pick me up to shop at the Alpha Beta not too far away – sending me in to the liquor store next door sometimes to pick up cigarettes or beer, as well.

I think after my father remarried that he and my stepmother, partly motivated to perhaps reduce the amount of time I watched tv at their home after junior high, which they lived nearby, and things like “Seymour presents” on Saturdays, gave me a small black and white portable TV. I would watch in my bedroom for hours, catching up on reruns of Get Smart and beginning my love of old movies – to escape the loneliness of the house, now holding only my mother and I. And I drifted away from youth group and choir at church, starting to attend the more modern “Cross roads” that was large, new, and had guitar music and a popular pastor who appeared with his family on “Family Feud” in my teens. The Milbrats were always there next door – my mother would talk with Mrs. Milbrat, and her other friends from bible study, on the phone for hours. But they slowly became less of a presence in my life.

Oh Skylark … Have you seen a valley green with spring?

And then an amazing thing happened, in 1979, the summer after my third year in college – my Mom presented me with my first car. She said she realized my father was never going to help me get behind a wheel – my brother had left to live with them in part so he would be able to drive once he was licensed in high school. Of course, my Mom had not worked in all the years since they first married, and her income was limited to a small alimony and disability payments from the state; but, the Milbrats daughter had decided she was finished with her 1965 Buick Skylark, and I think out of the kindness of their hearts, they sold it to my Mom for a mere $350. It was somewhat beat up, and my father immediately found many things that were wrong with it. But, it ran – and I finally had “wheels”, and no longer needed him to give me a weekly lift from Corona to my Cal Poly campus and dorms. A year later, after graduation, I remember distinctly a co worker at my first job, with a San Bernardino CPA firm, ridiculing it as the “Jupiter Two” from Lost in Space – but it was, nevertheless, a thing of beauty (in function if not form), to me.

There was one other “gift”, in a way, that came from the Milbrats, and remained in our lives, for a while. She made wonderful stuffed toys, dolls, and puppets – and when my younger brother was born in 1971, I bought her handmade “Raggedy Andy” doll as a gift for him. He had it for years, calling it “Baby Andy”. In time, my mother bought two more – one for my older brother and one for me, to give to our children. What happened to my older brother’s Andy is unknown to me – perhaps one of his kids, now grown, has it stored away – but I kept mine in a drawer with my own childhood mementos for many years. Because, of course, I knew – as did my Mom in time – that I would not be having any children to pass it on to. Five years ago, I had the joy of giving it to the daughter of a dear friend who was expecting her own first child, and sharing with them what it meant to me, and knowing it too would finally become a beloved companion. Another enduring gift of love.

Not Mrs. Milbrat’s Andy, but … a friendly face, even now.

Then, in May 1980, shortly before my college graduation, Mom called my dorm room to let me know Mrs. Milbrat had died; and, the family was asking me to be a pallbearer. At this point in my life, I had never even been to a funeral; well, probably to my fathers parents services, but not in my memory. I was shy and reluctant to be around so many strangers, but I remember driving to the chapel in Loma Linda and then to the cemetery, and returning to campus. I know that my presence meant something to Mr. Milbrat, but to the rest I probably seemed like an outsider – and, I guess in many ways, I was. After I began my job in San Bernardino, he moved away, and eventually word reached us a few years later that he had passed.

Presenting – my best neighbors ever … Oscar and Beatrice Milbrat

When I came across their picture in my endless sorting of faded documents and forgotten faces, I reflected on how much the simple kindnesses of these “chance” neighbors had touched my life, in ways that at the time I did not appreciate. Of course, as a child, I always thanked them – especially when they bought one of the many fund raisers I had to tramp through the neighborhood hawking, like seed packets, cans of nuts for cub scouts, or engraved Christmas cards for church youth group. But I was a child, and as I grew, I became too busy to appreciate all their kindnesses, busy with work, career, and trying to make my way through my own life with it’s challenges that I mostly bore alone.

So, this week, I delved into the amazing online resources available through services like Ancestry, Newspapers.com, and other resources that until now I had only explored for my own family of birth – realizing that in many ways, the Milbrats were my grandma and grandpa of the spirit. What I found was a bit surprising. Oscar, born in 1893 in Alabama, had been a grocer in Orange county – and had been married previously, in Yucatan Mexico in 1925. (It really is remarkable the information one can find on these services!) Apparently his first wife had unsuccessfully filed for divorce, according to a short newspaper article in Santa Ana that she had filed a police report for her husband being too noisy in repairing her roof! She passed in 1957, and two years later he married Beatrice – he was 66, she was 51, and the daughter I had thought was theirs, was only his. After he passed in 1985, he was laid to rest back in Orange County, beside his first wife, not Beatrice – and so, childless, she perhaps today is largely forgotten. But, not by me.

There are all kinds of angels in our lives, you know. Not like Clarence from “It’s a Wonderful Life”, necessarily – not even people whose names we know, perhaps. They may just pass through, but they give us moments of grace, love, encouragement and hope. Even better – we can be those sources for others – it doesn’t really cost us much, if anything, to take a moment to be kind, to listen, to smile. And I think, despite the fact that the tract home neighborhoods of the past don’t exist for us all anymore, we still have neighbors, just in a different way – online, social networks. Our need to connect still drives us deeply within, and there are days when I lie in bed thinking – did I touch someone today? Did I take a moment to show them care, to be as the best neighbor of all, Mr. Rogers, would – just be present with them?

To me, the Milbrats were like Mr. AND Mrs. Rogers, right next door

Is there someone who touched your life like my neighbors? Perhaps someone who in the past, or now, is making a difference in your life that you have never really acknowledged or expressed? Perhaps you’d like to take a moment to reach out and check on them, and say a heartfelt thanks. Or, if like the Milbrats, they have moved on – then the best way to thank and honor them is to share what they gave you, with someone who crosses your path soon. Yes, indeed – what the world needs now is love, sweet love – for and from each of us, especially this very moment.

I thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Milbrat – Oscar and Beatrice – Grandpa and Grandma neighbor – for your love. Your caring, acceptance, and giving spirits. I have to admit – I don’t measure up, by a long shot. But perhaps, sharing their lives with you today, will help us all remember – we have the power to touch lives, moment by moment in small ways – that echo through those lives in ways we will never know. We can reach out and together – rise. Let us do so, today.

It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of … let’s change that!

Do we “simply choose to forget”?

These days, when many of us are spending far more time at home than we might have planned – it’s an opportunity to clean up, sort through and toss out. I can attest that not everyone embraces this vision with vigor, but there is something about digging into old boxes that has always held a sense of adventure and discovery for me. Growing up, my Mom had a bedroom that was basically “off limits” – filled with boxes and old furniture, but more importantly I think for her, filled with memories she did not want to be reminded of, yet could not find a way to let go.

When her lifelong health problems ultimately reached a point where she was unable to care for herself safely, she seemed to be at the end of her days – and I went through a period of desperation to find a housing and care facility. Ultimately, she improved – and I felt the “right thing” to do was to sell my home and return to that childhood tract house, where so many of my formative years and experiences still hung in the air. Being raised by a disabled single parent who had no earnings, no car and little interaction with the outside world had shaped me in many ways, so returning to living alone in a home drenched in memories was not much of a change.

Surprisingly, Mom hung on for eight more years, and during that time, I took on what I came to view as a “redemption” of the house, which had always needed much in the way of repairs and care that was never without our means. I wanted it to be a home that someone would be delighted to call their own, knowing the time would come that she would move into eternity, and others would make the house their own. As I began digging through the closets filled with old clothes and more, I began to uncover something I had not expected – shadows of the past that had not been viewed in decades.

There were photo albums from my parents, grandparents and boxes containing images from unknown ancestors. I unfolded faded letters dating back decades (including my father’s as shared previously), greeting cards, travel brochures and more. Going through them with first my parents, then in time other cousins and family members, opened a window to my heritage but, in time, also to a fuller realization of my own worth, and hope.

But today I am sharing about a member of the family in particular who met me in my infancy and passed not long after – my maternal grandmothers second husband. Grandma Jean had divorced my grandfather Richard before WWII – a pretty uncommon act back then. High school sweethearts in Denver, they’d both lost their mothers as teenagers, and after marrying in Oregon, raised her younger brother and sister and had two children – my uncle, and then my mother. Sadly, Jean passed a year before my birth. My mother had issues with her father until his passing – he lived out of state, and I never knew him either. But Mom loved her mother dearly – in fact I am named for Jean’s younger brother Norman who died during the 1918 flu epidemic.

My mother’s parents – teenager in love a century ago

Mom had told me that at some point grandma Jean had remarried, and they were seemingly quite happy until her own passing in the late 50’s. As with her not so socially acceptable in those days divorce, she again made a choice that in her time was rare – as an Episcopalian, she married a man of the Jewish faith. There were photographs, and even color slides, of their many trips together and with families – including strangers that were apparently his own. Other than a few unfamiliar names mentioned in passing in those old letters – there was only one other fact that many in my extended family recalled quite clearly. And it was not a pretty story.

Grandma passed in spring 1957, and he remarried shortly thereafter. Following my own birth in spring 1958, he had stopped by my parent’s home in Vacaville, near where my father worked at the state prison. Less than six months later, at the mountain cabin where he, my grandmother, mother, cousins and other family members celebrated summer vacations and winter getaways, my mother’s uncle found his body, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. My mother’s cousin David, still alive today, clearly recalls the incident, but with more expressive verbiage.

It was just one of those family stories, about people I never knew. But I looked through the photos and slides to see strangers faces from 50 years ago or more, and wondered what had happened to them. Now, after retiring, and in this time of isolation where I finally am trying to piece together so many little fragments of my heritage, my family’s journeys, for those who will follow – I came across those color slides with strangers faces and unfamiliar names again. I thought of another cousin who maybe 3-4 years back had gotten a call from descendant of his 3^rd wife – they had found some of our grandmother’s items in boxes and wondered if we wanted them. To my ongoing regret, that never led to us reconnecting and recovering those pieces of the past.

With all the amassing records and resources available to us online today, you’ve probably seen programs on PBS or elsewhere about “discovering family”. Well, perhaps at least part selfishly – knowing that it might possibly reconnect me with other records from my grandmother – I decided to see what I could learn about this gentleman and track down someone who might want to preserve these photos of strangers that I had found, who might be their ancestors. At this point, I should explain I am taking care to not mention names, due to privacy – I generally do not share photos of living persons other than myself (with one exception). However, I do feel the photos of those long gone, in many cases of family I knew little or none at all while they lived, bring the stories and discoveries that I share here a little bit more “to life”.

As I scoured Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com and other site, knowing little more than his name and profession, to see if I could find reference to my grandmother’s second husband, some interesting facts appeared about his subsequent marriage and death – social notices, mainly, but then – an obituary. And in time, another article – describing his death, not from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, but – “an overdose of pills”? I was not surprised that the harsher truth of his passing had been softened, but i was not expecting another revelation. The memorial service article mentioning and naming children from a prior marriage – one that neither my Mom, nor her cousins and family, ever knew of.

Among them, a son – and from the date, and with his name (because, of course, the daughters might have married, and I would not have as great a likelihood of finding their “trail”) – I found a high school yearbook from southern California with his picture. From there – articles about his life, incidentals really – and with a bit more digging, I find several addresses. I realize some percentage, maybe a high percentage, of you might think why I am doing this – reaching out to a stranger who is not a blood relative, may not even know my grandmother married his father, and that I might be opening doors that he or his family prefer to leave shut?

I can’t tell you for sure that I know reaching out is the right choice – but I did. I wrote a letter; I made a call. At this point, there has been no response – possibly by choice, maybe by chance. But I do know that if someone were to reach out to me with an offer of photos of family that I had never seen, and maybe to learn a bit about their lives from someone who knew them – I would jump at the chance. Would I bring up the circumstances of his father’s passing?No, I would not – but if he asked, I would share what I knew.

Because in my life, at least, learning the truth – the facts, the hard history rather than the pretty fairy tales – has given me strength. Courage – to accept myself, and others, imperfect as we are – working on that every day, believe me. Knowing that those who came before experienced not just joy and summer vacations and new cars and baby showers of the photos now faded, but also disappointment, uncertainty, and yes – failure – gives me hope, because I face those, we face those – every day. Especially now.

There is a conflict erupting in our communities, country and world, between so many fragments over so many divides. I understand, in part, the rage of those who see the emblems of a past that brings pain even now and want them to be gone. I can listen to the words, the hearts of others who truly believe that it is better to bury the past. Yes, the dead are gone from us- but while we have their memories, their past remains. We each must decide – for ourselves, and for those who follow, in our family whether of blood or of choice – what memories will we preserve. What steps will we take to pass on those pieces of the past – whether in our garage in a crumpled box, or in a remote corner of our memory? Will we decide to let them go? Or will we choose to let those who follow make that decision for themselves.

I am not ready to throw away these pictures of stranger just yet – but the time will come. It does not cost me to save them still; it is not a burden. But their knowledge will end with me, I am certain. My focus must be on preserving the lives, hopes, dreams and memories of those truly dear to me, for those who like me, one day, will look at them perhaps with a sense of awe, and wonder. Perhaps in time, even the lessons of my life will somehow speak, after I am gone, and as was the gift to me, provide a doorway to a greater faith, a stronger hope, and a deeper love.

Tattered pages, echoes of faith

Robert Titus Pence and Elizabeth Conger … their names written in faded ink on a colorful page, along with their children. Nearly 175 years have passed since they wed in 1847 – but it still speaks. I hear the whispers as I carefully explore the pages, images, and scraps inserted by those long gone.

Robert’s grandfather, Johann Heinrich Bentz, changed his name to Henry Pence when he emigrated to the colonies in 1749, arriving in Philadelphia with his family at age 9 – hard to imagine a journey like that for a little boy. Henry married at age 25 and had at least 16 children, raising them in the colony of Virginia, including Robert’s father, “Judge” John Pence. Born there is 1774, John really was a judge, and eventually settled in Oquawka, IL on the western border, married 3 times and fathered 16 children as well. Just think of how many grandchildren Henry must have had! Robert was born in 1817. After his first wife and infant daughter passed, Robert married Elizabeth Conger in June 0f 1847, and raised their family of 11 children in Oquawka.

“RT Pence 1876” is written on an otherwise blank front page of the leather bound bible, making it nearly 150 years old. It is huge and heavy, worn – perhaps from use, but probably mostly from age. It is difficult to imagine someone reading this by candlelight, carrying it across the continent over generations. The “family record” page is in color, and legible – but the binding is collapsed, pages missing and torn. Like many of the items that have found their way to my files, library and stacks of paper – it is irreplaceable. A reminder of people mostly forgotten except through a few preserved stories and photos with forgotten faces. They speak to me through these once lost treasures – and their unspoken testimony.

After their first child, son Harry, was born, Robert captained a wagon train to Hangtown, California, during the gold rush – now, Placerville. The account of that journey was shared with the readers of the Oquawka “Spectator”, departing in March 1850 and arriving in July. I had always thought that was how his family came to be here in California, spreading west – but I was wrong. He returned home, safely but not richer, and remained for nearly 20 more years – their last child, my great grandfather Arthur Sherman Pence, was born there in 1847. In 1870, Robert and family lived in Kansas, but eventually he bought ranch property in Parkfield, California.

I have always thought it providential that so many pieces of my family history have somehow found their way into the stacks of paper I now sort through, gaining and understanding of how challenging it was for my ancestors to come from other continents here, hoping for a brighter future. It was not easy for any of them, from Germany, Portugal, Scotland and Britain, nor from the family members they married from Spain, Mexico, and other areas of Europe – building new lives, surviving, sacrificing and struggling. Their lives are woven through time into a tapestry whose colors I am just beginning to see – a living legacy across the west and beyond.

The Sutro library here in San Francisco has a copy of a book written by another son of Robert’s, Kingsley Adolphus Pence – who, although married, died childless, but lived a fascinating life. Like me, he developed an interest in writing about his family heritage, and published his book in 1912, now available online as well as in many genealogical libraries, including many photos and anecdotes. Another distant relative, Richard “Dick” Pence, was a pioneer as well, an early advocate of computer based genealogy. He maintained a website about the extended Pence family which I found online, and corresponded with before he passed in 2009. He provided me with the transcription of my great great grandfather’s journey west. It is intriguing to me that two generations at least before me were drawn to understanding their family’s past.

As I turn through the pages of the Bible, I realize I am probably the first in decades to do so. How it came into my Uncle Morley’s hands I am not certain, but I am grateful to have it now. There is a letter from Robert Titus written from Parkfield in 1886 – mostly illegible, to one of his sons. I know that my great grandfather, Robert and Elizabeth’s youngest child Richard, eventually worked for the railroad in California and Oregon, where he met his wife Nellie, one of the pioneer Applegate family. As was the case with many families, unlike his parents, they had only one child – my grandfather, whose two children were my uncle and Mother. There are letters from Arthur to his brother, thankfully typed – and from them I learn that he needed his brother to provide a notarized statement of the Bible as proof of Arthur’s birthdate and citizenship. This would make him eligible for the Railroad Retirement act of 1934, in the depths of the depression – he had remarried and was reaching out for help, and the Bible record of his birth gave him the proof he needed to receive it.

There are also clues to the heritage of Richard Titus Pence wife, Elizabeth Conger, who was little more than a name to me. I find inserted among the pages a copy of the Oquawka Spectator from August, 1902 … describing her passing and burial. There are also two handwritten brochures from her brother, an O. T. Conger, who is mentioned in the newspaper. One appears to be a treatise on “Foreign Missions” that he presented in Lincoln, Omaha, Malvern and New Albany on occasions ranging from 1874 to 1885; another, in very tiny detailed script, is titled “A quiver of arrows” and includes thoughts and stories – apparently a reference for him in developing sermons, as a little digging shows him to have been a respected Baptist minister. I find online his obituary showing he left behind a widow and 3 children – I hope one day to find a descendant who would see these as treasures to preserve of their own heritage.

But it is the remembrance article from 1902 that tells me the most about Elizabeth, her family, and the impact of faith on at least some of her children. Robert had passed in 1889 and she spent her final years with a daughter’s family in Colorado; at the time of her passing, five sons remained alive, and one, Robert Lincoln Pence, accompanied his mother’s body back by train from Colorado to Illinois, to be buried where her husband family had been laid to rest at Rozetta cemetery. As I read the words, the depth of feeling is conveyed in a way that still holds power over 100 years later ..

“And now, in the old grave yard, where are laid her father and mother, where he sisters are laid, where he husband and our father, where her daughters and our sisters are sleeping, in the presence of old associates, the casket, borne by the arms of old friends, is our mother laid. Perhaps we, her sons, may never be permitted to see the graves of those near to us again, but in this old haven of rest, the old burial ground at Rozetta, it seems meet to leave her”.
^{Oquawka Spectator notice of passing of Elizabeth Conger Pence, August 1902}

**Memorial Card for Robert Titus Pence, in my grandfather’s papers**

I do not know fully the history of how my ancestor’s viewed faith – many families then, and some now, simply had bibles given to them. So, it is impossible to know what meaning faith had to these souls long gone; whether the Bible was simply a volume to record births, or a source of hope and encouragement. For now, it is time to put it away again, until such time comes as another follows after my quest ends. It and other documents of faith for families over centuries has served many different purposes, and for many today they are of lesser relevance – but the impact of faith itself on their voyages, their quest, reaches into our own even if only buried deep in our DNA. Whatever answers they sought, and found, are not unlike those that many of us have today, in very different times. They too, perhaps even more so, faced an uncertain future, with hopes and dreams, fears and obstacles. The faith of our fathers and mothers may be one we do not share, or even know – but its seeds brought forth our own lives as well. I find comfort in these letters, and these tattered pages, knowing that as they sought strength and guidance to make their way through the challenge of an emerging world, so shall I. So shall, hopefully, we all.

“Sometimes I cry when I see the boys”

Memorial day weekend, 2020

What do we gain by looking at the past? Some might say, very little. Yes, we live in the present, and hope and plan for a better future – but the past still speaks. It tells us stories – sometimes in words, in letters, more recently in videos, and silently in photos, in eyes that gaze into our present from times we never walked in, and people we never knew in life.

Perhaps you, like myself and many others, look back on your childhood and feel a combination of gratitude, nostalgia, and yearning – some things you treasure, some you wish could have been different. Although we cannot change what happened –sometimes, life gives us an opportunity to see the past through new eyes. I was given that opportunity, and it helped me understand my heritage, my family, and life in ways that I would not otherwise appreciated. I feel today’s attempt to share how this came to pass for me will not be fully successful – too long, too personal, perhaps – but if you are willing to come along, let me try to share how seeing the past anew helped me build a better future.

***My Parents – in their only “Non wedding” picture together …..***

This look back begins with a stack of letters in the 1960’s – from probably my age four to age 8 or 9. My Mom, as she did with so many things, kept the letters – some would I know question the wisdom in that, but I am grateful she did. They are undated, for the most part – all but a few typewritten, from my Dad to my Mom. He would type them at work, I believe – some even on the stationary of the “correctional institution” where he spent his career. Although I have wonderful childhood memories, I have few of my parents being together; they divorced when I was 7, being separated much of the time before then. So they are my father’s words, not my memories. Whether my Mom wrote back is unknown, but I doubt that she would have.

Here is the beginning of one from I believe 1964, just the first stanza of a poem from my Dad to Mom –

Ten years ago today, you became my wife
My pledge of love to you was for all of my life
Our honeymoon I remember, so well, so very well
Why did it have to change and become a living hell.

The poem, titled “To Nancy with Love”, continues for 7 more stanzas. One page, brimming with regret, anger, sadness, pleading – like all of the roughly 2 dozen others. My parents had married in 1954, my brother born the next year, I in 1958. She had worked at McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach, her coworker’s husband worked with my Dad at the state prison at Terminal Island; they met, dated and were wed at her mother’s home. They honeymooned in Ensenada (she kept the napkins and matches from the hotel) and ultimately moved into central and then Northern California as my Dad transferred to different correctional facilities, eventually returning to Southern California, where family remained and where I grew up.

***Wedding Day, May 1, 1954 – Long Beach, California***

Dad’s letters are filled with pain, but vary wildly, sometimes even within the same letter – one five pages long, typewritten. Dad revisits arguments, his attraction to other women, medications, group meetings, talking with doctors and counselors and even the priest at the prison; feelings of hopelessness, loneliness, apologies. Promising that he has always loved her, always will; in one, he blames Mom for the most recent incident, whatever that was, and points out her “unhappy life with your father”, which was true. Her parents had divorced in the 30s, when that was quite rare, and I know she was scarred by it. But he also admits to his problems with drinking; of physical violence between them; of emotional abuse. He talks about leaving our home after a heated argument, emotionally upset, and driving the car off the freeway. “I often cry when I see the boys”. Yes, I realize, he truly did cry. Nearly 6 decades later, I can feel the pain in his words. He wanted a better life, but he didn’t know how to make it happen.

Of course, all these letters were written while they were separated, and in some cases even after the divorce. Some letters touch on problems at work, staying with his older brother whose wife had died, his ailing parents, his mother’s stroke and hospitalization and his father’s decline. In his later years, Dad told me stories of his own father’s alcoholic issues – about his mother sending him to “get his father home from the whorehouse in time for Sunday dinner”. One letter includes a detailed budget, with the notation – “Since there isn’t any money, I will have to stop drinking, but not because of your dramatic performances and emotional feelings”. She was emotional; she also had severe health problems, exacerbated by rheumatoid arthritis that developed after my brother’s birth. They struggled financially, like many families. And I am sure there were other families in our neighborhood dealing with alcoholism, or worse issues.

It is somewhat revealing to read Dad’s thoughts about my brother and I, referencing regret about missing my birthday, our first Christmas apart, and other events. In one, he says my brother has “much better control of his temper” and that I am “still full of the devil but is growing also”. There is a note about taking my brother camping for the weekend with the neighbor boy (their father was a local attorney, also divorced). In one he talks about plans to go to Disneyland “soon” – I remember a trip, perhaps that was a seed that led to my own love of “the happiest place on earth” – a place I saw as a refuge from my own pain in adult life, when I had not yet realized the answer to the loneliness and isolation I struggled with, like Dad, lay within, not in escape from reality.

***The only pic I have of me with both my parents together***

Mom also had stacks of letters from attorneys; issues about his owing fees, the ownership of the home and property; and Dad’s handwritten will leaving his property to my brother and me. One attorney letter advised Mom that Dad was going to tell the state, who had financed the home mortgage under a veteran program, that he was abandoning the home and to take action against her; in another, her attorney indicates that Dad was representing their divorce was “off” due to “conciliation” – but that was not to be. Their divorce was final in October 1965 after years of separation. In the end, the home was awarded to Mom, along with $150/month alimony and $100/month child support for each of us – $350 a month. Mom’s physical and emotional deterioration continued; she never returned to work.

In 1966, when I was 8, my Dad married a wonderful woman who did what she could to include both my brother and I in their lives. We went on vacations to Pismo Beach and Arizona, I spent weekends visiting them a few blocks away. In time, they had a son, and he and his family continue to be a blessing in my life. My Dad did all he could, I believe – within his ability – to provide for my brother and I, to support us. I remember the weekend visits, the trips to work, watching “Seymour presents” and “The Outer Limits” on TV together, and later, support and encouragement in other ways. But no one has all happy memories.

Friend, I do not want you to read these words and be downcast or depressed. But something inside me quietly whispers that whatever value my experience has to offer others is dependent on understanding the depth of what came before. I literally have only one memory of my parents being together – my coming home from kindergarten with classmate Tina from down the street, to find my father screaming at my mother outside the home, her on the porch crying, and then him driving away. I suspect it was a form of self-preservation that the rest was erased from my memory. In a home with little money for anything other than food, I grew up feeling different from all the children in my classes; I remember the pain of 5^th grade open house when I was the only child with no one coming to participate, and the loneliness of not being able to talk about TV programs with others because we had no TV in our home, and no car to go to school events. And, in time, I became aware of the other difference, the one that was not allowed, that caused my isolation to become even deeper – from others, and from myself. I buried my soul so deeply that life without hope, and intimacy, seemed normal.

We put together photograph albums, we set them aside, with the pretty pictures, the smiles, the happy memories. They are wonderful to revisit, and good to preserve. Personally, I do believe there is just as much, if not more – to learn from our family’s struggles and losses. Growing through them. Understanding them, perhaps – and maybe, using those lessons to chart a better path ahead. It may seem contradictory to expectation, but for me – coming to understand the flaws and challenges and disappointments of the past gives me hope.

***Trying to see the world through my Dad’s glasses … even then***

When I first found these letters, I was 40; my Mom was in a care facility as I began the nearly 8 yearlong process of what I now call “reclaiming” my childhood home. She had a bedroom, their bedroom, filled with boxes and things she had shut away. In them, I found the letters, and … treasures. Photos of family I never knew. Family I reconnected with. And in time, that led to sharing, stories – healing.

My Dad and I had a difficult relationship for many years. My own journey seeking help – for a long time, for the wrong problem, unfortunately – led to separation from most of my family other than my Mom. During that period, I found the letters, and I learned to see that my understanding of the past was, like all of ours, incomplete – I came to a point where I realized that forgiveness was the only door that led to hope.

It took years, help from others, and pain – but in time, I made peace with my Dad. I dare to say we became close; my stepmother passed in early 2006, and my Mom a few months after. Dad outlived them both, and I am glad I could offer him support and care in those days. After they were gone – I continued to gain insight into their struggles, and mine as well. Eventually the desperation of my own emotional isolation and embedded shame brought me to a place where I found – acceptance, of them, from them, and for myself. Recovery, hope, faith – and love. And, in a way, I feel closer to both of them now than ever before. I know them differently today.

One letter is different from all the others – Dad wrote it to my brother and I at Christmas, with a note that he asked Mom to read it to us. In it, he writes – “I know that you both will someday have children of your own and my fondest desire is that you will become good, strong men who are loving, and will love your wives and your children. Never become mad or hateful as you only hurt the ones you really love and yourself”. Is that not the wish for every father for their sons? My mother has two grandchildren, my father four; none from me, but in my imperfect way, I try to share with all four the love that my parents had for their fathers, and I. And, thank God, I have come to know love, not in the way my parents wished, but one just as real and alive.

I close the file on these letters from the past; but I do not destroy them. They have shared their lesson with me, and perhaps hopefully with you. Parents and children, spouses and lovers, hopes and disappointments, sorrow and joy – like the rhythms of waves washing into our lives, generations repeating the longing of our hearts. With forgiveness, we have the chance to begin again, and build life anew – together. It is not easy, but there is a way to seek it, and to give it, for us all. I am thankful I found that doorway, and the life beyond and ahead.

Scraps and fragments

I have always loved time travel stories. There are some amazing theories about time, how we experience it, what exists within and perhaps outside the flow as we move through it. But eventually we are left only with stories, photos, documents and memories. Learning my own family stories gave me both hope and courage to move ahead with some of life’s most difficult challenges – and I have come to believe that it is the experiences of struggle, conflict, even despair, that sometimes have the most power for our lives.

So here I will be sharing those stories, those discoveries. You might well think that the details of these moments from the past have no meaning for anyone but me or some relatives somewhere – but I suggest otherwise. So, I am going to write about them here. They are not all pretty, or happy endings (perhaps) – but they are real, at least in the sense they are truth that I know, which is never of course all of it. And I will do my best to share them honestly.

Many of them I have because my Mom was in many ways a hoarder. She was a disabled single mother with two boys, age 9 and 6 at the time of her divorce; in time, hopefully, I can share more about her life, but what is relevant today is that she kept a room in our childhood home crammed with boxes, things that we were supposed to stay away from, never to be touched. It is odd she preserved the past yet wanted to perhaps insulate herself from it at the same time; whatever her motives, I am grateful that I was eventually able to sort through it and review some of it in her later years, while she was in a care facility. She passed there in May 2006, Memorial day weekend.

Before her passing, and that of my father nearly a year later, along with the passing over that same two years of my uncle, stepmother, and my Dad’s cousin Bill, I was able to talk with them, reconnect with relatives and meet others for the first time, visit family sites, and learn more about the people whose messages were preserved in the cards, letters, photos, documents and diaries. Now, “sheltering at home”, I am beginning the process of culling from them something to preserve for my broader family – no children of my own, of course, but cousins, nieces, nephews and others who share this heritage.

There is a mountain of paper. I haven’t really looked at these files since my move to SF move than two years ago – it was always “important” but now that circumstances force me to stay home, it is time to climb the mountain. This past week or so our dining room table has been covered in files, and some of it – has gone in the trash. Deciding what is worth keeping is daunting. I kind of feel like I am throwing out irreplaceable items, and yes, they are – but irreplaceable is not the same as worthwhile.

Among the fragments, envelopes, plastic baggies and other stacks of what have you were the kind of things we stick in drawers thinking we might need someday, but never do. As I went through them and started to toss things in the trash, I realized these little scraps of paper reflected not just the ordinary items in my Mom’s life, but something more. There were business cards for doctors, for gift shops and florists; receipts for books orders, thank you notes from friends. Birth announcements and baby showers; on the other end, death notices. Neighbors going back to the 60’s. Lists of members of her bible study groups, where they had moved to, their children. My Mom … cared. She really did care about all these people, and many names I had not seen for decades.

These were pieces of my mother’s heart, of her life and memories, now … gone, with her.

In time I will share more about my Mom … her love, and the limits on it, and how that affected me and others. She was a person of faith, in many ways turning to that to cope with the physical – and emotional – pain of her disability, and her past. For now, I just want to share some pictures of what I found, little pieces of a life not to be remembered by many, not particularly distinctive or world changing, yet meaningful, just as many of your parents or your own lives – lives that matter in small ways but nevertheless do indeed matter.

Here is a 1954 letter from Humphrey’s music co. before my parent’s marriage, for the “splendid manner in which you have paid your contract obligation” and assuring her “You have compiled an enviable credit rating in Long Beach”. There was a cultural politeness, an etiquette (for some) then, which no longer exists. Why she kept this all those years is a mystery, just like some of the other weird items like the thank you note from J. Edgar Hoover.

A small scrap of an ad for a backyard children’s swingset from the LA Times in 1962 with a handwritten notation “Hope to buy for James and Norman in our new home”. They had been married 8 years or so by this point – about 2 years remained before that ended, but the swingset was in our yard, rusting and deteriorated, well into the 1990’s when I returned to care for the house once she was unable to remain. We had fun on that, in our little tract house backyard. All that for $33 in 1962!!

From somewhere in between those dates, or maybe even earlier when she worked for McDonnel Douglas Aircraft in Long beach – “Your Social Security account card” pamphlet filled with helpful advice. Funny how most of the information is pretty much the same today.

An unused thank you note with a scripture and an illustration of a cat – she always loved cats, but we never had pets of our own. “May your day be blessed with simple pleasures”. She was a stickler for sending cards, all occasions, and kept many that she received from family. A tradition that is becoming lost along with many others.

Including this one – which I will be keeping to pass on to my oldest niece – her birth announcement from 1994. My Mom loved her grandchildren, but did not get to have what many grandparents share, due to distance and other factors. “There is no such thing as a small miracle”, with pink ribbon. She also had handwritten notes for each birth with weights and time.

I am sure my Mom would think of my older brother’s children as her most lasting legacy, one I could not offer, but there are others in the way she touched our lives. She was by no means a saint – saints are mythical figures, for the most part – but she tried to share love with people around her. Like her parents before her, the marriage she had looked forward to ultimately failed, and she was left broken in more ways than physically. She turned to faith for encouragement, and to share it with others as best she could. We did not always have the relationship that she wanted – I could not be the son she had hoped I would become, and that was something that was never resolved between us – but we still shared love.

So what do I take away from this tiny scoop out of the mountain of paper that lies now in folders and boxes awaiting the judgement of “keep” or “trash”. Little scraps of paper, soon to be picked up in our recyclable barrel, on to the dump. Names, addresses, most of people long gone, like Mom. Someday, someone will be throwing out my scraps of paper – and yours. Little fragments of our lives and memories, moments that only we remember, already perhaps fading. But it is not the paper which we need to preserve.

There are people in our lives today that will not be here perhaps sooner than we imagine, and they have loved us, and fought with us, disappointed us and rejected us but also lifted us up. We have done the same to others in our lives. Perhaps we should search the fragments and notes in our drawers and address books and reach out, one more time. While we can. Take their hands, sit with them; thank them. And for those we cannot thank here and now, to take the time to preserve them. To ensure their love, and sacrifice, lives on – in our actions in the days to come, as well as in the memories, faded photos, and scraps we leave behind.

Thank you Mom. I am glad we came to a place of peace together. Not all your lessons were good ones, but you taught me love, and I am grateful even today you are teaching me still.