Years ago I kept a journal. Writing almost daily I kept track of my dreams and thoughts filling on the average three books a year. I am not sure when I quit that practice, I could go back and look, but at some point it fell by the wayside. Today those journals sit on a shelf in my mountain home, rarely read, never shared.
Journaling became a way of life after my mother died; returning from her funeral I sought therapy to deal with the panic attacks that began the summer before and again at the funeral. Writing was not the suggestion of the therapist, but a natural outflow of having kept sketchbooks while getting my fine arts degree. Very quickly, upon entering therapy, the sketching turned to the recording of dreams which followed the panic attacks. And the recording of dreams led to a recording of thoughts.
I have always been a thinker. For the longest time I assumed everyone had an interior life like mine, just like as I kid I assumed everyone could draw. Growing older I have developed close friendships, people with whom I share my private thoughts; at times I am met with blank stares and the changing of subjects but occasionally the response is just a straight forward "I don't think about things like you do." And occasionally there are the kindred spirits who welcome the exchange.
As I begin writing again I am not sure of my motivation; I do wonder if it is egotistical. But I think there is some obligation to pass on observations and experiences we find meaningful. A blog is easier than keeping a journal for sure, but wanting to share my thoughts, it is a vehicle providing access to those who desire to read them both now and in the future. I have been wanting to have a ceremony to burn my journals but have been reluctant because they seem so much a part of me, my process, and what I have to leave my children. And now grandchildren. With a new writing tool I find it easier to imagine that bonfire.
I don't know those who preceded me. I know where my father was born and lived until he joined the military in WWII, but I know very little about the people who raised him. My father was a fifth generation member of a family hailing from Raleigh County Virginia, now West Virginia. Thanks to a distant cousin I learned that my great, great, great, grandfather Thomas Dickens was born in 1785 in Montgomery County Virginia. He had one brother, Ephraim, two years older who was also born in Virginia. No one has yet determined the names and birth places of the parents. There isa book listing every known descendant of those two men, but very little detail of their lives or interests. No stories.
My mother was Hungarian, also born in West Virginia. Her father, my grandfather, Stephen Gyovai came from Csongrad, Hungary sometime in the early 1900's seeking a new life after his wife died. Leaving a family of children behind he brought his new wife, my grandmother Ethel Papai, to live with him in America. Together they had thirteen children, eight of whom survived childhood. The reason he left Hungary or what happened to the children he left behind, is a mystery to me. I don't know if they were grown or just left with relatives. Thanks to the internet I know the name Gyovai is popular in and around Budapest.
The circumstances surrounding our family history never mattered to me until I had a family of my own, and even then I was too busy to seek answers to the questions. It was when my grandchildren began to be born that I wanted to know about their family, to share those stories and facts with them when the time came.
As a child, like many children I imagine, I did not like my parents. More than that I had a deep dislike of them and the choices they made. At some point I remember making the decision to not be like them, to not need them, in fact to not need anyone. It was the way I propelled myself out of the bog in which they seemed mired; education, marriage to an educated person, was the vehicle I used to move away from my family. Interest in where they came from seemed like so many tethers keeping me down.
Over time my perspective of family has changed. I better understand my parents' dreams and the obstacles they encountered. I know that my family will always be part of me. And I have forgiven them, and myself, for that shameful fact. Currently I am reading the book Stiffed, The Betrayal of the American Man by Susan Faludi. My son offered it to me thinking it might lend some perspective on my father, but also on the men I married. It is certainly interesting in that regard but at one point the author discusses a conversation with the leader of Promise Keepers wherein he, the leader, is talking about his son:
" I didn't understand that then." Referring to his relationship to his own father. "I do now as a father. There's something of me in that boy, a mystery beyond all mysteries. As a father, I am the root, the trunk, upon which my boy is the branch. My history is his history.Who I have been is who he is. My heart is the boy's heart."
Reading it, the passage burned in my brain. Because isn't it something that we all feel as parents, and again as grandparents? And don't our children, and grandchildren, deserve the opportunity to know the tree, or trees, from which they spring? We can deny them, as I did, or we can embrace parts and deny others, which is also tempting, but the truth is that we come from all of it. And it is a mystery, and mystical. And while we are all different there are times when children are so different from their birth parents, or even grandparents, that knowing something about those who came before might be enlightening and comforting to the little oddball that seems to come out of nowhere.
I am a bit of an oddball. Taking hold of myself as a child I determined my own path with little assistance from my parents. Making mistakes along the way I was still able to move into a world unrecognizable by the family left behind in West Virginia. I have become an educated person, vital and interested in the world with great empathy for the people who reside in it. Some of that curiosity comes from the way I was raised, as a child tagging along as my parents moved around the world, and some of it probably comes from ancestors of which I have no knowledge. I know it did not reside in my parents. For them I am deeply saddened at times, but no longer angry or hurt. They did the best they could.
So I too endeavor to do the best I can. At every stage along the way I have struggled with my fears and desires to be someone worthy of being called mother, wife, teacher, but most importantly human. I have hoped to create an imprint that inspires and energizes those who know me, or who will know of me in the future. But most importantly I want to find meaning and joy in the daily comings and goings of my life. Writing is, and always has been, part of that endeavor. More now than ever.
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