From Generation to Generation

I was doing the NY Times crossword puzzle this afternoon. One of the clues was: “It’s handed down from generation to generation.” The answer was “lore.”

It made me think, sadly, how often this is really not the case in American culture anymore.

In slower-paced times, lore was often handed down at the dinner table. Today, shared family meals are frequently sandwiched (hurriedly) between after-school activities and homework, or are totally non-existent. And grandparents – traditional lore tellers – may live on the other side of the country.

In less frenetic times, lore also belonged to the community: people who grew up together, and whose children grew up together. Today, people may not even know the neighbor down the street beyond a passing hello. And tomorrow there may be a moving truck in front of the house.

“Stories are how we organize our thoughts, preserve them in memory, share them with others, and pass on the lineage of the community and its experiences,” said noted author and practitioner of mindfulness meditation, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn.

A family, a neighborhood, even a country, needs its stories: Who are we? Where did we come from? How do we belong? – or it will cease to know itself.

A year ago, I went to Denver, Colorado and Brunswick, Georgia to record old family stories told by the last two surviving elders on both my paternal and maternal sides. These audio recollections are very precious to me. What are you doing to keep your personal lineage story alive in your family?