At the monthly Ladies' Craft Day at Mt. Olive church, I decided to work on my scrapbooks, and totally drew a blank. I have photos, letters, diaries, copies of old German documents from my grandmother, but I got hung up on who was who in the pictures. I wish I had listened more carefully (or remembered better) when Nanie told her stories at bedtime about when she was a little girl. I recognize Aunt Minnie as the person who answered little Paula's question of "What do bunnies say?" with "Nothing" and Nanie thinking for a long while afterwards that bunnies ran around saying "nothing nothing nothing." I see the photos of the Hartford grandparents, but know nothing of why Great-Grandfather killed himself. The people we called Theresa (with a hard "th") and Sister -- no idea how they were actually related! It doesn't help that one of the last names involved was Smith!
Most mysterious of all, of course, is the question of what happened between her dad and her mom -- gushing letters apologizing -- for what? Children being taken away -- why? How many dead babies?
I guess I'm going to have to join Ancestry.com and see if anything can be unearthed. One of my friends says I should just invent a story! But I'm convinced truth is probably stranger than fiction.
No comments:
Post a Comment