Making story of our family history doesn’t mean we change the realities of our forebears’ lives … we don’t turn a thief into a pillar of virtue …but we learn to carry the story differently so the lineage can heal.

Christina Baldwin                                                                                                                Storycatcher, Making Sense of Our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story

As I sit pouring over photos of family and friends, I struggle with many questions.  Who were these people, really?  What have I missed?  What role did or do they have in the weaving of my own story?  What stories can I tell about them … only the one’s that make me laugh and bring smiles of joy?  Can I tell the other ones that are sad, deeply hurtful? The ones that most every family has hidden in the deep, dark closet filled with spider-webs and ghosts that we call denial?

I recently finished reading Mary Karr’s most recent memoir, Lit.  She is a no holds barred storyteller, brutally honest, but in her honesty becomes a friend that you can trust to always speak her truth.  She lays out her life, a tightly woven carpet, that drew me in and once and for all convinced me that addiction is a disease.  Having had relationships with a number of alcoholics in my life, including my mother and mother-in-law, I have seen for the very first time what it is like to be a prisoner of addiction.  I can finally say I have reached a place of understanding and forgiveness, both for them and for my own behavior towards them.  Did Mary Karr go over the top in telling her story?  Does she give us more information than we need?  I think not, since through her story,  she has the ability to help us relate to the difficulties in our own lives.

I come from a family who kept their secrets tightly guarded.  There was a great deal of shame involved.  In the days when my parents were young adults, no one asked for help.  To need help was a sign of weakness. You had to deal with whatever was difficult for you, alone.  My father, a veteran of WW II, had PTSD, which at that time was not fully recognized as the debilitating disorder it is.  He suffered from sudden mood swings and moments of severe darkness. My mother, a victim of a cruel childhood turned to alcohol to soften the blows of their lives together and the memories of her own family of origin. Their challenges were never spoken of.

Most of us can and do blame others for who we are.  But in the blaming do we not lose perspective of our own story?  I have frequented Alanon meetings in order to find answers.  I have relived childhood trauma with caring therapists who have helped me see that my difficulties have resulted from the challenges of others.  I am thankfully at a point where I no longer blame somebody else for my pain.  I can only feel compassion for the cards that my predecessors were dealt during their lifetimes. Life is not a romp in the park, but a life long trek through darkness and light, fire and ice.

We all have our dark sides.  I have hurt others, including my parents, my brothers, my husband and my children.  I have warts.   I am a member of the human race.  It is through story that I search for answers that will help me to heal not only my own life, but my family’s lineage as well.  It is through the stories of others, that I am finding my path through the forest. I am searching for the crumbs left by those before me to help guide the way through the great mysteries of life.

I recently found a box of old photos that I had packed away in hopes that it would someday serve as just the thing to get me started recording some of the family stories just beginning to surface from the depths of my unconscious mind.  For a long time, I thought I had only a few memories. They were either really great, wonderful memories, like my love of waterskiing as a teen, flying across the surface of the water without a care in the world. Or they were just the opposite. Dark, painful ones like listening to my parents fighting in the backyard as I hid in my room. I remember thinking I heard my father throwing bricks at my mother.

Several things happened as I began going through the photos in this box.  I started remembering things that I hadn’t thought of in years and since then memories seem to keep emerging like bats leaving their roost at dusk.

I found this photo of my mother holding my first-born brother and felt a deep connection that I have never felt before. Consciously I did know about this little brother of mine, born when I was probably 3 years old. But I don’t know very much about him, because he died shortly after he was born.  My parents rarely spoke of him and I can only imagine the pain they must have felt at the time of his death.  Try as I might I cannot bring anything to mind about his death.  I remember him being there, a curiosity to me, my first sibling, but the old file cabinet in my mind reveals nothing more.  My parents are gone now and all they have left behind of themselves are some of their possessions and  the photos in the box.  They were very private people, filled with deep pain.  They kept to themselves the traumas of their own lives, believing that if things are not spoken of, the pain will disappear.

I do know this little brother died because of an Rh blood factor incompatibility between my parents.  He was weak at birth and was given blood transfusions to correct the problem, but it didn’t work out. This child was named Thomas Zabski, Jr.  after our father.   When he died and my second brother was born several years later he was given that same name.

There is no birth or death certificate.  I don’t know when his birthday might be.  I don’t know when he died and I don’t recall ever going to a cemetery to visit his grave.   It is as though he never existed even for the few days or hours he was a living being on this planet.  I find that extremely sad and in writing this story would like to honor my faint memory of him and to let the world know that for a time, he was here.  He was my brother.  I remember him.

Being nestled in the fullness of winter here in Virginia, memory flashes of past winters have been filling my head.  Hence, my last post with the poem, Caledonia Winter.  But my rememberings haven’t stop there.  Bringing my home in Vermont to mind, fills me with more of the richness of that precious time.

A stay at home mom, I raised chickens, a few sheep and Angora goats, for their eggs, wool and mohair, which I spun into yarn, then crafted into a variety of goods … wall hangings, sweaters, purses and pillows that I sold at area craft fairs.

The cold, dark winter season, seemed to sometimes last up to six months.  One year there was snow on the ground from October 1st and it never completely disappeared until May 1st of the following year.  At Halloween, Mark and Lisa usually dressed up as ghosts … a white sheet being the only costume that would fit over a heavy snow suit.

The wind howled and temperatures were often below zero, not including the wind chill factor.  At times, snow drifts would close off our view from the picture window in our family room.  We heated our 125 year old farm-house with an old oil burner, backed up by several wood burning stoves, one in the kitchen which I cooked on during the cold months, baking bread and slowly simmering hearty stews.

Winter days were mostly gray and snowy, followed by one or two exquisitely cloudless, arctic-blue-sky days. The sun, hanging low in the southern portion of the sky would set the icicles on the eaves to dripping.  Those were favorite days.  I’d often go off on cross-country skis, finding my tracks to be the first across newly fallen snow, except for those of tiny mice, a fox or some other wild creature looking for food to bring back to its den.

Yet, I was depressed much of the time, often had cabin-fever when the weather was cruel and cold … when being outside was not a realistic option. I suffered from what is now called Seasonal Effective Disorder, which at the time wasn’t recognized as something that might cause one to think that they are loosing their minds.  One March, after the days had warmed a bit, I went out with an axe and tried to chop away a 3 inch layer of ice on the driveway.  I’m still surprised that I wasn’t hauled off to the loony bin, but I know others suffered as I did through those long, cold days and took measures of their own.

Winter, was followed by mud season during April and early May, when the snow would slowly disappear leaving many yards and dirt roads mired in mud.  When grass started sprouting in melted places, daffodils began to blossom and maple trees came into bud, I knew the long haul of winter was over and warm summer days would soon follow.

Still, one of the richest times of year for me was during March and April, when the lambs and kids began to drop … tiny, soft creatures sent from above to fill those last excruciating months of snow and ice with wonder and excitement.

As with birthing my own children, I felt these events were miracles … teachings on the essence of life, love and existence … in a scientific world, the result of sperm meeting egg.  In my heart, it was so much more.

I have never experienced such warmth and joy as when witnessing a new life being brought into the world … when a lamb or kid, slowly slips from its mother’s womb, covered in a thin, blue veil, which mom slowly removes with gentle strokes of her tongue.  The small bundle of life unfolds, bleating as it finds its legs, reaches a staggering balance and butts its tiny head in the direction of mama’s teat.

It is hard for me to find words for what seems to be a healing of the spirit.  Envisioning this newness fills me with the sweetness of life and the mystery of our being.  I find it similar to what happens when words seamlessly flow from some unknown source onto a blank piece of paper; or when a paint brush, though held by the painter, finds its own way across a canvas, bringing to life a work of art.