My Great, Great, Great…

I was in the back seat of my Grandparent’s gigantic boat, well, actually it was a car, but one of those mammoth 1960s full-size four door Fords, the “longest, lowest, widest” cars that had ever been built, and it felt like you were the King, just sailing down the road.

Grandma asked, “Anybody hungry?” and started to rummage in her similarly oversized purse, producing a paring knife and commencing to slice off chunks of the large cucumber she had extracted from its depths, her version of a road trip snack.

“Did I ever tell you about my brothers herding sheep from…” The familiar story droned on, its well-worn rhythms rising and falling in a comfortable haze as I looked out the window at the well-known, well-loved fields and streams as the road twisted and turned its way to our family cabin in the mountains. Grandma had been going there since she was a girl when the trip took two days in a horse drawn wagon and they stayed for the whole summer. It would take us a little over an hour and we would stay for the weekend.

One time when Grandma asked, “Did I ever tell you about…” I had ventured to say, “Yes, you already did,” which was true. She said, “Wonderful, then YOU tell me the story.” Never made that mistake again!

But, you know, now I’m so glad she kept telling stories. She was proud of her heritage and her stories of her parents and grandparents, her aunts and uncles and all the rest of the family made them come alive for me and instilled in me a respect for their values and traditions. I love that I could take my children, and grandchildren, and now my great-grandchildren to play in the same meadows, wade in the same river, hike in the same mountains, and even hear some of the same stories.

Over the recent Fourth of July weekend, I had the privilege of listening to five of the descendants of Frederick Douglass deliver parts of the famous speech he gave to a group of abolitionists on July 5, 1852. As each descendant was introduced, they proudly said, “I am the Great, Great, Great…Grandchild of Frederick Douglass,” carefully counting off the right number of Greats as they laid claim to their heritage. One of the younger ones excitedly said, “I’ve been counting on my fingers since I was like 5.”

How beautiful that this family has kept alive the story of their ancestor, his beliefs, his pain, his vision, and his hope for a better, more just world. How beautiful that being a part of his family has become an important part of their identity. Resiliency research highlights the powerful positive impact of children knowing their family’s history, the good and the bad, the experiences of those who came before them, how they handled those experiences and what they learned from them.

So please, share your stories, whether your grandma told you about the long ago past or not. You can start today, it’s easy. Just open your mouth and say, “Did I ever tell you about…”

Here's to Failing Forward Together,

Anne and Calvert

P.S. if you would like to hear the Douglass family for yourself, here is the link.