I was thumbing through my file cabinet and found an old yellowed tablet in which my mother kept dates important to her. I was fascinated with the wealth of history saved from notes, newspaper clippings, photo’s obituary’s, locks of hair and things too numerous to mention.

I spent a while looking at some of it and decided I wouldn’t be able to get clear through so decided to add one photo that is my favorite. It’s a five generation picture on my maternal side. Five generations of first born girls in each family.

My grandmother is holding Becky’s baby, Jennifer, my mother is standing behind her, then me and Becky. I was forty years old when this picture was taken. Today as I write, Jennifer is packing to leave for the Ukraine later this month. Time has a way of going on ahead of us it seems.

My grandmother (who I was named after) died in 1974.….also my dad. My brother died in 1989 and my mother in 1991. So Becky, Jennifer and I are down to three generations now.

I write much of what I do for family, to let them know who, what, where and why. I am the last who can do that for them. I want them to know that two old forks I have, for instance, were once owned by my great-grandmother and my grandmother. The one has a wood handle and only three “tines” which I would call tin or something like that. The other has a handle of bone, also three tines……carved to make a handle and joined by small brass rivets. My mother kept simple things to remember the people she loved. Mom went through life content with her surroundings because she was at peace with herself and the world at large.

It is a gift of character I will probably never have. My dad impressed me with “now” and the future. He could cast off anything when it was no longer of any use. He wasn’t wasteful by any means but he was interested in development. He would have made a good scientist. He was a mechanical man who could fix anything, He was a thinker linked with action.

I am a mixture of both I think. I find peace in the things my mother liked and taught me……. and I also love getting things done and finding a way to hasten the process. I appreciate good workmanship because I know what it takes to make lengthy projects. I like the natural. Wood, glass, metal ……anything made with hands. It all starts there for me.

Well, that’s enough “history” for today from my world. I encourage all of you who read me to write down things you want your children to know or to remember. It is so loved and valuable ……more so as the years go by.

Those old memories re-told are precious to those of us who lived them. They are worthy of being handed down…………

Essentially Esther