MARILYN'S WRITING ASSIGNMENT FOR WEEK 10

I know, I know. I've not posted anything lately. It has been a little hectic around here. Little Yellow has been in the pet hospital and will come home today. He has been very sick, but we think he is getting better at last. Al is feeling fine and Marilyn has been busy with exercise classes and her writing class. I have been bored to death, but it is the Dog Days of summer and not exactly a time of great energy.  Below is a 500 word assignment that Marilyn wrote this week. The picture is of first cousins on the Bunch side of the family with Billy Max and Zella in the front row. Marilyn says with Zella's help, she will identify the others accurately. She doesn't want to make a mistake, but as she came along years later, she doesn't remember her cousins at this age. Her guesses are: Back Row: Frieda Lines, Jack Legore Middle Row: Lucille Legore, Argel((?) Bunch, Gene Bunch, Geraldine Bunch, Maxine Legore holding Manville (?) Bunch Front Row, Billy Max and Zella Mae Carnell.

 

                                                                                      

A PART OF MARILYN'S MEMOIR

As we often do, Ian and I go into my office. The place we come to have conversations so we don’t disturb Grandpa Al’s reading.  
“Grandma, I need help with a school project. Could you tell me some things about our family? My assignment is to write a family history. Dad has told me a few stories about your side of the family, but I would like to know how things changed during your lifetime.”

I look through  the screen of the  big sliding door to the band of trees that shelter us from the rest of the world in our new urban environment.  The smells and sounds of early fall It remind me of  my office in Missouri –  looking out on a verdant scene, teeming with life. Instead of canoes gliding by, I see walkers or bikers on the almost hidden trail to remind me of the outer world.  What I should tell him?

It would take more than a brief conversation. I have to begin somewhere, so I said:

This is just the start of a very long story. My life is finally beginning to make sense to me and I have a better grasp of how the course of a life can change from a single incident. You know Grandpa Al and I  moved here  to Minnesota only three years ago and we were in a pretty sad state. We had lost our home, our way of life and most important to me, I had lost my identity. Here I was unknown and so very lonely, so I began to explore ways to crawl out of this deep hole of depression and doubt and figure out how to re-invent my life. I was like a slate that had been wiped clean, leaving behind only a film of tears and sadness. .In order to begin to enjoy living once more, I had to step back and look at my life on a bigger canvas.  No one learns much or thrives in isolation. There is an old story of a King who was curious about what language a baby would speak if not talked to in any language. He instructed that a certain number of babies be isolated and no one was allowed to speak to them. They were to be cared for, kept clean and well fed, but no other interaction. The experiment failed because the babies all died. Without human interaction, we have no reason to live.

So I started thinking about our family – how they depended on each other and some of the things – some big, some small – that  changed the courses of their lives.  Our family is rooted in McDonald County, Missouri, as you know. That place affected all of us and some of them even affect you and your little brother, Max– some in good ways and some, not so good. Most of our ancestors came from the mid-south – mountain people that were self-reliant and strong. They survived great hardship and what today would be called poverty, yet we felt rich in so many ways. It wasn’t until I moved into a bigger world that I realized that we were different in so many ways from people in other parts of the country. 

 

I will be glad when she gets to the funny parts.She assures me there will be some.

Lucky

Comments

[Katrina]

So true!