She was a collector. She collected things that were very rare and difficult to find. She collected bits and pieces of her husband’s life before he became her husband. It wasn’t really for her. It wasn’t for him either. It was for the kids. So they knew who he was when he was a kid like them. They deserved to know so they could see they were just like him sometimes and not like him at all some other times. She did it because she believed in legacy and continuation and life circles of family and more. She did it, quite frankly, despite him.
He didn’t talk much about the past. Just not his thing. He was about now and later. Back then was back then. Not quite gone but not quite here anymore. He just wasn’t interested. For a collector, that made the collecting all the harder as well as all the sweeter. So she collected the stories in any way she could.
Pictures were the first place. To see her husband as the cute blond kid that looked a lot like their son inspired her. So she asked questions. Questions her husband answered with, at best, short sentences, and at worst, with “whatever.” She gathered precious and rare fragments at family gatherings where the telling of the old stories were blue moons of joyous sharing. Then she found a source. A storyteller that spoke of the family she knew existed but knew so little about. She drank of the tales and enjoyed.
Soon the images of her husband’s youth showed some clarity. Perhaps she would learn about the strawberry patch that was his side yard as a child. In time, she might just be able to picture the grape arbor that shaded the patio so well in the house that is now someone else’s home in Belford. His dog. His dad’s mustang that was almost his undoing. All of it might come to life to be shared and to become part of the legacy that is family that preserves what we are long after we stop being it.
She collected. She knew it was important work. She was right.
Happy Birthday, Misti.
Add to the collection.
Courtesy of Uncle Gil
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