DejavaBOOM

The handsome Hitler youth (on the left) is my father, when he was a wee lad, maybe what, five? Wow, he looks an awful lot like my son (if my son were so well groomed). Dejavu back at you, I need another cup of coffee--BOOM. How can it be that generations can so parallel? Just as my dad died, my son came into his own (well, he was about a year and two weeks old, but he seemed to lack definition until just about the time my pop went by the way of the weasel).

I used to dislike pictures of kids. Now I find them mesmerizing. Glimpse that guy there...so positive, so full of light and hope...so much potential packed into those tiny shoes. Kids are utterly empathetic, though they've lived little, they love much. That boy in the picture reared me, and now I'm rearing my own, and yet sometimes learning more from my son than I think I impart on him.

I'm going to be a personal historian. It was one of my dad's dreams to document all the family's anecdotes, not just their genealogy, but their stories. I want to do that for our family, but I also want to help other families do the same. From requiring my students to interview the elderly, I've confirmed, time and again, that there are riches in story telling that go untapped. Whenever I spy pic's like the one in this post, my family or any other, I wonder about the context. I wonder about what transpired in that person's life after the snap. Even in the case of my father, much of the story is forever lost. What can be retrieved from documents, friends, family, memories and memoirs--all of it is stained and strained. Maybe it's better that way. Undiluted, objective information would be bland. Colorized by loved ones, any life can pop off the page. I can hardly wait to start on a client.