How I wish I’d taken notes when the old folks were reminiscing. The stories about hard times and good experiences of the immigrant generation in the new country, milestones as their children grew and separations as family members scattered, they’re now down to just a few surviving anecdotes, somewhat out of context, nothing written by key actors in the saga.
The only grandparent I knew, Grandpa John Murphy, died when I was a young teenager and I don’t remember asking him a single question. I didn’t have the appetite for details at that age. He had eight siblings but we only have connections with the descendants of two.
My Dad was forced to quit high school and work to support his widowed mother and the youngest of her 12 children. We didn’t put a recorder before him when he dredged his memory about stories his parents told, but one that lingers was about the German landlord begging his Polish tenant farmers not to emigrate.
My mother and her sister were the second generation keepers of the stories. But they were talkers not writers and they’re both long gone. Gone with them are their intricate decipherings of the family tree.
I guess it was healthy and a good thing that our birthdays and holidays were all grounded in present time, with talk about old traditions just a light frosting on the cake.
But how I wish I’d taken notes. That will be the theme song as my brother and sister and I, and a couple of cousins, meet at summer reunions. We come armed with more questions than memories each time, trying to fit together the pieces. Cousin Bob Welch’s grandfather had a spin on the Irish clan that fills in blanks from our side of the family. We’ll roam cemeteries and ponder connections — how does it go again, our relationship to the folks in the adjoining plot?
We come armed this year with some new archival treasures, photographs found in an old album. A long lost cousin contributed obituaries of the immigrant Polish grandparents. A fourth generation Irish descendant with a recent interest in genealogy found notes from her ancestor’s return visit to the Old Country 90 years ago and, bless her, led us to the gravesite of Mary Byrne Murphy, who brought her brood to Milwaukee, Wis.
This train of thought has taken me on many tracks, starting with Mother’s Day which, thanks to travel plans, was celebrated a couple days late. It was the rare occasion when my niece and my sister were together to affirm their bond by scratching together in the dirt of the first vegetable garden of the new house.
It led me to share the memory of our childhood tradition, a trip to our small town nursery to select a flat of tiny pansy plants, the annual Mother’s Day gift for Mom. I’m pretty sure Dad did the digging and planted the little patch of the first fragile flowers of spring in that winter climate. But am I right about that, or did Mom end up doing the work? I’ll have to ask my brother.
Awareness of the memory gap made me jot down notes, complete to the point of compulsive, a list of the vegetables we expect to arise from the seeds just planted. It’s the old reporter’s habit, better to collect too many details than not enough.
The liturgical readings at this time of the year also bring out the newsman instincts.
Like my desire for family stories, I often wish the Gospel writers had used just a few more details.
St. Luke’s details
The liturgy on Pentecost always makes me muse about Luke, writer of the Acts of the Apostles, who actually did go into impressive detail telling how, filled with the Holy Spirit, the apostles began to preach and were understood by the polyglot Jerusalem crowd.
“Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? How is it that we each hear them in our own language: Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya around Cyrene and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs. We hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God.”
Most of those place names mean nothing to us at this distance in time, but we get it. It was hugely important to the recorder of the event to name all those disparate people who heard the word on that birth day of the church.
He was also thorough and fair to point out that some in the crowd mocked Peter and the other guys who were ecstatic with the good news they proclaimed, saying “they are full of sweet wine.”
Theologians and historians tell us that the Gospels aren’t firsthand accounts of events. They were written down more than a generation after Jesus died. It was information that had to be saved as the church spread beyond the scenes of action and away from the Jewish culture at its roots. And there was an agenda on the part of the chroniclers to make clear that Jesus was the Son of God and his teachings were for all peoples and for future generations.
So they selected stories that made pertinent points and other stories ended up on the cutting room floor, so to speak. There’s a line in John’s Gospel that admits there is a whole lot more: “Jesus performed many other miracles that his disciples saw. Those miracles are not written in this book, but these miracles have been written so that you will believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and so that you will have life by believing in him.”
I always get a grin on my face on Easter when it’s John’s Gospel being read because the author just couldn’t resist adding some personal information that went beyond bearing witness to the fact of the resurrection. John, who identifies himself as “the one Jesus loved,” tells how he and Peter dashed to the tomb after Mary Magdalene reported finding it empty. “They were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and got to the tomb first.” Just a little gloating aside, worthy of today’s sports page.
The Gospel account of the beginning of Jesus’ public life is another example where a little extra personal detail makes it vivid and real for me. It was, remember, at a wedding in Cana which Jesus attended with his new disciples. His mother was there, too. When she told Jesus that the host had run out of wine, he answered in a way that has been analyzed and interpreted every which way.
A mother’s request
He said: “Woman, how does this concern of yours involve me? My hour has not yet come.”
John’s Gospel tells us that Mary then told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” We know the outcome. The Lord told the servants to fill six tall stone jars with water. The chief steward tasted it and deemed it the best wine served that day.
Ever since St. Augustine, Christians wise and not so much have explored the episode. Books, theology classes, sermons and even blogs have analyzed that account. They speculate: Was the son disrespectful to his mother? Didn’t it mean he was leaving the private home life behind? Was wedding hospitality not worthy of a miracle? She obviously believed in his miraculous power, right? And on and on about new wine as symbolic of the new covenant, the church as bride of Christ.
Well, Jesuit college education or not, I’m not equipped to enter the theological debate. But, if you’re interested, I recommend seeking out National Catholic Reporter blogger Mark Shea’s Sept. 10 column on the Internet.
I do have opinions, as a woman, as a believer with my heart engaged as much as my head. Clearly, the evangelist thinks Mary’s role worth telling. He could have written her out but he did not. The story has deep meaning for me because of her role in it.
And as a storyteller, I really like getting all the details possible. I want to know the back story. I always have questions about the things that didn’t fit into the final edition. That’s all I’m saying. I guess I need to read the books again to find what I’ve missed and let them tell me more.
