Puzzle Pieces

 

Remember when we were younger and thought our parents and/or adults in general had answers to the problems of the world? Ah – the sweet innocence of youth. Well ... we Boomers are the older (closing in on oldest) generation now and most of us, I think, know just how much we don’t know. My own “children”, of a sandwich generation caught between their parents and their children, have been at the point for a while now where they realize all of this as well.  It’s hard being a grown up sometimes.  

The thing is the older I get, the more I think about things – you know -- mull over …. Maybe it is because I have the time.  Case in point… ever wonder if your kids and grandkids have any idea of who you were before they were in the picture? Or -- have you ever wondered about your parents’ and grandparents’ lives before you?  There is a sort of invisible thread that links all generations together - sometimes I even sense that I am waking hand-in-hand with my Mom or Dad. I hear their words coming out of my mouth or finding their way onto the page of something I am writing. The thing is, though, that it is difficult to slip out of time and to find a way into the past … only bits and pieces of memories come together.  Things you may have heard or that you saw in an old black and white photo -- they sort of float around -- hard to reel in. Sadly -- some information is lost forever.  All are parts of a large puzzle yet to be finished.

I can’t remember if I ever told my children what I know about our ancestors – like about one grandmother who was married five times or a great grandfather who was blown up while dynamiting a tree stump while clearing a field. Have I ever shared with them that my mother was a shoe model in NYC attending a music school at night, when she met my father who was a Marine on leave there.  She was actually engaged to someone else at the time, but ever the salesman, my father convinced her to go out with him – just once.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, … was the beginning of a life time loving partnership. I think it was just a few weeks later that she took a train to Texas where they were married.  He was a Marine stationed at Lackland Air Force base there.  I found the paperwork after he passed away that explained what he did during WWII - a Marine on an Air Force base.  He taught pilots how to fly at night using Radar. Apparently, he studied at both the University of Utah and Pennsylvania’s own Grove City College in preparation for this.  Wish I had known about this during his life time. He never talked about the Marines except to teach me the Marine Corps Hymn – To this day I sometimes find myself singing it in my head.  Good olde “From the halls of Montezuma…”.  The thing is  -- I have a million questions and no one left to ask. Lost pieces....

Every once in a while things come up in conversation that I am surprised to learn that my adult kids didn't know about me in my time before them. Think I better make a list of things to tell them and my grandkids so that they don’t just find info in a dusty file in a desk drawer …  just in case they ever wonder what I was like and what I did before they came into the picture. You know – to make sure there are no, or at least fewer, missing pieces in the puzzle. Knowing a few things about the past gives one a certain special perspective on life and that is, I think, a good thing. I wish I had more of the missing pieces or had a way of finding them.