6 - How Stories Were Passed Down

I still think about the long car rides from Lubbock to El Paso. Crossing the plains, next to cotton fields, parallel to the railroad tracks, seeing the rows and rows of pumpjacks to my right, oil fields, small towns, New Mexico, mountains, Carlsbad Caverns, Texas, El Paso. It is a beautiful ride. It takes six hours. It’s scenic. Timeless. As a child, it was a hard but beautiful time. I remember my parents having to juggle—kids, extra shifts, and obligations. There is nothing easy about the calculations every parent has to make. How do we afford? Where does it come from? Can you be there at a certain time? If it wasn’t being the overnight “on call” at the hospital, it was wanting to be the parent volunteer. To be there, however one can be, in the hope that your presence can make a difference. There is nothing easy about being a parent. The days are long. The years are short. It all flies by.

I’ve never met most of the central characters in the larger theater that is my family’s history. They were gone long before I was born. There’s a beautiful timelessness to their personalities and stories—their emotions and jokes are still alive in subtle ways. I’ve studied their photos and can see a little of myself in them. And through the learning and laughing, their stories are becoming my story.

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