My Take
DiVoran Lites
Even though I haven’t studied it in depth, I do know that genealogy can be exciting and interesting, especially if you have a passion for history. If it is your own history, you can enjoy it even more.
My Mother’s grandparents lived with Mother’s family in their old age. Mother was named for her grandmother, Dora Bell. One day when we were in that hometown, we went past a small house on the main road where Dora Bell once had her own shop. She sold gifts and items she had designed and crocheted herself. She was very creative and she taught my mother to crochet too. Neither of them ever used a pattern.
For fun, they made tiny dresses, teddies, shawls, coats and hats for Mother’s, “Little Dolls.” She had homemade furniture and other clothes as well. When I was a child, I got to play with the “Little Dolls.” I remember the non-crocheted hats best. They had deep crowns and wide brims and must have been the fashion in the 1900s. I like seeing that type of hat in pictures. I think it’s still my favorite style.
My playing with Mother’s dolls, and the fact that she and her grandmother made the clothes made a wonderful continuity in my life. So did Mother’s story telling. I feel as if I know my great-grandmother, Dora-Bell as well as any other member of the family, though I was only four years old when she died. It gives me a warm feeling of belonging, and I understand characterization mostly because of my mother’s stories.
Dora Bell loved her family deeply. When she grew old and frail she wanted them around her as much as possible. Mother said when she was a teen-ager Dora Bell would get ill whenever Mother went away for a short time. Once when Mother went shopping in the next town, Dora Bell had a heart attack and Mother was convinced it was because she left her. They both survived. Maybe it wasn’t even a heart attack, perhaps it was a panic attack.
In a way, I can understand that and relate to her, but in another way, I can’t. Her first husband left her with two daughters to rear, and that was enough to traumatize anyone. I’ve been to the cemetery where Dora Bell is buried next to her second husband whom everyone dearly loved. Her daughter, my grandmother is there along with my grandfather and my other two grandparents plus some other relatives. My parents are there too. I don’t know, it all just gives me a feeling of belonging that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
So there’s another plus for knowing where you came from and where your ancestors came from too. What do you know about your family history? Does it give you a feeling of belonging too?
Old Things R New 