Some Things Are Eternal

I do a lot of genealogy research. Not just for my ancestry, but for TW's as well. And for the random individual's headstone I encounter in various cemeteries and graveyards.

As part of researching prior generations, one finds the occasional photo or, for really old people, paintings or sketches. Then there are work, tax, and other records and data. If you are fortunate you can put all the data together and paint an extensive mental picture of these people. Knowing they were in a specific unit in the military and in a certain battle, that they held public office or were involved in politics, or simply a farmer or sharecropper tells you much about the life he or she might have led.

Until the about the 1940s or so almost all photos were formal things. Or at least posed as they took longer exposures. Thus people appear very stoic. And the photos tend to be of older people. This was in part because as photography became available to the masses they wanted to preserve the images of their elder parents and grandparents, know well that these people would soon be gone.

So you can imagine that I see more than a few images of older, often dirt poor farmers and their wives, well into middle, late middle, or old age with the effects of a hard life etched on their faces. And they are NOT smiling.

And I often have the same thought. "How the hell did they every have children?" He looks like he could not and she looks like she would not.

Yet there is no question that they did. And it was seldom one or two children. Usually there were 6, 8, 12 or more children.

Obviously they 'got busy' as the modern trope goes.

Then there are the occasional images of a young couple just before or just after marriage. And in their faces - their eyes - you can see an entirely different story. You can see the eagerness with which they anticipate future 'marital relations'.

I did not experience knowing Grandparents. One grandfather died a few months prior to my being born and the other two months after. One grandmother died before I turned 4 years old. The other lived out of state and, frankly, was a Psycho Bitch From Hell so we had little contact with her. The great grandparents were much the same story. All save one were dead before I was born or in my very early years. The exception lived several states away and I only met her about twice.

So I did not get the tales, the time, or any of the other experiences most people get from knowing their more direct ancestors. As a side note, neither did my father. Our experiences in this respect are eerily identical.

But I did have a few great-aunts and a great-uncle (all siblings of my paternal grandparents, one side or the other) that I knew, though the great-aunts were rather standoffish so there was less interaction with them.

Through the great-uncle, though, I managed to glean some of what I missed from other channels. It was from him that I learned to see past the façade of old age and glimpse some of the person that was.

His name was Sidney Ransom (I will leave off the surname). I knew him as Uncle Buddy. He often remarked to me that In his youth he called himself "Handsome Ransom". A distant cousin shared some photos on Ancestry of Uncle Buddy and Aunt Nobie (Honest! That was her name.) in their late 20s or early 30s, early in their marriage, long before they even dreamed of the challenges they would soon face; The Great Depression, a son with MS would would predecease them, and other things.

I wish I had seen those images when Uncle Buddy was alive so I could have called him a liar to his face. He was anything but handsome. I honestly believe he would have howled in laughter and reveled in arguing just how handsome he really was.

He told many tales of his youth (though I was still too young and unaware to think to ask him important questions about his parents, grandparents, etc.), and imparted some of the alleged wisdom he learned over the decades. Some of this was his version of 'adult' stories. Remembering that he was born in 1907, some of his tales were Blue, Risqué, or otherwise Naughty. At least they were for his generation. And considering the glint in his eyes at such times it was clear that he intended them to be.

Today his stories might barely rate a PG-13 rating. To him they was downright scandalous!

Sometimes those Blue Tales come to mind when I see these old photos and the images transform from static two dimensional fictional things into living, breathing, and dare I say, passionate people. I am reminded of one quote from a young wife to her husband that was quoted in Ken Burns "The Civil War". Not the one from Sullivan Ballou to his wife promising to come back to her even after death if it is possible. No, as eloquent and heart rending at that letter was, I am thinking of another.

The letter I recall was from a wife. She longed for her love to return to her. She waxed, in a thinly veiled code, and reminded him of "when he laid her on the couch'. Then she begged for him to come home as she so wanted him to lay her on the couch again.

Her letter reminded me in some ways of Uncle Buddy's stories and tales.

Unlike me, TW knew one of her grandmothers well. They were very close. I only knew her as an elderly woman (she was in her 70s when I first met her). But I was convinced that I knew her better, or at least more clearly, than TW did. See, TW could only see her grandmother as someone in middle to old age. A twice widowed sedate and genteel lady. 

I looked past all that. I saw someone who came of age as a young woman in a larger city during the Roaring Twenties. I would regale TW with visions of her grandmother being something of a 'wild child' in her day. This was seldom well received. TW did not believe her grandmother ever danced! So you can imagine TW's reaction when I would get the old lady talking about 'the old days' and she would talk about dances and dating. 

She still has trouble believing that I am right in such matters.

Her grandmother's real past became undeniable recently. TW inherited boxes of photos and ephemera from her mother (and father to be honest, though he is still alive and kicking). I have been assigned the task of scanning and archiving all of it. A good part of the materials came from her grandmother.

And it included two love letters. And they were not from her grandfather!

TW was faced with irrefutable proof that her grandmother was not always the sweet little old lady she remembered. She had A PAST!

That Civil War letter, Uncle Buddy's tales, TW's grandmother's letters and stories, and other things best left unsaid - at least here - come to mind when I see tombstones, old photos, read wills and other records. They make people come alive. The years fade away. I hear the laughter, secrets, passions, fears, hopes, and dreams common to all couples. All of us.

We all think ours are unique. It is only after decades together and even more years of living on top of those do we begin to learn the opposite is true.