Gifts That Keep Giving through the Generations
In late December 2001, I felt deflated as I wrapped strands of twinkle lights to store for another year. Frustrated with the hassle, cost, and my disappointment in the gifts I’d given my family, I wondered what I might give them the next year that might be more meaningful.
Could I make them each something that was one of a kind? Maybe design and sew sets of placemats for each of them? No, that seemed like an overwhelming task.
What gifts could I give they would treasure and pass down to their children?
The answer came in a flash. They all knew and shared family stories and appreciated hearing more about our kinfolk. I could capture an observation, a tiny slice of family history on paper, then send it as a gift.
Hmm, what could I write about? My mind wandered back three years earlier when my grand-aunt Nell, whom I called Aunt Nell, and I’d toured an area in northwestern New Mexico.
My great-grandparents and their parents, along with other family members, had moved to New Mexico Territory in 1908. Many of them homesteaded in a community along the La Plata River between Farmington and the Colorado state line.
I’d often visited the area as a child. Beginning our circuit of the countryside at La Plata, Aunt Nell showed me locations she’d been familiar with all her life that I’d only heard about in family stories. Barker Dome, which I’d only known as the name of a family biscuit recipe, turned out to be the area where my great-grandparents had worked and lived. My grandparents had lived near Pendleton, once a thriving community [i] that had become a sleepy spot alongside the road. From my adventures roaming the countryside with Aunt Nell, I came away with a greater understanding and appreciation of ancestors and some locations where they had lived.
Aunt Nell and I had stopped to walk around and through the shell of what had been my great-great-grandparents’ house on the High Road. There she described the long-gone hollyhocks her grandmother Alcena had planted along the garden fence. A nearby tree had dappled the empty yard with light and shadows, and I could imagine my great-great-grandmother tending her flowers. I realized we were among at least five generations of women who raised flowers along with children. A flood of memories made a kaleidoscope of familiar faces and flowers.
Great-grandmother Lou and lavender irises.
African violets on my grandmother’s windowsills, rose slips in a cold frame, and her cutting garden with wide rows of flowers including daffodils, irises, bachelor buttons, and asters.
Mom, waist-high daisies, and riots of wildflowers in mountain meadows behind her office.
My sisters’ vegetable gardens and orchards, and our yards bordered with roses, gladiolas, irises, dahlias, hyacinths, hydrangeas, and herbs.
The sixth generation, niece Michela, even as a preschooler, with definite ideas of her own about her favorite plants and gardening.
Although I associated specific, diverse flowers and plants with each of us, I generally associated flowers and plants with all of us.
Feeling hopeful and happy with my plan, I packed away remaining 2001 holiday decorations. Yes, I would write a family story and send it to my mom, sisters, and adult son. I could happily invest time, enthusiasm, energy along with a little money to research, write, print, and mail the story. I could imagine big dividends as each family member read and enjoy they story. They could save the story to return to from time to time—and pass on in due time. Yes, I’d send each a precious treasure—a remembrance of our shared heritage—a gift that money couldn’t buy.
For Christmas, 2002, the first family story I gave as a gift, “Everlasting Bouquets,” began:
“Grand-aunt Nell was 85 and I was 49 the autumn day she reminisced about how much her grandmother, my great-great-grandmother Alcena, loved flowers. After visiting some of our ancestors’ homesteads and old stomping grounds, Aunt Nell and I chatted in her backyard as we gathered mature seedpods from hollyhock stalks. Pausing at an old-fashioned, single-bloom variety, she shared seeds and stories about how her grandmother Alcena taught her to make hollyhock dolls.”
For the first page of my gift, I wreathed an oval of graphic pink flowers around a quote from In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens by Alice Walker. Next, I placed the two-page family story I’d written. Then I added four pages of snapshots that showed one or more of the six generations, from my great-great-grandmother to my niece, posed against backgrounds of flowers and trees.
I made my mom, sisters, and son each a copy, encased the pages in clear plastic sleeves, which I placed in three-ring binders.
But wait! Which relative wouldn’t like to read a family story, and where does family start and end? I made additional copies for each set of aunts and uncles, each of my first cousins, my nephew and niece, and Aunt Nell.
Since 2002, most years I’ve been able to write and share one or two stories or a longer family history. I’ve never heard from some recipients, but others have told me they have built holiday traditions around reading them.
Aunt Nell passed away twenty years ago. As I’ve grown older, I’ve wondered what our outing in 1998 meant to her. She had seemed delighted to tell me stories I’d never heard before about her grandparents, parents, and siblings. Had Aunt Nell known how much she contributed to my project during our adventure? Was anyone else still alive who could have described her grandmother Alcena’s long-gone furniture, rugs, dishes, and the kitchen counter on which a neighbor gave birth to a baby? Aunt Nell had also pointed out where a community store, cabins, and corrals had once stood. As we traveled graveled county roads, had she wandered down her own memory lane?
I also wondered if our exploration of family locations had created a stronger bond between Aunt Nell and me.
Some years after our adventure, Aunt Nell moved to a nursing home. I visited her from time to time or took her out for lunch or a drive. In her 90s by then, she often retold the same stories. Each reiteration was an opportunity for me to ask more questions and to allow the repetitions to engrave the essence of the stories into my memory-bank.
In 2023, more than twenty years after I wrote the first of many family stories and histories, I circled back to my great-great-grandmother Alcena. I began researching and writing a story about her gumption and a family history that included her family of origin. My memories and notes from a long-ago tour and chats with my grand-aunt Nell continue to serve me—and my family readers—well.
- What have been your investments you’ve made and benefits you’ve gained while writing and gifting your family stories and histories?
- Which insights about your family or yourself have you gained from writing and sharing family stories and histories?
- How has sharing family stories and histories affected your family relationships?
What will it take for you to collect and write family stories and give them as gifts
[i] Marilu Waybourn, Abandoned Cemeteries and Lesser Known Settlements (San Juan County Historical Society, 2001), (http://www.aztecnm.com/aztec/history/abandoned-cemeteries.html : accessed 17 May 2024).