Photo books are cool!

The old saw is that nothing that is worthwhile in life is easy… everything requires an effort. Sadly, this is also true of what we leave behind. In the area of family legacies (this word sounds so much better than “stuff we leave behind”), we can all agree that a tidy book of photos with appropriate notes is much nicer to inherit that a bursting box of disintegrating albums and stacks of sticky photos (for example, that first box I posted in this blog).

There is a fascinating story in every family, even a book, especially with the emigration of our parents and grandparents from Lithuania. But not everyone has the time or inclination to write that story. However, we are all probably capable of tidying up a collection of family pictures with as many notes as we can muster, as Peg did with the self-produced binder. This requires some knowledge of computers and desktop publishing.

Through conversations at a coffee club, I found a new friend from Hamilton who has also already done what we are all merely talking about…

This is Audre Sakalas, with the beautiful volume she prepared through Shutterfly. Audre spent countless hours scanning many many photos of her Mom and (separately) of her Dad, and will be working on a third photobook about their family life together. The result is really very impressive.

Making a book like this is possible through many online photo companies as well (look for “photo books”), and also through COSTCO. Groupon also has occasional specials on them. It will, of course, cost more than a self-published photobook on your own computer. Do you have time for this? Well…that depends. Are you working? Do you have a hobby? Can you set aside a bit of time each day or each week? As in anything else, it requires prioritizing and organizing. You can jump into it with both feet and proceed willy-nilly, or start by listing your tasks and setting up a timeline. You could possibly farm out or share the scanning work with another interested family member (or pay your teenager). If there is no one to leave the book for, the Lithuanian Museum-Archives is the perfect place for your story, because that is its purpose.

Am I doing it? I have actually begun. I labelled a collection of file folders by family member. Admittedly, that was last year, and I am… snoozing on my laurels. Audre has given those laurels a shake! Thanks for showing us the book!

What to do with those old letters and diaries! Short answer: burn them!

A few weeks ago, an interesting question arose in a discussion about family documents. Some of us are “of a certain age“, as the French say, and that means we were actually taught penmanship in our youth and are adept at writing longhand. Many of us are nobly trying to keep up with technology and think that tapping reminders into our cell phones is quite a feat.

Not only writing longhand, but writing letters seems to have gone the way of the quill for most people, in this age of email, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. These phenomena have undermined letter-writing almost to the point of extinction, largely due to the instant gratification they provide. A life is now described in a series of selfies and cryptic comments punctuated with phonic (not to say moronic) abbreviations that have the personality of a licence plate.

Also, we grew up in an era of keeping diaries, which is another now-quaint habit on the endangered species list. It is said that journaling is coming back into vogue, but mostly as a meditative exercise in the never-ending desire for “self help“.

Baby-boomers are likely the last generation to have practiced the art of letter-writing. I remember studying abroad and staying connected to family and friends by writing and receiving letters. The thin, bluish airmail  sheets and envelopes were an important tool at a time when the only other communication device was a telephone, and long distance calling was expensive. The plot thickens. When I went away I also left behind a serious boyfriend, and we corresponded for months at a time… for a total of 3 years. We ended up getting married, had children, and the bundles of love letters rested in manila envelopes hidden from prying eyes for a few decades. What to do with them? We finally committed to burning them. It was not so much that the letters were improper, but they were special, and held unique memories that we felt were ours alone. In the end, just as our  children have their private lives, of which we cannot, probably should not, know the details, divulging everything about ourselves is simply neither possible nor appropriate. They already know we‘re only human.

In my opinion, the same is true for diaries. Unless they are of literary value, i.e., written in good prose in an interesting or informative way and without repetitive whining, self-pity, self-deprecation or vitriol, I can‘t image someone would enjoy reading them. In this vein, I think we can also blithely burn photos of old boyfriends/girlfriends, because no  one will know who they were or what they meant to us. Do you have silly photos of yourself at high-school parties? Are they really so cute that you‘d want your grandchildren to see them? I prefer to err on the side of caution. In fact, sad but true, few children are very interested in our fond old memories of youth. Usually, memories are like many anecdotes about comical situations…“you had to be there“!

The sentence you never want to hear:

… Mom’s high school diary really cracked everyone up at “Show and Tell” today!

 Far-fetched? Of course. But old perspectives may hold some wisdom…

An interesting article came over my horizon recently regarding family trees and ancestors. It was written in Lithuanian by Algirdas Urbanavičius, who has evidently delved into this field. He writes that not very long ago, people were more in tune with their origins than we are today. According to the author, people were familiar with their ancestry up to seven generations back, because it was important to know what you might inherit. Citizens of yesteryear realized that nothing is random, relatives are not just a bloodline, but various characteristics passed down from generation to generation. Thus before marrying, they would want to discover as much as possible about the family they were joining, so they could foresee the family‘s destiny and what their children were likely to bring into the world.

Apparently, old Sanskrit teachings, the Vedas, tell us that we are the first generation; our parents are the second generation. They influence us most strongly through their personal example. They provide the model of family relationships; a daughter will model after her mother, a son after his father. Even subconsciously they mimic their parents‘ behaviour. Parents also influence their children‘s world view. Children inherit habits, lifestyle, manner of speaking, emotional expression and physical attributes. According to this theory, the most dominant characteristics are passed down, thus each generation is ever more intelligent, skilled and able to improve. Children do not necessarily inherit their parents‘ actual talents, but the parents can create a beneficial environment for them to flourish.

The third generation is two grandfathers and two grandmothers. This theory postulates that we inherit creativity, intellect, initiative, interpersonal skills and outlook from them; most often grandfathers pass these on to granddaughters, grandmothers to grandsons. Illnesses may also be inherited from grandparents, but parents are also responsible for providing a healthy environment and good habits. These teachings also parse the types of qualities that are passed down from paternal and maternal grandparents, for example the paternal grandfather passes down creativity and energy; paternal grandmother – worldview and material values; the maternal grandfather – interaction and relationship skills. Arguably the star of the foursome is the maternal grandmother – she is the keeper of motherhood and family relationships, passes on intuition, emotions and feelings, our connection to home, homeland and homestead (namai, tėvynė and tėviškė).

This is the scary part: it is very important for grandparents to be virtuous, to pass on virtuous values to their grandchildren. If the grandparents are “complicated“ people having negative traits, it is likely that their grandchildren will take on that negativity.

The fourth generation – great-grandparents – are eight ancestors. From them we inherit feelings of harmony with the world, appreciation of beauty, morality and the ability to love. The fifth generation is the keystone of the family. From it proceed the highest virtues or the darkest sins. The generations become more nebulous the further we go back: the sixth generations consists of 32 ancestors – from them we get genetic harmony or disharmony, balance or imbalance, lightness or darkness of spirit. The Vedas say that symbolically these ancestors are like our 32 teeth – the upper jaw representing the father‘s family, the lower – the mother‘s ancestors, reflecting their strength, purity, or early decay. The seventh generation consists of 64 ancestors. Misfortune and violence in this generation can influence the destiny of its descendants, despite their best efforts to avoid them.

What can we do with this information besides relegating it to the realm of mythology or astrology? Urbanavicius says that although we have no influence whatsoever on the behaviour of our ancestors, it is simply important to know this and not blame ourselves, for example, for our children being good or bad, for difficulties in creating harmonious relationships or achieving spiritual growth. Sounds like a wonderful excuse. However there is merit to tracking genetic health tendencies, because as we know, there are some diseases that can be avoided or at least mitigated by practicing or rejecting certain habits.

It would be fascinating to find out about our earlier ancestors, but as children of immigrants, many of us do not have at hand the means to gather the threads of our connections without on-site research. The lesson: interrogate your elders while you can!

Thank you to Peg for sharing her experience and giving us concrete information about directions we can take to start a family tree or story. Inspiring ideas and concrete decisions to be made. Sharing like this is an excellent way to motivate and to teach others!

It’s true that the DNA aspect of genealogy can be limited in some ways. As children of immigrants, we may know the names of and have even met our relatives, as I have, and so I was not completely surprised that my DNA test showed me as 99% Lithuanian. And although the services provided through sites such as Ancestry can reveal relatives we did not previously know, there is also the possibility of being queried by people who have no connection to our relatives. I was recently questioned by someone who thinks we are related, but none of the names, places or dates match at all.

What does knowing my ethnicity give me? Proof – possibly, but there are currently all kinds of doubts being cast upon the testing and its accuracy.  (By the way, no one in our generation – dragged to Saturday school and folk-dancing, forbidden from dating “others” and scolded for not speaking Lithuanian – truly had much doubt as to our ethnic background.) Possibly more useful is the analysis showing predisposition to certain diseases, but there again, it may be solid evidence only in some cases, and how useful is it in reality? How can you prepare? Fodder for dinner conversations – do we want to know, or not, and how much?

I think Peg is right that collecting material for the family story is most important: this is what we would like to preserve for the next generation, to find and mark our place in history, in a sense. Every family has a story. And displaced families especially need some sort of anchor in a mixed society here in North America. So, back to the box. It does now have files named according to family branches. As soon as I declutter the sewing paraphernalia that’s currently on my office futon, I will bring it out and aim for chronology. And inspired by Peg, I will begin to compile my family history. I must remember – it does not have to be a Pulitzer Prize contender. My notes and my thoughts in my own handwriting will be more revealing as to who I am.

You never know what you’ll find in your Box! This was my baby tag.

Logic dictates that I begin my story with my parents’ arrival in Canada, as it is easier than trying to go backward from there, for now. A future visit to Lithuania and the tiny cemetery that my grandparents are buried in by the old homestead, while it is still standing, is in my plan for Part Two.

I invite you to tell your story, or the story of your efforts, here and now, for others to read and be inspired. Give us even just a few comments to egg us on…

Readers and relatives – come forth! 

The time has come to confess. Writing a blog is much more difficult than one might think. It can also be quite boring if no one provides feedback. Throwing your thoughts out into the ether is easy enough, but realizing that they linger there, lonely and cold, can be a deterrent to sending any further envoys. I can see both sides of the equation and provide a multitude of excuses for both readers and potential respondents, because I am guilty of using them myself: summer, laziness, other projects, work, family, travel.

The lesson is: never give up. As in any project, initial enthusiasm may wane if no relatives respond to a Facebook page you have set up to unite them and make your plans accessible. Have I actually contacted some or any of them to tell them clearly what my expectations are? As in any form of teamwork, I am responsible for providing some leadership, guidelines and examples.

My sister’s sister-in-law Birute Mikenas on her parents’ tobacco farm in Tillsonburg, Ontario

Even while a project simmers on a back burner, inspiration may come in strange and unsolicited ways. Research on an article for Lithuanian Heritage Magazine about Lithuanian tobacco farmers in Southern Ontario renewed my interest in refining information about my own ties to that area – I spent most summers of my early youth there with an aunt and uncle. When someone mentions Delhi, it creates an immediate understanding of a whole other lifestyle than I knew in the city. It evokes seeing vast fields of giant-leaved tobacco plants, the unforgettable smell of tobacco drying in kilns, and praying for rain, but please – no hail…

This in turn encourages me to write down the names of the people I knew, talk to others who knew them, tell their story before it’s too late. Many of our elders are gone, so we rely on cousins and old acquaintances to help remember or connect the sketches of our past. Why is it important? Most likely because our true roots are overseas, and we have little or no “proof” of it in our hands, as do some of our friends whose families handed down homesteads and histories in what seems to be the here and now as opposed to a distant, foreign past. We lack a real connection with it, unless our parents made supreme efforts to educate us about that past and gave us opportunities to go back there.

The question then is — why do we search for our roots? Why is it important? I offer this as a starting point for a discussion. In my view, for children of immigrants living in a country of immigrants it is particularly meaningful to have a sense of connection to something more permanent than ourselves, something unique. The desire for permanence may be particularly important to the children of refugees. A person born and raised in Lithuania does not have to prove they are Lithuanian – it’s inherent, like the colour of their eyes. In Canada, Lithuanians are judged by whether or not they speak Lithuanian and how well, which wave of immigration they hail from, and how they are connected to the Community. We strive to display or explain our heritage and our interest in it. Why? One reason may be a need to portray our uniqueness in a giant mosaic of ethnicities, or – in a mass of average Canadians (if there is such a group, referred to in the US as “Middle America”).

Finally, and mostly, defining our connections with our family network and history can give us and our children a satisfying context and a sense of inclusion in a vast anonymous world.