Scrapbook reminded me of older generation’s stories

One of the pleasant surprises from pandemic lockdown was my discovery of a tattered scrapbook full of ancient black and white family photos. I think it belonged to a great aunt and, if fashion can serve as a guide, it dates back to the early 20th century. Some pictures look way older, though, and many are of places and people I don’t recognize.

I brought the scrapbook to my father’s cousins, two women well into their 80s. Though we speak by phone regularly, they always treat me as royalty when I visit. They bring out pastries and coffee and offer up a sweet liqueur saved for special occasions.

The scrapbook, of course, was beyond special.

“I remember this!” exclaimed one, as she leafed through the worn pages. Her face glowed with nostalgia and something else too. Something I can’t define and perhaps haven’t experienced.

“Look how young tia was in this picture,” said the other, pointing to an aunt long dead.

During that visit, I was able to put faces to names, stories to ancestors. I thought it a privilege. For instance, I now own a Barcelona studio photograph of my greatgreat grandparents, a couple whose love story has turned into family legend, passed from generation to generation. I’ve visited the hot springs where they met and planned to elope, he a coach driver, she a French woman of noble birth.

I’ve also walked the tiny apartment they occupied in a building that has since been demolished to give way to something more modern.

But knowing what they looked like, gray-haired and decked in sober clothing — well, that was a treat like no other.

That scrapbook visit got me thinking about how little we know about the lives and hopes of those who came before us. In fact, since my parents’ death I’ve found out all kinds of fascinating details about their childhood, but now I can’t ask for elaboration. I regret the missed opportunities.

A few years back, dying from the same cancer that killed my mother, her older sister told me they had briefly fled Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, when many antiFranco families in Spain sent their children north across the Pyrenees. I had never heard about this — but maybe with good reason. My mother would’ve been too young to remember, and I hadn’t thought to ask about those experiences.

Plain and simple, I lost out on learning about an event that ultimately determined much of my mother’s youth. As a storyteller, as a woman who earns money knotting together the threads of sometimes disparate narratives, I’m left wondering about all that I do not know. All that will remain unknown. I’m certain these blanks in history would’ve been valuable in understanding how and why my parents became the people I knew.

Is it too late? Maybe. There are very few of them left, family members of my parents’ generation. In most cases, we are separated by distance. Some still live in the old country, others in a different state. A few might not even remember decades back.

Soon enough none will be left standing. After all, not a year goes by without a phone call or an email from a far-flung cousin reporting the sad news of an elderly relative’s death or the unforgiving slide into dementia. But that’s life. For better or worse, it goes on and on, unforgiving and relentless.

And yet, and yet. I’m now acutely conscious that as the older generation dies, their stories die with them. So do their memories, their way of thinking, their dated idiosyncrasies. Something else happens in the process too.

My generation is becoming the elders seated at the family holiday table, the last ones still standing, and that’s proving a little scary. I don’t know if I, any of us, is ready for the transition.

Ana Veciana-Suarez writes about family and social issues. Email her at avecianasuarez@gmail.com or visit her website anavecianasuarez.com. Follow @AnaVeciana.