When History Repeats

I've always had a knack for history, especially family history. And over the last few weeks, I've gotten to get a nice peak at how sweet history can be.

Within my family, extended family has always been an interesting topic to discuss. My dad is originally from New Mexico. My mom is originally from Virginia. We live in Ohio. Growing up, I didn't have the "traditional" grandparent experience that many of my classmates and friends had. While many were able to go to grandma's house whenever...sometimes grandma even lived next door or down the street...traveling to visit my grandparents was a LONG excursion...that we liked to call "vacation"! Getting together with relatives normally only happens during the summer months...unless some kind of event warrants the family getting together at another time.

Even with the distances between families, it seemed like we were much better at getting together with my mom's side of the family than we were with getting together with dad's side of the family. I don't know why that was...personally I'm going to blame it on the fact that my mom is a twin...so they have one of those freaky twin genes...which basically means they are NOT able to be separated for more than like 2 weeks at a time (before the use of cell phones and text messaging...they would call each other every weekend to chat...taking turns doing the calling so that no one was paying more for the long distance call than the other).

Whatever the reasoning, I've always been a little closer to my mom's side of the family than to my dad's. We'd see my mom's family pretty much every summer when we traveled to Virginia to visit them, and then again around Christmas when her sister's family would come up to enjoy the snow-covered wonderland called Ohio.

My mom's mom passed away in 1996 when I was only 7 years old. Much of the last few years of her life, I only remember seeing her in a hospital bed in her house battling cancer. But, as family photo albums and old stories go...my grandmother lived an amazing life. When my mom was in school, my grandparents owned a florist in their hometown. After closing the florist (don't know when that was), as a retirement job, my grandmother took on a job at Colonial Williamsburg as a costumed re-enactor. Re-enactors are the costumed people that go around those historical venues dressed and acting to portray life in the specified time period. Nana (as we called her) played the tavern keeper Jane Vobe at the King's Arms Tavern in Williamsburg.

I don't really remember much about it. I remember making trips to Williamsburg as a kid...we have the family photos in albums to prove that. Nana loved that job and playing her role of Jane Vobe. Even to today, though, as a 26 year old, I enjoy going to Williamsburg and exploring a place where my grandmother was once employed.

My grandmother's death in 1996 was, I believe, the first family death I had been through in my life. Nana had been sick and in a hospital bed for many months (possibly years...my measurement of time at age 7 was not always the most reliable). I remember that that summer, when we went to Virginia for our annual vacation, something was different. My mom was pretty sure that my grandmother would not be living much longer. So, part of our packing for that particular trip included black clothes. She was anticipating that (assuming God's timing would be convenient for us), Nana would pass away sometime while we were there on vacation. We may have needed to miss the first day or two of the new school year, but that would be okay. We spent probably a good week or so in Virginia...and she remained alive. Surprisingly, I don't think that was much of a relief to my mom. My first memory of one of my parents crying was on the way home from Virginia that year. I remember being somewhere in I think West Virginia (there were lots of mountains around us) when I looked over to see my mom crying.

We got home from that trip, and went to the first day of school a day or two later. The morning of our second day of school, as we were getting ready to head out the door, my uncle called...to tell my mom that my grandmother had passed away that morning. We went to school that day...and mom picked us up while I was at recess...and headed BACK to Virginia for the funeral. I don't remember crying that much. But I remember my brother being a complete wreck. It was such a sad time.

But the story doesn't end there.

Several years later (I think it was like 5 years), sometime around Christmas, my mom's sister's family was in Ohio visiting for their annual holiday visit. We were in Toledo at the local Barnes and Noble store. My cousin had dragged me to the children's area so she could ask the clerk to look up a specific series of book (that the clerk had NO IDEA what she was talking about). Trying to kill time while the clerk searched the store's computer system, I found a book to look at. I was a HUGE fan of the American Girl series. Ironically...as mentioned before...my mom is from Virginia and my dad is from New Mexico. Well...of the original American Girls, Felicity's story takes place in 1774 in Williamsburg, Virginia...and Josefina's story takes place in New Mexico! I was very interested in both of those dolls...and looked at everything that AG put out. While I was standing at the children's counter with my cousin, there was a new Felicity book on display that I was interested in. So...I picked it up and starting flipping through it. The book was called "Welcome to Felicity's World: Life in Colonial Williamsburg in 1774"...or something like that.

Now, you have to understand something. When I say I flipped through the book...that's exactly what I did. I don't believe in the whole "judge a book by its cover"...so instead...I flip a book open to a random page and look...then skip another 50 or so pages and look...to determine if the words are too big or too little, to take notice of the number of pictures...and overall, how the book looks. I started flipping through the book in my normal manner. My second flip got me to page 36 (again...something like that). And I stopped. This book had a bunch of "real life" pictures from Williamsburg. The page I was on was talking about tavern keepers and other jobs in Williamsburg. At the bottom corner of the page was a picture. And I thought...huh...that lady in that picture kinda looks like my grandmother (though I wasn't completely sure...her death had been years ago. And really, I didn't know if ALL people that portrayed Jane Vobe looked like my grandmother). I left my cousin....who was still asking the Barnes and Noble clerk to look up her wanted book series...and went to find my mom. Opening the book to the page, I said "Look mom!" and held up the open page of the book. I was going to finish that sentence with something like "...this lady looks like Nana!"...but before I could get another word out of my mouth after my "Look mom!"...my mom stopped, stared, and said "Oh my gosh...it's mom". She then took the book, found her sister and showed her. Before leaving Barnes and Noble that day...we bought all 6 copies the store had of the book. My mom sent one copy back to Virginia with my aunt's family to give as a gift to my great aunt (my grandmother's sister who is still living). The book was wrapped with a post-it note that said "Turn to page 36." We got a picture in the mail a few days after New Years of my great aunt seeing the picture of her sister in that book. And I was congratulated on my great find (and I stood proud that maybe my flipping through book idea wasn't that stupid...still beats judging a book by the cover!)

That is still one of my favorite stories to tell. But in the last few years, I have gotten the urge to look for other ideas. Over the last year or two, I have done numerous Google searches of my grandmother. With this day in age being the age of the internet, I was hoping to find that picture that had appeared in the AG book and find a plethora of more like it. Surprisingly, though, I never really found where that picture originated from.

Earlier this year (2015), I re-tried my search. I came across several possible leads and started looking into them a bit more. In I think March, I found two different possible publications that, although didn't include pictures, had my grandmother's name in them. Before pursuing those any further, one day while my mom and I were in the car, I mentioned the find to her. Apparently I misunderstood what she was saying. I guess my grandfather had given my mom a lot of information or history of some sort. It seemed like these two publications were already known to my mom. My search stopped for a time...as those were the only leads I had found.

A couple months later, we were again in the car, and somehow ended up on the conversation about my grandmother's history with Colonial Williamsburg. I asked my mom is she remembered me telling her about the publications (she didn't). As I began to re-tell her about those publications, my mom wanted to know more...and to find copies of at least one publication. The publication I was telling her about was a novel that, in the Author's Note page of the novel, included an acknowledgement to my grandmother. The book had been published in 1992, went out of print, and then was re-released in 2012 as an e-book only. After doing a lot of searching, I could only find the book in e-book format. Mom sent information around to others in her family...and within about 24 hours, pretty much all of her family that was interested had downloaded the e-book onto their e-reading device. I tried to send the author an email through her website, hoping to locate a copy of the book in print, but didn't get anything back. And...just for fun...I friended her on Facebook.

Feeling quite accomplished, I looked again for the other publication (a magazine article she had written in the 1990's about Colonial Williamsburg and women's rights in the 1700's). I was a little discouraged that this publication was not as rare as the novel. My aunt already had a copy of the magazine on her shelf. Now we have one too!

A few months later, I was still bugged about the whole novel thing. Back in 1992, there was no such thing as an e-book. But I couldn't find a single TRACE of this book anywhere. I couldn't imagine how a book was published in the 90's with no trace...and now back out as an e-book. So...back to my old friend Google I went. After searching a few used books sites, I found one that had a few books listed by the same author of the novel I was looking for. This author didn't write very many books...and most of the books were the same I had already seen available through the e-books. But then I realized there was another title that I didn't recognize. After doing even more research, I discovered that when the author re-released the book in e-book form, she changed the title of the book. I ordered a copy of the book...just to make sure only the title had been changed...and the acknowledgements hadn't.

When the book arrived a few days later in the mail (which I had faithfully tracked all the way to my doorstep), I quickly flipped to the acknowledgements page...to see that her name was still one of the first acknowledgements in the book. I took a picture of it to send to my mom...and then just for fun...posted that picture on Facebook. The next day, while I was on my break at work, the author (who...remember...is my Facebook friend) commented on the picture...recognizing her book! After several comments, Facebook messages, and emails...the author sent me 2 additional copies of the book...signed with a sweet note. One book is intended for us, the other intended for my mom's sister (or at least for the Virginia folks).

But I couldn't just stop there! Since I was STILL on a roll of finding things about my grandmother, I still wanted to find those pictures! If nothing else...I wanted to find the picture that had started all of my searches...the one in the AG book. The only photo credit in the book was to Williamsburg itself. Not knowing how else to do it...I decided to attempt to send them a Facebook message. I explained how I had found her picture before, how she had died 19 years ago, but I was still finding publications and pictures about her and asked where I could locate those pictures. And pretty much decided I would probably never hear back from Williamsburg.

This past week, I got a Facebook message back from Williamsburg. After a little bit of technical difficulty, they sent me an email with 9 photos they had taken during a photo shoot of my grandmother in the early 90's. Apparently they searched through many slides and files to find the pictures. I forwarded the pictures to anyone I could think of on my mom's side of the family and just today downloaded them into my Dropbox account and posted them on Facebook.

Ironically...as I was just finishing this story, I remember how a history professor I had in college commented during our class one time about how much he HATED re-enactors. I was always a little offended about that...since he OBVIOUSLY had no idea how important one re-enactor was to me.

There is a lesson to be learned from all of this. What you do today...although maybe not obvious at the time...could have an affect in the future. I sometimes wonder if my grandmother was still living...what she would have said when I found these things with her picture and name in them. Would she have been embarrassed? Did she think that sitting down to give information to a young author or taking some pictures for a photo shoot would eventually become a treasure hunt for her granddaughter?

I think about some of the pictures and things I've said in my life, and start thinking of their affect. There are some things that I PRAY never resurface 19 years after I die! But...there are others that I wonder if anyone would remember me for.

The Bible says (somewhere) that what the devil intends for harm, God intends to help us.

Back in 2010, after my battles with birth control meds, I began seeing a "Christian" counselor. I put the word Christian in quotes because it took me a little while to eventually realize that there wasn't much Christian in the counseling I was receiving. I saw this counselor for about a year. My family doctor had told me that my depression was coming from the affects of the birth control, and I was immediately told to get off of the pill. Within the next few weeks, things started looking up. My counselor didn't see me as a "high priority" patient...so I only went to the counselor every other week. After a few months of counseling, I started getting irritated with the counselor. We were paying the counselor per session out of pocket (it wasn't covered by our health insurance). I started realizing that what was supposed to be "Christian" counseling....was lacking in use of the Bible. I started paying attention to my sessions. We'd pray before our session began and at the end. The counselor had her Bible in her lap...but there was NEVER any passages in the Bible shared. Another words...I realized we were paying a decent price for me to have a bi-weekly vent session with a stranger. It's free to have a vent session with God.:)

As my doubts about the counseling continued to grow, I began digging deeper into my own relationship with God, even occasionally sharing verses that I had come across with my counselor! Yet...somehow...we still never consulted the Bible for any answers. I finally stopped my sessions about a year after beginning them after having a weird session with my counselor.

There was a name to the therapy she was planning on doing...but I now don't remember what that was. Essentially, the goal of the therapy was that although I seemed to be doing better on the outside, there was still some kind of underlying cause to all my issues on the inside that needed to be dealt with. (I actually learned something about this in our Bible study at church a month or two ago. Unless you go to a Christian counselor who uses the Bible as their main source of answers, apparently in modern psychology, there's this belief that there is some underlying reason for everything we go through. Counselors will continue to take your money and have you come to a session so they can keep searching for this reason...never really reaching that answer).

Basically, as my counselor described it, our job was going to be to summon the Holy Spirit, and have the Holy Spirit come show ME where all my problems were. Now...keep in mind...the only issues I had really ever talked to my counselor about were broken relationships and fractured friendships from my incessent clingy-ness from being on the birth control. Somehow...we were going to have the Holy Spirit  reveal the reason I was having so many friends issues (a thought I'd been trying to figure out my whole life). The counselor went on to explain the process.

So...during my next session, we did this "therapy". The counselor prayed to ask the Holy Spirit to join us. I felt pretty uncomfortable. A lifetime of going to church and learning about the Trinity didn't make any sense to ask the Holy Spirit to join us. It was my belief that as a Christian, the Spirit was already there...living in my heart. Why were we asking it/him to come? It's like telling the guests in your house to come on in. After the counselor felt that the Spirit was with us...she asked it/him to reveal to me where my problems were. And we waited. And waited. I didn't know what was supposed to happen. Was a unicorn going to come down and whisper it in my ear? A few minutes later, the counselor asked me if the spirit had revealed anything to me yet. With the exception of my thoughts on what to have for dinner that night because I was hungry...I said no. So we waited longer. Apparently the Spirit would show it to me in it/his own way. Feeling even more uncomfortable and wanting to be done with this supposed "therapy"...I let my mind wander to the first thing I could think of. I told my counselor the Spirit had given me the answer and we stopped.

The only thing I could think of...was a picture I remember from 2nd grade. I remembered a few days after getting back to Ohio from Nana's funeral, being in my 2nd grade classroom. It was bad outside, so we had inside recess. I was still sad from my Nana's funeral and had my head down on my desk, sobbing. Two classmates came over with the teacher to ask if I was okay. I told them that my grandmother had died, put my head back down, and cried again as they walked away. Truth is...I don't know how I remember that from 2nd grade, but I do.

Before concluding our session, my counselor told me "so THAT is where all of this comes from. We will start digging into that at your next session". And prayed and ended the session.

Driving home from the session...I was mad. I had sought counseling because of broken relationships due to depression from a medication I had been on. Things that...at the time...had happened only in the past several months. And now supposedly that wasn't true and really my problems came from one experience of some 2nd graders not knowing how to comfort a classmate who had just lost a relative? How in the world could anyone even CLAIM that those two things were related? I had just started to heal from one set of wounds and now a counselor was getting ready to re-open other wounds that had finally healed years before.

I needed truth...so popped the CD of a local Christian band in my player in my car and began singing along. A couple days later, I told my mom I didn't really want to go back again to that counselor. When I called to cancel my next session with the counselor, I lied and said I'd decided to get counseling from one of the pastors at my church. Still concerned now that we'd "discovered" this root of the problems, she sent her well wishes and told me to make sure to tell the pastor what we had done.

I actually wonder now if it's from that counseling experience that spawned me to begin looking again for pictures and publications of my grandmother. I don't think it's the reason for any of my issues...but now it's a reason for my JOY.