Family Legacies

In my last posting, I wrote about my father and our collaborative exercise of looking back over his life to identify the significant episodes in each decade of his 95 years. Just seven days ago marked the fifth anniversary of my mother’s death, which provoked more reminiscences on my part. Coincidentally, last week also marked the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. The news media is full of articles and editorials about the Kennedy Legacy—in particular, the legacy of public service. Then there are the poignant stories about Ted the dad encouraging his son after his leg amputation and Uncle Teddy, the father-figure for the whole Kennedy clan after so many of the fathers of the family had met with violent deaths. The responsibilities on this man’s shoulders were enormous.

As a follow-up to the exercise I did with my Dad, in today’s posting I’d like to write about some of the legacies left to me by my parents (pictured above soon after their marriage in 1936) and about how they impacted my life. I don’t have to look very far to identify the foremost legacies left by my mother and father. For my parents, it was clear that family was the number one priority. How do I know this? Did they tell me? I don’t remember that either parent ever actually verbalized to me what they valued and why they lived their life the way they did. Even if they didn’t spell it out for me, I’d know because they lived it. I can tell you about the car trips to holiday celebrations when we gathered at either my mom’s or my dad’s family homes in West Virginia. This is where we got to know our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins and also where we got to observe what our family represented. During these family events, we children learned how to sit quietly and listen to our elders talk, contributing to the conversation and sharing our latest adventures when we were asked questions. We knew that we were expected to be there and that we were expected to display proper manners and behavior. This was part of the privilege and the responsibility of being a member of the Saville family.

In addition to these holiday times, there were the weekly Sunday rituals when we attended church as a family and then returned home to gather around the dining room table and share our traditional Sunday dinner, usually pot roast with potatoes, carrots and onions—always preceded by saying the blessing and followed by the clean-up. On Sundays as on every evening of the week, we were all expected to be there for dinner, and to help out by setting the table and clearing up after the meal. One of our favorite family memories and shared images is of the four children, lined up in front of the kitchen counter, the youngest standing on a step stool, each with an assigned task for the week—washing, rinsing, drying or putting away the dishes. This image speaks volumes about what it meant to be a member of the family.

And then there were the very clear expectations that we would all work hard in school; that we would go to college; and that we would prepare for a profession so that we would be able to support ourselves, boys and girls alike, and so that we would be able to make positive contributions to our communities. From my mom, we got the high expectations for performance. From my dad, we got the work ethic that meant you stuck with a job until it was done and done well.

All of this, we got within the first two decades of our lives—mainly through the power of observation and assimilation as we watched our parents move through their lives. These formative years of my life were spent in the safety and protection of a loving family. There was church, Girl Scouts, 4-H, piano lessons and a whole score of other healthy, wholesome activities. The most incredible aspect of all this is that in addition to teaching their 4 children these life-long lessons, my parents were both pursuing careers which made them valued and respected members of the larger community. We learned that it is possible to raise a family and at the same time to do your professional job and to do it well. We did not see an attitude of “I work from 9-5 and don’t ask me to do anymore.” Rather, we saw “You do what it takes to excel and to be the best teacher / public servant that you can be. Mediocrity is not an option.”

I look at my own life as a working parent, and I see the same patterns of parenting combined with pursuit of a career. I tried to teach my children to be engaged in life from an early age; to participate in worthwhile activities; to respect and to be helpful to others; and to value learning. I’m not sure how well I carried out the high expectations part. I know that at some level I was always afraid of putting excessive pressure on my own children to live up to MY expectations, something which I saw too often among the students and families where I taught. As for myself, let’s just say that “achievement-oriented” is my middle name. Remember, I said I am a type-A personality. Need I say more?

There were certainly many challenges along the way for me, both in parenting and in marriage. Some of these challenges would have made my parents cringe if they had known about them. My children knew how to push buttons that my parents didn’t even know existed. Somewhere along the way I learned the lesson of persistence—maybe to a fault. I never gave up—on my children, on my marriage or on my career—even when the road was so rocky that, if I had been in a horse and buggy, I would certainly have been thrown out of the cart. On those occasions, to continue the metaphor, I guess you could say that I stepped out of the cart to lighten the load, or to help lift the cart over the rocks, and then kept on walking or riding until I reached the desired destination. Like Paul Harvey, to tell the rest of the story, I must add that ultimately, my marriage ended in divorce. After 27 years, my husband decided to pursue a lifestyle that did not include me. Because of the high expectations I had always had for myself, this divorce was one of the greatest disappointments in my life. But, I have adjusted and moved on. (More on this topic at a later time.)

So, here I am, age 63, and basically I am still living my life in accordance with that legacy left to me by my parents, in addition to a few on-the-job lessons I learned the hard way. Parents have the potential for so much influence on their children. I wonder if my parents knew to what degree each of those daily acts and decisions would eventually influence the direction in my life. At any age, it’s a good question to ask —what legacy am I leaving to those that follow me? How will I be remembered?

An Exercise in Looking Back

As we age, we unconsciously follow in our parents’ footsteps in so many ways. I have been fortunate to have had parents who served as good role models to me in almost every aspect of my life. My parents entered a wonderful retirement / continuing-care community at the ages of 89 and 93. After they had been there for one year (and coincidentally three months before my mother passed away), my mother requested that all of the siblings (her four children) come to their new home to participate with her and my dad in a one day workshop designed to help the “over 80 crowd” find meaning in their twilight years. None of us knew that my mother was so near the end of her life. She was a wise and somewhat sly woman. Somehow, in her wisdom or intuition, she knew that this would be a good way for us all to spend some meaningful and quality time together. As children, we took turns working with our parents on various assigned activitites. One of the most rewarding activities of that day was sitting with my father, helping him to recreate a timeline of his life. In particular, we looked at his life by decades, and reflected upon the major events and meaningful memories of his life as a husband, father and professional.

According to the workshop leader, instead of focusing on our aches and pains and all those things that our bodies may no longer be capable of doing, this is the time in our life to focus on our spiritual lives. If we are lucky enough to maintain our cognitive functioning, we can use this time for reflection and for examination of our inner life, something that we may have been too busy to spend much time with in the earlier years. More than once, after my dad began his physical decline when he was well into the latter part of his tenth decade, he kept asking us or wondering aloud, “I just wonder why God is keeping me alive. I wish I knew what the purpose is.”

My father was a hard worker, a highly respected man in the community, a very selfless person who would have considered it not only egotistical but a waste of time to spend time thinking about himself. What a pleasure it was to have those few hours to sit with him and to help him make a timeline of his life. It was hard for him because it just was not in his nature to focus on himself. I had to keep reminding him that God was keeping him with us so that he would have this time to be mindful of where he had made contributions; to look for patterns in his life; and to prepare himself for the life to come.

Dad had always liked to reminisce about growing up on the farm; about the sacrifices his family made by sending him to high school; about his life at the university when he worked on a dairy farm and also made the wrestling team. He told us how there was no time for fooling around on the farm and that his dad, my grandfather, never allowed any “monkey-business,” as he used to call it.

As we looked back on my dad’s life, it’s true that there was very little “monkey-business.” He was reminded of the many young men he had mentored as a 4-H leader; of the multitude of mutual acts of kindness and devotion he had shown to and received from his own four children and 5 grandchildren; and of the love of his wife for 60 years. My dad never expected anything in return for all he did to help his family, friends and community. There was no doubt to me that the world was a better place because of his presence. Of course, in his typically modest way, he never acknowledged any of this to me or to anyone. But, in my heart, I like to think that he got a glimpse of his real value and that he took time to be thankful for his own gifts.

If you are wondering how to spend that empty day in your retirement, why not try the same exercise? Map out your life in decades. Ask yourself what were the formative experiences of those decades that helped make you who you are today. You will probably laugh, cry and be astonished at all the marvelous memories that come flooding back.