I just spent Easter with my parents and brothers and extended family. My sister-in-law has been doing an online Family Tree and asked if I wanted to be involved with it. Of course! We sat for a couple of hours going through the relatives and arranging dates, but the best part was the pictures. She had many pictures that I didn't have and I have some that she doesn't have, so combining them has been great. We found pictures of my great, great grandparents from Russia. Recently I found this picture of my mother with her Swiss father and her siblings, when she was just a little girl. She is holding a china doll and looking a little sad. She's the oldest one, on the left. I don't think she had a very happy childhood. Her father was murdered not long after this picture was taken.
How is it determined who has a happy childhood and who doesn't? My own childhood was idyllic. I wish I could have given some of that to her as a child.
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4 comments:
I'm sure your mother took great pleasure in providing you with an idyllic childhood.
The family tree project sounds like great fun!
I agree with the above commenter. Your mother probably made a special effort to give you the childhood she did not have. Doing a family tree is a huge project with a lot of rewards and sometimes surprises. I found out that some of my ancestors were slave owners, and even further back, there was one who was executed for witchcraft!
Hi Cindee~~ This is a million dollar question. My childhood was horrid. I'll spare you the graphic details, however. LOL Because I've been forced to spend a good portion of my adulthood making sense out of it, I'll share probably the most profound thing I've learned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
In a nutshell, it's Dr. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. If you're not familiar, I've offered a link. It was very freeing to discover the definition of the optimal environment for a child to thrive. Unfortunately other than some of the bottom layer of the pyramid these things were missing from my childhood.
Somehow your mother must have known these things intuitively and passed them on to you which makes her all the more heroic.
Who has a happy childhood? The children whose needs are met. The rest of us do the best we can to fend for ourselves.
wonderful picture...
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