Easter!! Rebirth!! Spring and Easter Egg hunts! This Sunday my sister had an Easter Egg hunt for her grandchildren and our grandson. It was absolute chaos with the little ones running around trying to get the eggs and eat the candy inside before their parents caught them. The children were all beautiful, charming, funny and wonderful. I think my own parents would have loved to be there. I still hear my mother’s laugh sometimes.
Ever wonder why when you least expect it, you hear one of your parent’s words coming out of your mouth? Maybe even think beyond that and wonder if it’s your parent’s words or their parents. Families are such organic entities. We not only share genes, appearance, personality, but also strange mixtures of all of the above. Anytime we have a family gathering I think of that. I see my own sons, my grandson, my nieces, nephew, and their children and begin to see all the various connections. Whenever a baby is born a female relative, (rarely a male), will begin this by saying. “He looks just like his mother, father, sister, grandfather etc”. The connections begin.
Then families begin imparting values, language, beliefs and everything else.
Sometimes families can pass on qualities and values that are not very positive. This can open them up to severe criticism from others who simply don’t understand where that has come from. My maternal grandparents emigrated from County Cork in Ireland in 1902. The reason they came is still somewhat mysterious. My grandfather was the oldest son of a farmer. Supposedly the farm would have been his, but Ireland at that time was suffering from overwhelming poverty. County Cork was also the site of much political turmoil due to still being under English rule. It is uncertain if they came to better themselves or to escape. He and my grandmother also sponsored a number of their relatives from Ireland so they could emigrate.
My grandfather’s trade was listed as a blacksmith. Now this was in the beginning of the 20th century. Automobiles were soon to become regular means of transportation and blacksmiths were not needed as much. They had six children. Five survived. Their oldest son died as a child from heart disease due to complications from scarlet or rheumatic fever. They were able to buy a brick 2 flat on the south side of Chicago. They could augment their income by renting one of the apartments. They survived the great depression and were able to keep their house. My grandmother was supposedly a very good financial manager. She had to be. My grandfather had a number of different jobs in factories and as a watchman. He may have had a drinking problem. He certainly had some difficulty adjusting to the complexities of modern life. My grandparents depended on money from their older children to survive. Thus was due to my grandfather’s difficulty in keeping jobs and also to the economy of the times. They never saw any of their children get married and may have tried to prevent all of the marriages because of their growing financial dependence on their children.
In the post war period neighborhoods began to “change”. This meant that black families were trying to improve themselves by moving to nicer areas. There were “Blockbusters”. This usually meant the first black family to move into an area. This caused much conflict. Neighborhoods were strictly divided in those days into Irish, Polish, and Italian areas. There was concern that black families would not just take over the neighborhood, but also take over the few jobs available then. In the late 1940s this happened in my grandparents neighborhood. My grandfather had stopped working by that time. He was probably 70-71 years old. There was a riot due to a black family moving in. The police had to be called to control it. My grandfather went to see what was going on. He saw the police struggling with a young friend of his. He tried to intervene and was arrested himself. He was in jail at least overnight. This was devastating to him. He had his first heart attack shortly thereafter and was dead within six months.
Due to this and the circumstances of the times, the whole family had a strong prejudice against black people. The family moved and became part of the “white flight” from the city to surrounding suburbs. The “N” word was used frequently. Not only had our grandfather died, but we also all had to move out of our comfortable environments. This was the way we grew up. It took a lot to change. There was family resistance to that change and some family members still hold on to the old ways.
Our generation went thru all of the civil rights movements, assassinations, Vietnam, to struggle to make some progress. Our children are now often colorblind and can’t understand how anyone can have prejudice because of the color of someone’s skin, religion or their sexual orientation. There are obviously still remnants of these old beliefs and values in certain areas and groups, but there is progress. I am proud of both of my sons and their partners in the beliefs they all have. I see them being passed to my grandson. Someday he will certainly wonder where a certain phrase came from, but he hopefully won’t have to deal with some of the more negative values his grandparents dealt with.