Front Porch: Making eye contact connects generations

Like so many of us, I find myself feeling sentimental and reflective this time of year. More than the Christmas lights and carols, visits with friends and relatives and exchanging gifts, I am thinking of Christmases past, loved ones no longer here and changing times and traditions.

Joy tinged with some sorrow.

Ours is a small family. I am an only child. My husband has one sister, who is older and who had children long before we did and raised them in another part of the country. Our parents are long gone. Bruce’s family has been in America since the Mayflower and has numerous relatives, mostly in the Midwest, but as he was raised in pre-statehood Alaska, he doesn’t know them.

Mine is an Ellis Island family. My father immigrated here in the 1920s. My mother was born in America to immigrant parents, so I do have cousins – all on the East Coast. Beyond my grandparents, I know nothing about my extended family from faraway places. But no matter, I have built family with my husband, and we look forward, not back.

Still, I see in others how nice it is to feel backward-connected, in touch with persons, places and traditions of earlier generations in regions in America or to “the old country.” I wonder what that feels like. It’s a feeling that passes, but it does say hello to me at holiday time.

And then I had a little connection recently that warmed me. Our oldest son, the one who lives overseas, came for an extended visit last month. It was delightful, and it also gave us time to take care of some business. He will be executor of our estate, so there were papers to sign and documents to go over. I spent a good bit of time preparing for him a list of what’s what, where it is and who to contact to deal with things – and in so doing, I had to review some archival papers I had in our safe deposit box.

I came across assorted birth and death certificates, my father’s passport and also his mother’s, my grandmother’s, immigration papers. My parents were able to bring her to America after World War II under legislation that allowed citizens to bring parents here from Europe. And so she came to live with her son who she had only seen once in the 20 years since he left Germany.

We all lived in a one-bedroom apartment. I was an infant, and she took care of me while my parents both worked, and within a few years, my parents were able to buy a three-bedroom home, where she lived with us until she died (I was 8 when she passed away).

It was because she cared for me during the day and because she never learned English, German was my first spoken language, though I understood English, the language my parents used with me when Oma was visiting one of her brothers, who had also emigrated, on the weekends. Being an American child speaking German in post-WWII in New York City, where we lived, was often awkward socially, but life moved on and good lives were created.

I have soft and gauzy memories of my grandmother. I remember some of her meals, the fact that she had her hair pulled back in a bun, a “dutt,” at her neck and that she often grieved for a daughter lost shortly after the war ended.

But when I read her immigration documents in the vault at the bank, I had to catch my breath. Under “physical descriptions,” there was a comment that her right eye was slightly crossed, something which, as a child, I never noticed.

I’m sure the note was observational and not the result of any extensive exam. My youngest son, Sam, has had extensive eye exams and had a definitive diagnosis. He had extreme astigmatism in his right eye as a little boy, causing the brain to begin turning that eye off. A patch was put over his good eye for a period of time, forcing his brain to make the affected eye work as it should.

Had we not done this, he would have had an eye that did not work in sync with the other – which, observationally, could have appeared slightly crossed.

Suddenly Sam and his great-grandmother were connected, right there in the vault of the bank, with our few meager family history papers laid out on the table in front of me. I felt such closeness to my grandmother at that moment.

The generations were linked, right there, right then – Grandma Luise, me, Sam. True, an eye defect isn’t exactly a warm and fuzzy bow to place atop a Christmas package, but it was a thread, maybe a ribbon of sorts, that tied family together. And not having too many choices of known traits to choose from, I think I’ll take it, thank you.

It’s strange the things that can engender feelings of family, feelings of connectedness. But I’ll not look a gift feeling in the mouth. I’ll just bathe in it for a bit and marvel how the unexpected can just jump out of a mundane task and give you a little gift.

I wish all of you a warm and connected Christmas or holiday celebration of your own tradition.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by e-mail at upwindsailor@ comcast.net.