![](https://clpauwels.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/family-pics.png?w=268)
Family still haunts my thoughts and my writing – division, dysfunction, lack of communication, the many elephants in the room. And as we say farewell to yet another family elder, the questions continue to pile up:
- Grandpa L:
- Which semi-pro baseball league did you play for? What position?
- How did you, from Central Ohio, meet Grandma, from Central Wisconsin, in the early 1930s?
- How did you end up settling in Woodville, of all places in between?
- Grandma L:
- Ditto above: How did you, from Central Wisconsin, meet Grandpa, from Central Ohio, in the early 1930s?
- How did become such an expert at tying flies (fishing lures) that you were part of the demo at the Chicago’s World Fair…and then never do it again?
- What was the secret to your un-reproducible chicken paprikash?
- Did your mother bring the washstand now in our home with her from Hungary?
- Nana:
- Was there really a formal portrait of your grandfather in full Native American headdress, or did Dad imagine things? If so, what happened to it?
- What tribe would that make us descendants of?
- Who are the individuals pictured in the lovely sepia portraits we found buried in your bottom dresser drawer?
- Baba:
- Why did you never mention your sister? Tell me about her.
- How/why did you become the expert coin collector I always knew you as?
- Grandma C:
- Why did you convert your first and middle name (per your birth certificate and early school writings) from two names into one by the time you were an adult?
- How many generations has the family clock now in our kitchen really been around – since your mother? Your grandmother?
- What’s the real story behind that family mystery no one would ever speak of?
- Why were things so prickly between us?
- Grandma/Grandpa M:
- What is the significance of the large swatch of red patterned silk preserved under glass that’s now in our care?
- Dad P:
- What was your dad like?
- Mom P:
- Why did you save a 6-inch rubber Pillsbury Doughboy in your cedar chest?
- Aunt G:
- How did you survive those dark days living on the streets, and how did you find your way home again?
- Aunt P:
- In a family of people who loved to laugh, what made you so angry?
- Uncle J:
- Why did you always call me “Candy” when my name is Cyndi?
- Where/why did you learn to play banjo?
- Why did you leave the US Naval Academy at Annapolis mid-term when it seems a better fit for the nuclear physics you then studied at Ohio State?
- Great-Aunt Z:
- Where did find the recipe for what is now the family-favorite Friendship Cookies, or did you create it yourself?
And what questions remain for those few elders still with us – that we should ask now, before it’s too late?
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