History

The football coach was my history teacher in high school.

We'd spend Monday and Tuesday reading the next chapter's text,

Wednesday answering the chapter review questions,

Thursday watching a relevant movie, then on Friday we would take the test.

I do not actually remember this man ever talking to us.

Occasionally, a football player would wander into our class

and they would lean together in hushed tones while we read or worked.

I think, I largely gathered enough stuff into my head for the test

(which I promptly forgot) then the whole cycle started again.

The book was red, I remember that. And I remember Amy Paulus

laughing with me as we passed notes and chatted. Yes,

the best part of history class was Amy Paulus.

In the last few months, I have become the keeper of the family documents.

Boxes and boxes of letters, discharge papers, marriage certificates.

In some way, this is an ironic choice. Who will I, the single one, pass this onto?

For now, that is not my worry. I like having the boxes in my attic,

and the contents spread out over my dining room table.

My grandmother's photo album from 1922 when she was a young woman.

A paragraph about my mother washing me in a German sink.

My grandfather's manifesto about his quest to Maine.

Stories of all the men my mother dated in college. Branson, Beau, Dick.

A picture of nine Cowan children, a picture of my father holding up

his first baseball mitt. My brother's genius test scores.

The last letters between my aunt and my mom as Papa was sent to hospice.

And, my favorite today, this photo of Grammy and Papa Reinhold

up north in Wisconsin. Just look at them.

I do not know why there was a war of 1812, or anything

much beyond the tea dumping mythology of the Revolutionary War.

I have no clue who our allies and enemies were in World War II.

I know we slaughtered Native Americans, and that we conquered Hitler

a little too late, but who does not know that?

I did not know about Chernobyl when it happened,

and I was a full-fledged mortgage paying adult then.

I still do not know a Sunni from a Shiite.

If you asked me to name and locate three eastern European countries,

I would ask you if you would like a lemonade and some guacamole.

The box is like those bible verses I skim over, someone begetting

someone else, one lineage following an older lineage, showing that

we all come from one source. But this box, I could not ignore.

This is what I can tell you: My grandmother loved my grandfather,

there is not one picture with him where she is not smiling.

My other grandfather was on a lifelong journey to improve himself,

and that included marrying a preacher's daughter from Tarrytown, New York.

My aunt was born with curly blond hair. My mother, years after.

When she was 5 or 6, she fell and bit the tip of her tongue off.

In high school, she got a C+ in Latin. And a C- in "Foods."

She wore girdles that she bought in New York City.

Sometime, on all those waist cinched dates, met my father.

Years later, he left the service to make her happy.

They had dreams of living in Chicago or Arizona.

My brother was the happiest baby on the planet during 1965,

even though, he crawled backwards

for a long, long time to get where he needed to go.

And, before I could talk, I knew how to whistle.

That's all the history I need to know.

That's the only history that will ever really matter to me.

And the best part, there is no test. No review questions.

It's all just reading and looking, smiling at people alive

before I was ever a person. Linking one love to another

until they all end up here. On this day, with me.