Today is my 50th birthday and it is a day for reflection and missing my parents who are not with me to celebrate the day.
Thinking of how the times have changed.
Thinking of just how much change there has been just in my lifetime.
I remember my father booking a telephone call to England in the late 1970s after we had seen a news report about a severe storm hitting Kent where Dad's relatives were living. We were given a time and were connected. Great Aunt Florence was so excited, a phone call from Australia, her son rushed down two doors where other family members were so they could all come up very quickly. The phone call lasted less than ten minutes (and was hugely expensive!) however they were all fine.
Somehow the regular contact around the world available now by Skype, email and even mobile just doesn't have the same element of excitement attached to it.
Although having contact with people all over the world is in itself amazing when we stop and actually consider how broad our boundaries have become.
Thinking of all the personal stories that have been lost. Today when we have so much technology available it is imperative that we do our best to record family stories and community stories before they are lost to us forever. Important to record the people in their own voices where we can do this and then important to share those many memories of people who were there before they too pass on.
Thinking of how family size has changed: my Great grandmother was one of 16 (12 attaining adulthood), my grandmother one of 13 (12 attaining adulthood) both my parents were only children. Dad because his father was killed in the Second World War and his mother didn't remarry until she was in her 60s. This has made it even more important as there are fewer of us to continue the stories.
It is good to see the work being done to commemorate the First World War. I hope that momentum can continue in recording other community history. And hard as it may be to believe, even our memories of our own lives need to be shared and recorded for the future.
So 50 years, a lot of change, most of it for the good, some of it not so great but all needs to be recorded for the future.
Happy Birthday Helen!
ReplyDeleteThank you Diane. One of the great things about living now is the way we can communicate!
DeleteHappy birthday. It is surprising how communications have changed. We did survive without the internet and instant messaging :) there won't be so many interesting letters to find either, not that my family wrote or kept such letters.
ReplyDeleteRegards
Anne
Hi Anne Thank you. Yes I agree that the moment you checked the letter-box used to be a lot more exciting. I am lucky enough to have inherited most of the letters written by my Grandfather to my Grandmother during WW2 plus some from my Mother to her Mother in the 1960s when she was first married and had moved interstate. it is a privilege to have them.
DeleteHappy Birthday. I really enjoyed your post. I do remember the thrill of getting phone calls back then from family members that and letters (which I miss). Great post. Sorry to hear that you are celebrating your birthday without your parents. You are honoring the memory of your family with this wonderful post.
ReplyDeleteH Bernita Thank you. While I would very much love to have my parents with me on such a special day I am very blessed in having many great friends all around he world who have shared my day.
DeleteHappy birthday,. Helen. and thank you for a very interesting and original post. It made me wonder what out descendants will look back on. Will there be shoeboxes of old photographs to browse through or will they be lost in digital time? Will there be anything like the letters my husband and I exchanged when we were engaged and when our daughter was born or the letters my parents wrote to each other during the war or the postcards my grandfather sent back from flanders during the First World War. Family history could be very different.
ReplyDeleteHi Yes this is something that does concern me as perhaps there won't be those items for the people of the future to see. I have heard stories of people who have lost photos because they did not copy them off their phone and these as photos of their young baby that died and the phone has been stolen. There are many advantages of the digital world but the loss of letters and postcards and photos is worrying.
DeleteI hope the people around you managed to give you some happy moments on your birthday. Thanks for reminding us that, as family historians, we should print and keep our most important emails. Digital formats will change, but paper goes on (up to a point, anyhow).
ReplyDeleteYes Judy without the letters and hopefully emails we won't have the records of today and that would be a shame as we all get so much pleasure in looking at records from yesteryear. Mind you it is hard at times to think I am "yesteryear" as far as some younger people are concerned!
DeleteBelated Happy Birthday, I hope it was all you could have wished for, and a BUNCH more than that!
ReplyDeleteThanks Carol I had a wonderful day and due to how busy people are the earliest date I could organise the get-together is 3rd May so my birthday is being extended for the whole month. I had a lovely morning tea at work last week as well.
DeleteHappy belated birthday! Your post really made me think. I believe it's a great way when writing about their lives to describe some new discoveries/inventions or social history to put context to the dates and place names. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteHi Schalene, yes putting our ancestors times into social context is so important. Even in our own times. I remember reading an adventure story written in the 70s to some teens last year and the two characters were running away trying to find a phone box so they could call the police and the audience said "why didn't they use their mobiles?" It took some time to persuade them there were no mobiles for general use then and even the size of the ones that came a bit later were huge. (Yes Google played a role here in the persuasion!)
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