Weaving a Story

Interviewing 97 year old Great Great Uncle Clicker

In Wausa everyone is related. The Hults, the Bloomquists, the Andersons. It feels as if the families can be counted on one hand. This is true in most villages where I do film workshops. Karluk, Alaska consists primarily of two families. One stops even asking about whether people are related in most communities because the answer is so obvious. The difference in Wausa for me is that I am a part of the web of relationships. I am a Hult, and also a Bloomquist and an Anderson through marriage. When I look at old pictures I sometimes see a resemblance with myself. Interviews are punctuated with explanations of how I am related to cousins, nephews, long lost aunties-in-law. When I flip through the pages of a Wausa Gazette from 90 years ago, my late Grandpa's birth announcement flies off the page. "Born, to Mr. and Mrs. David Hult, Monday, August 17th, a baby boy." I suddenly see him as a little baby, with all the potential that comes with babyness. He was not yet the handsome young man he would become, or the avid carpenter, or the old man who couldn't stop loving life until the very end. He was a bundle of freshness, unnamed in the paper. 

Grammie in the center of her grandchildren

I can mark time and growth through my visits to this place. The Labor Day parade, with hours worth of floats that defy any notion that the small town is a fading thing, reminds me of the same parade, 25 years ago. My grandma sewed all of us cousins swedish costumes. We danced around the maypole the way the Swedes did in the old country. We ate Potato Balogna, Ostakaka with Lingonberries, and we called the noontime meal "dinner." 25 years later I realize how much of myself is recycled from this past. I started a crepe stand, and we can trace the crepe tradition back in our family for 5 generations. No matter where I travel in the world, I am most comfortable in a village where people farm their food and live with the seasons. Tchabo and I recently noticed that we both apologize quite often even when we have done nothing wrong, and even this I see in the mid-west politeness where people tend to be extremely considerate of one another. 

Grammie's biography of her Mother-in-Law

I work with students to share their local stories, I also weave together my own story. I realize that my Grandma was quietly and impeccably keeping track of our family story. Every object she possessed had a note about its history. Every photo had a caption, and relatives had entire home-made books documenting the family tree and anecdotes. I find myself connecting to my late Grammie through this passion, as I too am drawn to understand the web of connections in our family. Who suffered what? How did people survive? What was different, and what the same? And yet my Grammie didn't leave notes about why she felt called to be the family historian. She did it so quietly that I didn't even think of her as a genealogist until I witnessed her countless albums, reel-to-reel-movies, and writings, after her passing. What she didn't say or write, but what I sense, is that she kept track out of love. She wrote her Mother-in-Law's history as a 95th birthday present. She wrote the story of tatting in our family as a gift to me and my cousin Melissa, who learned from our Great Grandmother how to make lace. She understood how important it is to feel connected to a bigger story, and wanted her loved ones to experience that. 

Oftentimes small town and family history can boil down to nostalgia, or a sense that things used to be better. Or for others, perhaps a sense of relief that we are in a new century that doesn't involve waking at dawn to milk cows and feed chickens and work all day, every day. Sometimes I look at the straight-forward and lasting nature of marriage as it used to be in Wausa (marry young, and stay married for life) and I find it more honest, that instead of looking for an ideal partner you work hard with the partner you have to make a life. Other times I feel grateful that I have more options, that I can marry (or not marry) on my own terms and in my own way. The truth might be that life is challenging and beautiful in either case. For me, looking into my ancestors here in Wausa, ultimately I am not comparing the merits of the past and the present, but I am in the tender process of understanding myself and my son. What is this piece of the puzzle? Tchabo intuitively knows the depth of the connection, which I see as he spontaneously embraces without release his Great Great Great Uncle Clicker, or as he plans how we will honor the memory of Grammie and Grampie through making apple pancakes and celebrating them "at least once a month." Through an honest and evolving understanding of ourselves, free of judgement, we grow and embody our full potential, our birth-right.