A train from Detroit to Chicago in 1955. A transatlantic passenger ship from Liverpool to Ellis Island in the same year. 
Each of these simple, everyday passages carried a young, scared teenager who would soon come together to establish life’s direction for another generation of people. Today, I can touch the words that were entered on the ship’s log as Mom began her life-changing journey across the pond. Her strong and glamorous Aunt Mary in Chicago sent for the 19-year old Helen to experience a better life in America, and escape the doldrums of England.
Scene 2: My father was running away from his father. Dad’s older sister and her husband helped young Don escape the oppression he could no longer tolerate from the man we only know through sketchy stories. The man who drove away his only son.
Because of these brave escapes, my parents met in Chicago Illinois in the middle of the last century. It’s all history. It’s all story. Oppression, Opportunity, Escape, Leaping (had to throw it in there!)
The decisions that these two teenagers made would accumulate to lay the foundation of the life stories for their five children and the bridges to future generations.
Everyone has them: bridges and ships and trains, and the choices of our parents … and their parents.
Part of our wholeness is to know about those stories in a way that only an insider would know, cherish those stories in our hearts and celebrate them with the next generation. Because when we know the deeper story, we can understand more about ourselves, and hopefully present a better, somewhat-improved version to our children and the world we leave behind.
It’s so stinkin’ cool.
