I am terrible at secrets.
If there’s a surprise planned, my kids have generally learned that I should only be told what is safe to leak, which I would offer is strategically helpful for the sophisticated surprise planner. I’m an open book, unless it’s a matter of privacy or there’s an NDA somewhere.
In broad terms, I’ve become a freak for truth. I know that truth is complicated and often subjective and there’s always more to the story, which is what makes it so exciting to explore.
But I don’t do well in secrecy. I have been known to blow up a room because I can’t stand the elephant. I view this duty as being akin to ripping off a bandage, which often is the best course for healing, but it’s also important to make sure the wound isn’t still open. (This is where I always need to consult maturity and wisdom prior to addressing the elephant.)
I’m sure it’s a compulsive condition I contracted as an adult after facing generational patterns of deceit in my own life. When I was 40, my deceit mechanism shattered and any important thing swept under the rug or mis-construed becomes a dangerous flare I must extinguish.
Or at least I must try.
Yesterday I read a powerful poem in Darling Magazine that gave me the willies. Nola Johnson wrote a poetic story about family keeping truths buried. She writes that only with the force of time and through weakening threads of secrecy, frustrating morsels seep out of the family fabric.
Glorifying legacy until only a distorted reality remains
https://darlingmagazine.org/the-family-secrets-we-keep/
We trudge through secrets
Not recognizing the weightlessness of truth
Yes! The weightlessness of truth.
I’m excavating the fascinating stories of my family’s history from 19th century silver mines in Bolivia to the grand estates of England to haunted vineyards in Northern California. As I interview the precious octogenarian uncles, I hear important, varied perspectives on the same story. The art is to know them all to be true, and to see how their differences are formed through [of course] more digging for buried treasure.
I want my children to know the stories of their grandparents; good, bad and scandalous. Most fundamentally, we have a treasure trove of stories of immigrants, pioneers, wars and the dramas of complex relationships and everywhere innocent children. Knowing these stories is a gift I will give our children for their visions for their own lives and the impact they’ll have on the ongoing narrative. These chapters from the last century are what will set them free to be both whole and broken, and keep growing to create a better story. I remind them that each generation can (and must!) be wiser, and learn sooner, the lessons of living well and learning to love.
They’re already well on their way – these wiser and brilliant pioneers of ours. And I know with the grace and mercy of God in heaven who sees the tapestry from the top, this generation can handle the glorious mess we’ve created.
