 | Editorial from Volume 6, No. 1 & 2posted by Susan Meeker-Lowry, Exclusive AccessWednesday, September 30th 2009 @ 4:01 PM (not yet rated) |
What a difference a year makes! Last year our first real snowfall came on Valentine’s Day. This year it started around Thanksgiving and hasn’t stopped. Tonight we’re expecting another ten inches and if they’re right my cedar swing in the back yard will be totally under snow. The frame is my height – about five feet. That’s a lot of snow. Usually in March I begin starting seeds to move into the coldframe in early May. This year, not only is the cold frame destroyed thanks to a backhoe we had to hire in to remove snow from under the windows (snow falling from our metal roof broke two bedroom windows and we needed to prevent that from happening again), but it’s hard to imagine that five plus feet of snow in the garden and the 12 foot high snow banks distributed around the yard as the backhoe made its way out back being melted in time. People who would deny climate change are convinced this winter proves everything is fine, but most of us know that’s not the case. Strange weather, stronger storms, and overall warmer conditions (even though we’ve had lots of snow the temperatures haven’t been all that cold, especially at night) are exactly what we can expect. And really, over four feet of snow in February alone is not “normal”, and it way exceeds those “old fashioned winters” I remember from my childhood. I hope by the time you read this, warmer weather has arrived and the snow is melting nicely. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
The theme for this issue is “Ancestors”. When I think of ancestors, many images come to mind: standing in awe among the huge, old growth redwoods along the coast of California, the beautiful White Mountains where I live, water cascading over granite cliffs and through deep ravines carved by glaciers during the last ice age, and the lynx I was blessed to see one morning a couple of weeks ago sitting in the backyard eyeing the bird feeder (a first!).
Then, of course, there are our human ancestors. A couple of years ago, I decided to go through the boxes of old photos my family saved over the generations, organize them into some kind of order, then pick my favorites and put them into albums. Daddy had died a couple of years previously and it took me a while to really get that I am now the family elder. It’s a strange feeling and the blanks in our family history loom larger than ever now that they will likely never be filled in. So I wanted to do what I could while I still have some memory, faulty though it is, of conversations with my grandmothers and parents about who these people were in the old, sepia photos and even older daguerreotypes stashed in boxes or in fat, pressed board photo albums with elaborate faded brown and guilt covers. As a kid I loved exploring the old chests and boxes that contained them and other relics of our history, and Daddy and his mother, my Nanny Meeker, would tell me stories of this person or that place. Luckily, some of these photos are labeled. Many are not. My father was a photographer and we have numerous boxes of his photos, slides, and negatives, dating from the mid-1930s on. Several photos in this issue are his.
I know more about my father’s side of the family, the Meekers, than my mother’s. I don’t know exactly when they came to this country but they fought in the Revolution and in the Civil War. Hannaford Meeker’s discharge papers from the Civil War, framed and hung on the wall, and his sword and powder horn fascinate my sons. And we are fortunate to have furniture and other items dating as far back as the 1600s. Nanny Meeker’s family, the Peets, came to this country from Dublin sometime in the late 1800s. I can’t remember the exact year although I know Nanny told me. Her mother, a young girl at the time, was allowed to bring only one nonessential thing with her from Ireland. She chose a small, rough-framed picture of a bird that we still have hanging in our home.
All I know about my mother’s family is that her father, Nicholas Kambolis, came to this country from Athens as a young man. He worked in the Danbury (CT) hat factory when he met and married my grandmother, who was of Polish descent. We still have a hat he made that Daddy loved and wore often. My grandfather died at a relatively young age, before my mother had a chance to ask him about his life and family in Greece. She always thought she’d have more time. I remember him as a kind, soft-spoken man with a love of gardening and a wonderful green thumb. He smelled like earth and sun and pipe tobacco. Though he died when I was five, my memories of him are strong and clear. But there are few pictures and none that go back generations. Feeling my grandfather’s presence so strongly at Delphi during my trip to Greece was a gift. He had returned to his home and in a way, so had I.
I chose the theme of ancestors because I wanted to explore the role our ancestors play in shaping who we are and how we live. More and more I get the sense that ancestors, both human and of the Earth, are being ignored and forgotten, as if they no longer have relevance in our lives. But our human ancestors, the places they lived, and those they left behind in search of better lives, are still part of us, part of our psyche, part of our soul. Our Earth ancestors, the ancient trees and rocks and animals, some of whom no longer exist, are also part of us, part of our psyche and soul. It seems to me that we are poorer for not remembering and if we are to move forward, to create balance and harmony, or to even survive in the decades and centuries to come, we would do well to call forth our human and non-human ancestors, to remember them, to invite them into our dreams and visions.
Photo: Woody Meeker
