April 13, 2008 Now and then when I have trouble sleeping at night (not very often) I put on an old audio-tape. Oh, not just any audio tape. They are recordings of one of the short stories of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. He’s always been a favorite subject of mine. Some of them are old radio recordings and star Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Some others are simply read by the great English actor, Robert Hardy. It’s funny how they put me to sleep – not because they are boring but because they are so engaging. They seem to give order and direction to a restless mind and bring on sleep.
On New Year’s Day this year I decided to sort through the tapes and to find a few others that might be buried in a drawer with other audio tapes. Perhaps I would find some I hadn’t listened to in a long time. I did! But I also came across something else.
In 1985, the year of the 50th wedding anniversary, I sat down separately with my father and my mother to interview each of them using a tape recorder. Here in my drawer was the tape which I had not listened to in a long time. In the interview I played Larry King – and let them do most of the talking. I prompted them with questions like, “What was your childhood home like? What memories do you have of your first jobs? When did you meet and what were your first impressions of each other? You have traveled in Europe and Asia; did you ever expect to see that much of the world when you were young? What were your fears in raising a family; your satisfactions? Do you have a philosophy of life? What is it? What message would you like to pass on to your youngest grandchildren…to those not yet born?”
Mother and dad have been gone now for 20 and 17 years respectively. Hearing their voices again allowed melancholy and appreciation to rise up in my heart. Dad told of how he loved canoeing on the Mississippi as a boy, especially through the waves behind excursion boats at the time; he told of his father’s death when he was six; as a young adult he earned $25.00 a week selling furniture at Tillman’s in La Crosse; he told of how he met mother and asked her to marry him; then, of the fears and joys of raising a family. Advice to grandchildren, “Honor your father and your mother.” I could hear even then the emphysema in his lungs which would one day take his life. Mother told of the grand farm house she knew as a child in Lanesboro, MN; of the closeness she felt as an only child to her cousins; she remembered only vaguely the death of her father when she was seven. One of her first jobs was in a La Crosse Bank; she was working there when the banks closed in 1929! She told of her dates with dad and of the night he popped the question to marry him. As always, I could hear mother’s laughter in her voice.
I discovered two things on New Year’s Day this year. First, that there are mysteries in life even more engaging than those of Sherlock Holmes. Secondly, that it’s good at the start of a new year to look backwards as well as forwards.