Everything’s Relative: Grandparents Anonymous

While doing family research I was able to go only as far as my grandfather’s parents’ names, dates of birth, dates of death, etc. When I got as much information as I could on them, I wanted to get the names of their parents, and I decided if anybody knew it would be my grandfather. So I called him and asked if he knew what his grandparents’ names were. Now mind you this is a man who doesn’t talk about the past; the older generation is very tight-lipped about everything.

When I asked him what his grandparents’ names were, he said, “Mom and Dad.” Thinking he was just being a donkey’s back-end, I begged him to give me a break and to tell me what their names were, but he said he honestly did not know-that his parents called them Mom and Dad and that you just didn’t know about your parents or your grandparents back in those days, you didn’t know when a birthday was, sometimes a child didn’t even know that someone had died. Things were not talked about around children.

My grandfather was very serious about not knowing, but I was really about to roll on the floor laughing.-Barb Norwood, St. Louis