Truth Or

While I have loved the Greek mythology saga of Pandora and her box since childhood, I was unprepared for my own experience this past week,.

Any repetition of my apartment construction is now not only dated but equally, if not even more than that, boring. Yet that is where this tale must begin.

When I relocated from NY I brought boxes and boxes and boxes of papers, documents, manuscripts. They almost required a separate van rather than travel with the other less valued. possessions. I believed they represented an uncatalogued history of our family.

Despite all good intentions, the “important” documents have remained dormant and neglected for the six years since my move.

That was until last week when one of my beautiful granddaughters visited. Noticing the box of framed items waiting to be rehung after the apartment repairs, Kat questioned me about one of them.

I mentioned that it was a framed tear sheet of the first of eight articles published by the NYT decades ago. When she asked about the others, I said I had planned to follow suit, but just “never got around to it.”

Delighted with her interest, I then inquired if she would eventually like one of the framed tear sheets. When she responded with pleasure, I was quite pleasantly surprised,

Since there were eight published articles, and I have eight grandchildren, I then decided it might be a nice way to gift them when the moment arises.

So the search began for the remaining unframed tear sheets, but also resulted in opening a Pandora’s box that while solving one riddle, unearthed another.

It came from a letter written in 1970 from my Mother to her oldest grandson, my son, in response to his inquiry about family history. Apparently John had a school assignment that provoked their correspondence,

For some now vague reason, my sisters and I had always believed our Maternal grandparents met on their voyage to America from “The Old Country.” Upon arrival they married and then had 12 children, one of course, our Mother. Not quite a Titanic story, but relatively close in romance,

Mom’s letter now contradicts that version and clarifies the history. Our grandmother arrived in the U.S.at the age of 5, and was the youngest of 8 siblings. John King, her future husband came to this country at the age of 3 from Northern Ireland with his widowed Mother.

The intriguing question is if this is the true scenario, why was it submerged for so long. Or perhaps my Mother was more romantic than my sisters and I realized and chose to frame history with tulle and lace rather than precision and poverty.

And isn’t that the essence of a good storyteller?