This year my sisters and I had the family ciné films transferred to DVD and I’ve just watched them all. And as I watched the parts where we children didn’t feature, I wondered if it’s ever possible for children to know their parents as individual independent humans? And I came to the conclusion that it’s only possible if we have the wit and the objectivity to ask questions about the times when they weren’t with us. Questions about the times before we were born, times when they were at work or on holiday or at play; when they were thinking and feeling and being and doing without us, not about us. Or, that they tell us.
This is, naturally, a rich vein for a storyteller. But in the real world, now that both my parents are dead, I wish I’d asked more questions about their attitudes, their feelings, their hopes, their fears, their experiences, the parts of their lives that made them individuals, the parts of their lives that had nothing to do with me. Because they didn’t tell much.
Image from Pixabay
And my One Green Thing this month is alternatives to plastic cling film for food storage. We’ve been using these for a while:
