An Imperfect Past

Abstract

I met my family through experience, but I learned my family through stories. As I grew I heard more and more stories, anecdotes dropped along the way, eavesdropping on conversations by the parents, trading information with the cousins. And as I grew people were more willing to tell me what I could not have understood when I was younger. Granddaddy's drinking, Mom's boyfriends, Dad's bad grades in high school were all gradually revealed. My mother went from Mom to person to woman with a history, someone who once had been young like me, with crushes on boys and homework. . . . So I decided to officially collect some of the stories, to try and piece together in some way some of the bigger stories that helped shape my perspective on my family and, by extension, myself. This suited my loquacious family beautifully. Actually, once I got people talking it was almost impossible to shut them up. The stories kept piling on top of each other, every one told with a new twist or interpretation as the teller tried to give me the full truth. Each story seemed to have different levels; I heard things about my grandparents that neither ofmy parents knew, about dead great aunts and uncles, whom I'd never met, that my grandparents didn't know. The Hungerfords and Andersons ( especially the Andersons) leapt wholeheartedly into the venture. And suddenly I had an incoherent collection of stories about two families connected through me and my immediate family. There is no chronological thread here, but their organization reflects in some way how I look at the stories, their interactions and how they make me think of other stories as well. I being to understand my family more, who they are as people, and sometimes, in extension, myself. [From Introduction]