The First Word #21: We All Hold on to the “Banners in the Rafters”

March Madness and is over for the year and if I understand correctly, UConn deserves congratulations. I don’t follow March Madness, but what I know of the tournament, is that anytime during the month, when I try to go out to dinner at a restaurant with a TV, there are generally crowds and loudness and cheering. (Personally, football is my favorite sport and I can’t wait for August every year.) Even if it isn’t my sport, I know that it is a great honor to make it to the championships appropriately named “the sweet sixteen,” “the elite eight” or “the final four.”

In any sport, when the home team wins the big championship, they put up a banner somewhere in the stadium, like “1991 State Champions” (as in my high school) or “Super Bowl XXXII Champions” (go Broncos). These banners are hung in the rafters where all spectators can see. Even when your team is having a terrible season, you can look up in the rafters and remember when your team won the championship. You can remember your team’s heritage, as it were. You can look back and remember the good times, remember the spirit, the stories, the excitement, the teamwork, the connection to other fans cheering for the same team. Like a photo album full of pictures, you have a reminder of times gone by that were important to you and your team.

The thing about heritage is that it signifies where you come from, what you were born into, what your team is about. You can identify yourself with someone or something that came before you. By looking at your heritage you can understand who you are and why things are the way they are. For example, I come from a long line of hard-workers, mostly farmers. I know most of us do, but I don’t have any doctors or lawyers or presidents (that I know of) in my past. No actors (I debunked that one) or writers or politicians. I don’t have any preachers or even anyone that was educated beyond the basics that I know of.

The people I came from are hard workers. I find myself to be a hard worker too, sometimes to my own detriment, but it’s in my gene pool to be a hard worker, to do a job until it’s done, to do it as best I can, to even take on too much just because the work needs to be done and no one else stepped up to the job. In job interviews I’ve had that ever so popular question “What do you think is your biggest strength?” I always answer with “I’m an extremely hard worker.” Most bosses appreciate that quality and I feel like I have lived up to that answer pretty well. I may not be some things, but I think most will agree with my need to work hard.

Despite having said that, there are times when I feel a little lost, distanced from where I came from. I come from a small family and on top of that I have even fewer family members that I have kept in touch with, and those are far away in Ohio. Of those relatives, many are getting older and don’t want to travel to Colorado. So, it is easy for me to get lost and “forget” where I come from. During those times, I can still turn to my genealogy, read old documents (death certificates, land records, obituaries, etc) to look at my family’s “banners in the rafters”. To “normal” people that might seem a little odd, a little morbid even, but it grounds me, brings me back to my heritage, reminds me of my “team”. And I’ll bet many of you feel the same way.

Just remember to not to only look into the past for your validation. What’s happening in your life right here, right now? As genealogists we are trained to look backward, into our history, to research and analyze, to collect and corroborate. But what about today? What things are happening in your life today, this week, this month that you should look at, enjoy and document for future generations? Just think what future generations will thank you for with what you can record from within your own lifetime! Don’t forget to enjoy the “now” while also holding on the “banners in the rafters.”