The Stories of Us

At my office a few days ago, a Chief of Staff level exec and I were having a discussion. This guy is one of my favorite people in the place where I work. You know how you sometimes have to warm up to people, and how you sometimes simply know you like someone from the first time you meet them? This guy's on that nice and easy second list.

We were talking about how to approach a certain issue, and he said, only half-joking, that he wasn't going to use a confrontational approach, and neither would his boss, as they were both Norwegians. And he looked over at me and grinned. I knew without further explanation what he meant. "We're Norwegian" meant to both of us that they were quiet, not prone to loud or argumentative behavior; that they were going to be polite and subdued in their approaches.

"Well," I said. "I'm Irish." And I grinned back at him.

"Yes...I thought so."

And we both had a good grin then, because our conversation was in a kind of ancestry-shorthand-code; we both knew he was telling me his story, about the end-game he and his boss were looking for, so that I could look for a social, vocal, pushier way to a solution for all involved - which, in this case, was called for.

We'd both heard stories growing up, as everyone does, about who we are, about where we and our people came from, and what that means in the scheme of the definition of them as individuals.

I learned about who I was and what the history of my 'people' was, by listening to family stories, and learning about the personality traits held in esteem by my family.

One half of my family came from a poor area in the city I'm from, a neighborhood called Irish Hill.



This picture is of my father, on the left, and my uncle, on the right, during the Great Depression, in Irish Hill. In less than ten years, both of these brothers were in the Pacific, fighting in the Second World War. After the war, both of these brothers had their children later in life than their postwar peer group did, in general. And both of these brothers had the 'gift of the gab' without ever laying their eyes on Ireland, the country their ancestors called home until the mid 1800s.

Stories we're told about who we are matter. We fold them into who we become, and we pass them on for generations.

My family stories included tales of bravado (false and otherwise), smart mouths, raucous humor, tough "I can make it through anything" attitudes, self-reliance, distrust of authority figures, and emphasis on the importance of story, and of sticking together, as well as an inordinate emphasis on intelligence as a way of measuring self-worth. (One of my cousins and I saw a long time ago that this lifelong family emphasis stemmed from placing a value on the one thing our fathers had - the one thing they 'owned' - that was good enough not to be ashamed of, when they were growing up so desperately poor.)

What are your family stories about who you are and where you came from, and what is held most dear, most important, in your family story?

Do you agree or disagree with the ancestry-shorthand-code idea?