About Families and Rememberimg

I am going to break away from the narrative of this blog (something that will probably happen often) to talk a bit about family and memories.

When I was in my mid twenties, living and working in Salt Lake City, my brother John dropped by on his way to somewhere else and we spent the night visiting. The conversation drifted toward family, and the result was a revelation to me: each child in a family grows up in an entirely different family, and has a totally different perspective on what it was like. My oldest brothers, Alan and Bob grew up with parents struggling to make ends meets, and three younger siblings. Alan was doing everything first and blazing the path for the rest of us. Both were essentially gone from the house after high school graduation. Alan went to USU and the military, Bob got married and joined the Navy to meet his duties as the head of a new household. When they were gone, I was in the 5th or 6th grade, still enjoying my childhood. John, the closest to me in age, also left the home after high school, but it many ways, he was gone after turning fourteen. He was the most independent of us all and didn't spend much time at home.

So from the seventh grade on, I lived in a family of essentially four at a time when my father's income was peaking. The house was quiet, clean, remodeled, and living was comfortable. My parents had more time, and as a result Mary and I grew much closer to them. In the summers, Mary and I would often go on trips with my parents using my father's various trailers and campers. I don't recall John going on any of these trips, but he might have. It seems to me John was spending his summers working at a friends ranch, but John will have to clear that up for me.

I ended up living at home, off and on, till I got married at 27! My stay at home was interrupted only by a two year mission for the LDS church to Austria. I attended school from home, left again to live in Salt Lake for almost three years, then returned for the last time when I was hired to teach at Clearfield High. So in the end, it was just my parents and me, and it included one last family vacation, I went with them to my first Pomeroy reunion in Wisconsin (a very nice memory for me, by the way)

My point is something that should have be obvious: These are my memories and are colored by my experiences and perceptions and age. Everyone who shared them with me perceived things differently.

I hope that any of my friends or family who follow this blog will feel free to comment about events described from their point of view. I also hope they correct any errors in my remembering or add details that I have forgotten. It will make this whole blog more interesting.

If I am able to follow through with this, it will become an important family document for my posterity and perhaps for others as well. To put it into perspective: What if any of my Great Grandparents had had a blog where they remembered and discussed family events?

As it stands now, the details of their lives are sketchy at best.

And now back to the stories...