Chapter 10 Grandma's Tale and Beyond

This is a winning story.At the end of the translation, I couldn't help being attracted and moved by the story.What impresses me is the sense of history that conveys the blood of the family.The author of the novel enriches the details with fiction, but the backbone of the story is a real grandma's story. Gaby, who is a grandmother, is telling her grandchildren about her experience. As she talks, Gaby seems to have returned to her childhood, full of gratitude and longing for her parents.Difficult years are history, but how a girl spends such years is full of details of family warmth.History books often describe big history, but only true stories full of rich details and emotions are truly living history.

I myself have a habit of sometimes chatting with old people and recording them.The tapes are there, and I don't know what to do with them.It wasn't until two elderly people passed away and I brought the recordings to their children that I realized that these recordings were very important. The formation of this habit also originated from a personal pain.I love my dad as much as Gabe.Since I was a child, I have been listening to my father telling me stories about his experience, and his life has run through the most turbulent eighty years in China.I had a tape recorder before my father died.But at that time, I was stupid and only knew how to use it to learn foreign languages. It never occurred to me that I should use it to record my father's stories and his voice.When my father left, it was too late for me to make up for my mistakes.I just can't think about it.

I had a grandmother too, although she didn't live with us.I still remember that she had bound feet, combed her hair in a bun, and liked to wear thick black silk gowns in summer.When I was young, I only thought that my grandma seemed to be born to love my elders, but I never thought that she was once a little girl, and there were stories about her and her parents.Contrary to my father, my grandmother never told me about herself, and it never occurred to me to ask her name when she was alive.When she died, I was in my early twenties, and it never occurred to me once that I should sit down and ask her to tell me her story.

I have some elderly friends. When there was a fad to encourage the elderly to "use their residual heat", they were all eager to find a place to play, and they were often unable to do what they wanted.I always advise them that the best way is to truly recall and record their own life first, even if it is to leave a memory for their children.If you want to make a contribution to society, it is also the most valuable contribution, because it is enhancing and repairing the collective memory of our society. I also have a young friend who teaches history at the middle school I attended.

He taught junior high school kids.When assigning homework to the children, he thought about a certain period of Chinese history, asking the children to interview parents who had experienced this period of history, and write interview records.He had been doing it for eight years when I met him.Thousands of vivid folk historical records have been accumulated.He also told me that he didn't have any utilitarian considerations in advance, but just thought it was very interesting.I think his sense of history must have influenced his students as well. I really wish I could read such stories when I was young, so that while reading historical knowledge and understanding many principles, I can also understand my parents and grandparents better, and cultivate my sense of history since childhood.Today, technology has evolved.Not only sound can be recorded, but video can also be recorded easily.The technical means of personal and family history inheritance is no longer a problem.

What we lack is the sense of history that fills this story.