Alec the Titan

My son is a Titan. Not necessarily a Titan as in the Titans who fathered the gods of Olympus, but a flame-haired master of his universe. But if we're being honest, and not just exaggerating in order to make a point, his hair is blonde-ish / brown-ish with a beautiful copper corona (psst: in this case, a corona is a glow visible in moderate to great sunlight).

The red hair began to show very early on, and came as a surprise to me... and my husband. When initially questioned about it, I replied that the color obviously came from the devil himself. Then we laughed hysterically.

When I repeated that anecdote to my mother, she "reminded" me that we were Scottish, so the red hair was not a surprise. I expressed surprise at the news that we were Scottish. She continued to act like this was information that I already had, and "repeated" a story about a great (great-great?) -grandfather, a long-distance bride, and a case of mistaken identity based on a beard that grew in red. It's a great story. If I loved you more, I would type it out here. But I love ME and SLEEP more than I love YOU, and also, it's not the point. The point is that my mother, The Keeper of the Family Lore is an inadvertent story hoarder. She has listened to and stored family stories for her entire life. She loves stories. She will practically mug people for biographical stories. She especially loves to share stories. The problem is not one of intentional hoarding. The problem is that she is so used to having all of this knowledge in her head, that she feels like we ALL have the same amount of family lore rolling around in our brains. I personally haven't heard a story older than my own great-grandparents in at least ten years - thus, my claim of hoarding.

To be fair, my mama and I have been through our share of wild, busy, stressful, amazing, exhausting changes in recent history. There hasn't been a lot of time for sharing of anything other than love. But if we don't tell more stories more often, the stories die. We can forget who we came from and how blessed we truly are. We forget that we are Scottish Titans Who Braved Untamed America.

Maybe it's time to listen more. You know. So we won't forget...