LEGACY BACKWARDS
My mama used to throw her head back when she laughed. This 5’ 2” woman could fill a room with the joy that radiated from a spirit ravenous for happiness. She was happiness embodied, like the little sparkles raining down in a snow globe scene.
At 5’ 10” I hadn’t thought myself so much like her. But often through the years, like today, glimpses of her are reincarnated in me. Bold as the espresso I’m drinking, my laughter comes easy and I throw my head back. Others in the room can’t help but smile with me. Somewhere in the corners of my mind I am intensely aware that my mama has arrived…in the cracks of my smile, in the twinkle in my eyes, in the release of tension in my neck.
My son, Kyle, muses, “I wonder why our ancestors had nothing to leave?” The question comes as he searches backward for what his own legacy will be.
My response is organic, crawling like an electrical current up my arm and down my back. Visceral, like the inclination to board an inadequate vessel sailing across the sea, to endure what feels like living hell for the possibility of experiencing a little piece of heaven—
“I think what they left us isn’t something tangible but intrinsic."
Legacy is not something they owned but who they were, what they survived.
It’s a courage embodied in a petite French bride—
You see her pictured here on the arm of an American soldier. He takes a bullet in a country he doesn’t know and is nursed by a young woman who will become his everything.*
Love takes root in the soil of sacrifice:
His—blood sprinkled like water on lavender fields stomped down by the boots of honor. Hers—the leaving of family and France to cross the sea with her beloved.
Her spirit of adventure is the legacy she leaves. Only what will fit inside a wicker trunk she takes, folded French lace and white cotton mixed with both anticipation and a kind of valor beyond her years.
She had nothing, or so it seems. But the larger-than-life spirit of my tiny Grand-mère lives in me. It’s more than the brown eyes, and the way my lips purse when forming the words of her homeland—her memory genes are carried in me like a mystical haunting, her life experiences miraculously familiar to me.
We deliberate with such precision what our gift to the next generation will be while neglecting to recognize what has already been embedded.
Who we are is living story, characters playing out the continuation of hopes and dreams born long before our arrival on the scene.
Our lives aren’t merely snapshots of incidental moments or random words on a page but essential, unforgettable chapters pulling forward the wisdom of another age.
That we exist at all is testament to a kind of endurance that we can hardly understand—
a leaving of homeland and loved ones that was complete and permanent,
a physical and mental stamina relentless in its necessity,
a determination that never wavered or looked back,
a conviction to an outcome worth losing everything, even to death.
The territory of my legacy isn’t stretched out in acres, but in the fertile soil of what and who I am. There, the marrow of my people flows like living waters through my veins.
My legacy is them.
*NOTES:
HEADLINE FROM THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER—
AMERICAN DOUGHBOY MARRIES FRENCH BRIDE
The article went on—
A shell-shocked hero of the Argonne Offensive, a base hospital and a beautiful French war nurse of nineteen summers.
Private W.H. Cook enlisted during the early days of the war, having a part in the horrors of the St. Mihiel and Argonne offensives. During the last days of the conflict a huge H.E. [High Explosive] detonated, burying him alive. After the fighting ceased, relief was sent in to follow up and was attracted by faint calls for help. After hours of searching, soldiers located a mound of earth that had become a living grave for Cook. Upon tending to his immediate wounds, his unit transferred Walter to a base hospital where he was diagnosed with shell-shock. For days his mind was gone, not even the faintest light penetrated his brain.
Through all of his suffering, a French war nurse, the daughter of a wealthy shoe manufacturer, tended to his every wish. And when at last his mind was restored, none was happier than his nurse. Walter was transferred to the convalescent ward and with his going, life in the hospital lost its attraction for the girl. She had grown to love the American. Desperately she made requests for a transfer to the convalescent ward and was supremely happy when the request was unexpectedly granted. All her spare time was devoted to the wounded American.
As the days lengthened into weeks, the soldier’s heart went out to this French beauty: her quaint expressions and comical attempts to learn English changed into deep affection and then into love. Walter proposed and Blanche accepted and when Private Cook returned to Topeka last week, fully recovered and honorably discharged, Mademoiselle Marie Blanche Roussel accompanied him, but her name was now Mrs. Cook.
A GRANDAUGHTER’S NOTES: Walter and Blanche were married in a tiny French chapel. Her mother and father were so unhappy with her decision that they vowed she would never be welcome home again. As with hundreds of wartime brides, Blanche accompanied Walter on his transport ship to her new home. Ten years after leaving her beloved France, Blanche returned to visit her parents and four siblings who welcomed her with open arms.
