Her Story

In honor of Women's History Month, I ask my fifth grade students to interview family members and then write about the life of a deceased female ancestor, one who perhaps would never make it into a history book. Stories come to school about women who escaped the potato famine in Ireland for the neighborhoods of NYC, only to raise seven children on little money, about women who were girls when they hid from Nazis, about women who were forced to live in the "Creole" section of a Pennsylvania town because neither African American neighborhoods nor Caucasian neighborhoods would accept them. 

My students write of the frustrations of women who longed to be teachers or doctors, but didn't have the money or education. Of women who went to work after their husbands died yet managed to raise and feed five children besides. They write of women who volunteered during World Wars and women who lost way too many family members to diseases that we know how to treat nowadays. 

I started thinking...what if one day, our children's children are asked to write about us? How could they possibly understand the challenges of raising a child who suffers from PANDAS and Lyme Disease? Of the social, financial and emotional impact it has on a family? When today is history, when fifty, seventy, one hundred years have gone by, will Lyme be recognized? Will it be treated with the same respectful fear as is brain cancer? Might there even be a cure? Will PANDAS be a language spoken by every pediatrician and immunologist? Or will it be relegated to history books, a thing of the past?

One of the lessons that come from investigating these life stories revolves around the characteristics that enabled these women to persevere. Whether one is adopted or raised by birth parents, the traits that have defined ancestors are often taught to future generations.

May we have future generations. I want to be a grandmother someday. But that's too far in the future. Some of our days are spent just keeping our children alive. What kind of future will my child have when his present is being stolen from him? Will he be able to raise children? I can't worry my head about those issues, although they do creep in from time to time. If my children have children, they may write about us as being those tenacious parents who traveled from doctor to doctor in search of treatments for our children, as self-educated parents who made use of the internet to learn as much as possible about topics such as moleculary mimicry, as dedicated parents who loved their children and sacrificed all to build a future.

Write that in the history books. But it still doesn't buy us back today.