In a few days I will be returning to my hometown for the annual reunion of my mother’s side of the family. Over the past few years, many of the older generation have died, which means that my cousins and I are quickly becoming the older generation. I don’t know about my cousins, but that thought makes me rather uncomfortable.

It’s not that I’m uncomfortable about getting older, but about being the oldest living generation in my family. I’ve always counted on the older generation to have knowledge and wisdom that comes from having lived a long time. Now that I’m nearing that point, I certainly don’t feel as if I have knowledge or wisdom! Maybe they didn’t feel that way either.

I’ve also counted on the older generation to be the “keepers of the family history.” They know all of the little tidbits that make our family’s story unique. Plus, their own experiences are so different from those of my generation and those younger than I am. My own mother, who is still living, did not have electricity or indoor plumbing for many years. Even after she and my dad married, they did not have a television. Growing up, she had three dresses—one to wear to church and two to wear to school—and often those were made from flour sacks.

We are losing many of the arts that the older generation did out of necessity: sewing, needlework, canning, basic carpentry, furniture making/repair, shoe repair, soap making, spinning and weaving, vegetable gardening, herbal remedies, butchering and curing meat, writing letters, baking bread, storytelling, and so forth. Many people still know how to do some of these things. We need to learn how to do them and pass them to younger generations so that they are not lost to the future.

I guess the thing that makes me the most uncomfortable about becoming the older generation is knowing that I will have to face the future without the love, support, and guidance of those who have nurtured me all these years. It will be up to me to pass along the strength, values, character, and morals that they instilled in me so that the next generations are built upon the foundation of the past ones. May we all be so fortunate as to have a foundation built on a family’s love.