the sabbatical logs

​I began researching hosts for the website I would like to create for this project.  I plan on putting all these logs on the site and hope to add links to some of the interviews and the finished final project.  I will then have a complete format for my students to refer to as an example Oral History project and the initial creation of future lessons for my classes.
 
Every morning my grandmother and I drink coffee and have biscotti on her balcony or in her kitchen.  We chat, we sit and watch the activity of cars and Vespas zipping along her street, and we reminisce about when she lived in the States.  I believe she misses it.  On this particular morning we spoke instead about when she was a little girl during WWII and the date 7/7/1943.

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September 8th, 2015
 
Graziella.  84 years old.  Born in Bagheria, Sicily.  Currently lives in Bagheria.
 
This is the 3rd time I interview my grandmother.  I first interviewed her five years ago.   I always ask her to tell the story of her tragic loss of her sister, aunt and grandmother to a bomb that went off on July 7th 1943.  I decided to interview her a 3rd time retelling the same story and noticed more memories exposed, sometimes more detail, and more emotion.  The story does not change but it becomes deeper, fuller and more defined—dates are remembered, names and places mentioned that hadn’t been before.  I never tire of hearing this story.  Yes, it is sad, yes it is tragic and speaks of loss but it too speaks of survival, of love and of life and it’s fragility.  It makes me think of quotes and sayings I see today about living life in the moment, about being grateful for what you have, and about love and kindness.  I see these sayings written on websites, social media or framed on people’s walls and I wonder—are they words, just words, or are these people who post these quotes or frame them, people who have experienced tragic loss, experienced a War in their country, have fled their homes for nearby fields to avoid being buried alive by a falling building, bomb or gunfire?  Then I wonder, do you have to truly experience such tragedy to feel such love and gratefulness.  Do you have to experience loss in order to truly understand living life in the moment?  I wonder if to feel deep and overwhelming truthful joy, one needs to have had the experience of feeling the opposite feeling?  Do words have more meaning through action and experience?  Maybe it’s a bit like faith—believing without needing evidence—it just is.  Maybe it’s just human nature.  We sometimes forget what is important and valuable until we’ve lost it.  It’s like a certain food, a burger for instance, we’ve eaten everyday—it’s just not as good as if we had eaten it for the first time.   The experience changes a perspective. I am of course generalizing when I say ‘we’ or ‘people’.  I have no idea what happens in the individual lives of many and it is a bit presumptuous of me to imply in any way that one needs to experience a tragedy in order to truly know what it means to live life in the moment or be grateful but I believe an experience adds a depth, a fullness and definition to words—experiences, good or bad do that.  I believe the telling of the experience, the Story, also adds this kind of depth to words, especially when told directly by the person whom had the experience.  I believe hearing a story enhances its depth, it’s reality, its truth—words spoken have a different effect than words read. I feel like I am now rambling—I guess my grandmother’s interview ignited many questions and reflection.  I feel grateful every time I hear her story and know that life is truly a precious journey.  It’s that sometimes in the day –to- day minutiae, I forget it and these stories help me remember—I think a story just has that effect