If my six brothers and sisters and I turned out to be good citizens and
decent human beings, at least part of the credit goes to Aunt Betty. She was a constant presence during our childhood,
even though we never knew her. She died the year I was born.
An Italian oil portrait of her, however, hung in our dining room in those
days -- out of place amid the plastic dishes and mismatched flatware. I remember at dinner looking up at her dark
hair, deep brown eyes, and kindly smile and thinking she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.
As each of us seven children got old enough to ask about the painting,
Mom would answer our questions only after she had finished clearing the dishes or whatever else she was doing.
"That's my sister Betty," she'd begin in a hushed tone, and even we older
kids would gather around to hear "The Story" once again.
Mom told us how Betty, one of eleven children, put herself through nurse's
training; how she resisted the advances of a married doctor while in school; how she joined the Army Nurse's Corps in Italy
during World War II and tended the orphans there during her off-duty hours; how she then volunteered for the Pacific theater,
but fell ill with TB aboard ship. She died without seeing her home and family again.
Thanks to Mom's story, all of us learned that Betty was beautiful on
the inside too. In fact, that tale and others like it probably played as important a part in shaping our adult lives
as our formal moral education. So says New York University psychologist Paul Vitz in "The Use of Stories in Moral Development"
in American Psychologist.
Vitz cites increases in rates of male adolescent death by homicide and
suicide, and crisis-proportion drug use as indications that "we need to recover and implement a much more effective way of
teaching morality."
Vitz found one way through a review of recent psychological publications.
In one paper, "Narrative Thinking as a Heuristic Process," researchers J. A. Robinson and L. Hawpe declared: "Where
practical choice and action are concerned, stories are better guides than rules or maxims. Rules and maxims state significant
generalizations about experience, but stories illustrate and explain what those summaries mean. The oldest form of moral
literature is the parable." Vitz adds that those narratives are effective whether they're oral, written, or on film.
And if those stories are about our own family, says Elizabeth Stone,
who teaches journalism at Fordham University, they are even more powerful.
In her article "How Family Stories Shape Us," Stone pointed out that
"Tales of our parents' and grandparents' lives, whether happy or not, form in us a sense of ourselves -- of who we are, or
should be."
Thus parents who think family stories are egocentric indulgences or superfluous
pastimes in a world of mass entertainment should perhaps reconsider. Stories, especially family stories, can be the
spoonful of sugar that helps the moral medicine go down.
The holiday season is a good time to start passing family lore on to
the next generation. Reminiscing is a natural part of family gatherings. Grandparents can get into the act then
too.
The rest of the year provides plenty of occasions to continue the practice:
- Other holidays -- "I remember the worst 4th of July I ever had.
I learned the hard way how dangerous firecrackers can be. See the scars on this hand..."
- Birthdays -- "Today your great-great granddad would have been 100 years
old. I hear he was quite a character..."
- Even everyday events -- "When our old TV blew a picture tube it would
be weeks before we had the money to get it out of the shop. So we'd put on our own shows. You should have seen
Uncle Eddie, with those boney knees of his, dressed up as Superman..."
All can inspire family storytellers.
The length and the frequency of these sessions are probably not as important
as remembering to tell a story rather than teach a lesson. Mom recounted the events of Aunt Betty's life with no shoulds
or shouldn'ts, in small, regular doses over the years, so we kids regarded the stories as pure entertainment. But while
the medicine did slide down easily, the effects weren't always apparent immediately.
When he was a teenager, my youngest brother fell into what Mom called
"bad company." We all knew he was headed for trouble, but no amount of preaching or pleading affected him. Then
one day, on his own, he walked away from those companions. Today he has a responsible job, a fine wife, and three wonderful
children.
Years later during a get-together at my parents' home, I visited with
my brother on the couch in the den where Betty's picture now hangs. When conversation turned to our teen years, I asked
something I'd always been curious about. "Whatever caused you to quit running around with that shady crowd back then?"
He seemed to think about the question for the first time. "I don't
know," he finally answered. "I just knew that our family wasn't like that."
Maybe it was the light, but Aunt Betty's smile looked particularly radiant
that evening.
