Life Lessons from a Fourth Grade Homework Assignment
Fourth grade. First week. First big assignment.

Go find the oldest person in your family. Ask them what world events they remember that were so big they still remember exactly where they were when they heard about it.
So Hunter and I got on the phone with my dad, “Puppa”, Grandpa Ron, born in 1923.
I took copious notes so nothing would be lost or misremembered as Hunter completed his assignment.
Puppa started with the Hindenburg. He was in his living room in the North Side neighborhood of Pittsburgh PA, glued to the radio, when he heard those famous words, Oh, the humanity!
And then the story went to Pearl Harbor, and then VJ Day. Then to events on my lifetime list as well: President Kennedy’s assassination, the Moon Landing, and the Challenger disaster.
When the litany was over and we’d said our goodbyes to Puppa, Hunter pondered all of this new information, and then asked, “Mom, has anything big like this ever happened in my lifetime?”
“No,” I replied. “Not yet.”
It didn’t take long. Ten days.
His assignment was completed and handed in on September 1, 2001.
It was an eerie coincidence. It was a coincidence that turned an ordinary, unremarkable homework assignment into a story worth remembering. Into a story with a moral.
So what is this story trying to tell us?
Is it just that God/Source/the Universe has a quirky sense of humor?
Is it that life is a series of unfortunate events, and more-than-unfortunate events, and way-more-than-unfortunate events. And, most of the time, it’s not your fault?
Is it about Go talk to your elders before it’s too late? After all, within 5 years my dad would be gone.
Is it about writing stuff down while you still have time? Because you never know?
If this is it, then I could go on to mention the story of Rick Husband, the Commander of the ill-fated Columbia mission, who kept a journal so his kids would know about his strong faith, just in case.
Or am I just writing this story for the benefit of Hunter’s grandchildren who will likely never meet me, much less their great-grandfather?
Maybe it’s all those things.
Maybe it’s about how Story connects us through time.
Maybe it’s about how those stories your parents tell that make you roll your eyes are going to fascinate your children someday. And be buried treasure to your grandchildren.
I know about such buried treasure.
The Joy is in the Finding
I treasure the fragments of life I found in a box of my mom’s old stuff — a “Persona Theme” from her one year of college that taught me a little more about her and her mother (who both died while I was still in high school), and introduced me to a great-uncle I would never meet.
I remember the excitement my cousin Ruth and I felt the day I discovered the 1939 diary of our Uncle-Ralph-who-died-in-WWII in a box of stuff my step-mother sent after my dad passed.
Buried treasure.
So write. And ask. And record.
Go create some future buried treasure.
You are a link in a chain. Don’t be the broken one.
