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Windows of Opportunity

by Val Atkinson

Article ID: 15, First Published: November 2004

When I was a young mother I was once in the supermarket with my two children. They weren’t naughty, just being children and constantly wanting my attention with their WHY? WHY? WHY?/WHEN? WHEN? WHEN? And their constant MUM! MUM! MUM!

I was really exasperated. I turned to the woman next to me at the checkout, and complained: ‘That’s the story of my life, kids always shouting for me’.

She replied (and I’ve never forgotten her words):

‘Yes. It’s a good story isn’t it?’

That was the first time I became aware of experiencing a ‘Window of Opportunity’. Until then I don’t think I’d fully appreciated being a mother.

Not long afterwards I saw a picture in a magazine of an elderly lady sitting with a book. Round her was a large group of children. The caption read:

‘There are many little reasons to be a good example, and some day they’ll all be big’.

Realising I was in a ‘window of opportunity’ helped me change my attitude to my circumstances.

Throughout our lives we experience these ‘windows’, and sometimes we never look through them at all to see what they have to offer, partly because we don’t understand them.

They function to divide our lives into areas of interest.

I’m not a young mother now. That window is closed, and my ‘grandmother window’ has opened. I don’t waste windows anymore. I’ve learned my lesson.

Family history and what it offers is a ‘Window of Opportunity’ which we can look through at any time in our lives but which we can scrutinise thoroughly only at certain times.

I glanced it regularly when I was in my ‘young mother window’, stealing the odd moment after children’s bath and bedtime.

I kept glancing while I was a mature student in my late thirties, and slowly, very slowly, I ended up sitting down for a long hard look at the ‘family history scenery’ and what it had to offer.

I wonder if this is why genealogy and family history are considered an older person’s interest, because the golden time for research is when we have less immediate family responsibilities, and more opportunity to expand our knowledge and interests .

Yet families aren’t just made up of old people.

This helped me to see things I hadn’t considered before.

Family history is:

� An activity we should participate in all our lives

� An interest we should encourage in our children

� An involvement in service to our ancestors as we identify and claim them, to graft them into our family trees

� A realisation that we have sprung from unknown roots that we want to make known

� A longing to be linked

� A feeling of gratitude for our ancestors

�

We should:

� Not try to do everything at once, because the ‘Windows of Life’ dictate our times and seasons.

� Consider carefully our circumstances, resources and abilities. Family history often needs a financial budget

� Remember that research does need the time and patience that can’t often be accommodated in the WHY? WHY? WHY? or the MUM! MUM! MUM! season of life.

TROUBLING QUESTIONS:

How can we interest our children in this absorbing activity?

How can we help them see that it is absorbing?

Why are genealogists considered as odd as (for example) train spotters?

Why must we avoid saying the ‘FH’ (family history) words, and the ‘G’(genealogy) word around our families?

Why are they bored by it?

Why is it so damaging to health? It can cause immediate deafness and acute loss of memory. It can affect their vision (at times I’ve felt totally invisible!)

Do these comments ring a bell?

� ‘Get Real!’

� ‘Boring!’

� ‘Not again, can’t you talk about anything else?’

� ‘Get a Life’

CONCLUSION:

� Be careful how you speak about family history if you want your family to hear the whole sentence!

� Look for ‘windows of opportunity’ to further your cause and an ‘effectual door’ will be opened through which you can draw your families.

WHAT ARE THESE WINDOWS?

HOW WILL WE KNOW WHEN THEY ARE PRESENTING THEMSELVES?

I have a friend who saw a ‘window’’ at her father’s funeral, where family came cautiously together after a divorce and a general drifting apart. Cousins met who hadn’t seen each other for forty years, and rapport was established.

Relatives had been living only a few streets away, unknown and unrecognised.

Family was e mailed and asked for remembrances to be included in a eulogy. Photographs were hunted out and given to family members.

A Royal Marine came to the funeral in full dress uniform to honour the twenty two years of service her fiercely patriotic father had given to his country.

This eulogy has become part of her family’s history, and the Royal Marine was a visual reminder of her father’s life. This ‘window’ experience resulted in a family reunion to gather in those who couldn’t attend the funeral, and relatives willingly came from far and wide.

The culmination was:

� Living and deceased family being joined, through speaking of ancestors and showing photographs

� Finding new facts and dates for family history

� Creation of new memories

� A family photograph taken of all the living relatives.

� A reunion for 70 year old cousins who hadn’t seen each other for over half a century

� Involvement of the ‘bored’ family members

� Free use of the ‘G’ and ‘FH’ words passing unnoticed in the general joy

THIS MUST MEAN THAT Family history is also about:

� Gathering in the living, and coming to know them

� Putting aside rancour and bitterness and looking to the future.

� Making our houses ‘houses of order’

� Extending love and showing concern

� Persevering with disinterest

Look through your ‘windows of opportunity’ regularly until you catch sight of the ‘effectual door’ just waiting to be opened.