A family, too, needs a museum.
You have probably heard it countless times — a family is a lot like a country, perhaps even more country than a country.
First there is the Day of the Interdependence from the burdensome independence of singlehood, when the couple stand before the world, make the vow ‘to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I pledge thee my faith’, and tie the knot. Thus, they announce the birth of the new state in their union to the rest of the world, with its own name, ‘the Browns’, with its own territory called home, ready to welcome its citizens — that is, if in their haste, the couple have not already had them before they could set up the state, ‘stateless citizens’, or they have had stateless citizen of their own from their previous failed states (there are so many of them).
A family, like a country, has an anthem too, the family anthem, a song that has unique meaning to them. Perhaps it is the song that was playing softly in the background in one of their early dates, when they shared a true moment, that exact moment they beheld in each other’s eyes their destiny together. It becomes their theme song, the soundtrack of their love. Perhaps that same song became their wedding song. This is also the song that when they hear playing in the stereo of the cab they are in, they would keep driving away from their destination for as long as the song plays; the song that they dance to in their idle hours at home, in their pyjamas.
There is an essential antecedent to the Family Interdependence Day, as is the case with a country’s Independence Day: a meaningful shared history. The couple in their independent days first take a journey together. And in that journey, they share meaningful experiences. Meaningful experiences are ones that require putting so much of ourselves, investing so much of our feelings and emotions into. Perhaps as valiant an experience as my friend’s.
My friend had the misfortune of falling in love with a girl who detested him before he ever spoke to her. Because he hung out with the meanest group in school. They were in high school. Thus, he was a rogue she had to avoid by all means. She never gave him a chance to show her that he was different, and that he was genuinely interested in her. But then she got sick and was hospitalized for two weeks. He visited her more often and stayed longer with her than her own mother. Still, she would not relent in her coldness. She would pull herself up to a corner of her bed and offer curt replies to his efforts at cheering her up. Such was the genuineness of my friend’s interest in her that her coldness did not get to him. Instead, he would lie on the bed that she left bare and would continue to talk to her. He was so perseverant in his gestures of love against her coldness that the attendant nurse could not hold back her tears.
What happened between them afterwards is a story for another post. Point is meaningful moments. Some moments we cannot share with others without baring our souls completely naked to them, letting them in on our vulnerabilities, and in so doing, growing closer into one another. It is in these moments that the relationship develops its unique flavour and the couple conceive the desire to live under the same roof and build a country, a family together. The more meaningful these experiences are, that is, the more of ourselves we put into them, the stronger the foundation of the family, and the less likely that little temptation or affliction would tear the family apart.
These moments more than others make the family. They are the sources of the core values that become the cornerstone upon which the family is built. The memories of these historic moments, just like national holidays, should be captured and preserved. In a museum, just as countries.
Mind, you might say, is all the museum a family needs, but mind is not the safest of museums to safeguard the memories from the looting of time; thus the saying, “The palest ink is better than the strongest memory”. Memories of these experiences are just too indispensable to let the wind of time blow away from our mind. Hence, the couple must pick up relics of these experiences as they go along, such as perhaps a screen shot of the most affectionate text, to put in the future family museum. Resist the urge to destroy these relics in your fights though, for these are important artefacts of your relationship; let out all your anger on the pillow instead.
Photos in family albums or selfies in our cell phones are not enough either. Nor memorabilia in the casket in our basement that we like to rummage through whenever we are nostalgic. A family needs a physical museum. It ought to set aside a room in the house (if they can afford it) or just a corner, where they can place snapshots of their most special moments, both before and after Interdependence Day, such as goofing off in the photo booth in their young days, or the man looking out of place in hospital uniform in the labour room with blissful smile on his face when they had their first child; or videos such as of their wedding, or celebrating their child’s third birthday in the presence of family and friends and neighbours; photocopies of ticket stubs, Playbills, photos, etc., of all the special times they had shared over the years compiled into a book; their inflamed love letters of the courtship days; the teddy bear he gave her on her twenty-second birthday; an old keychain to him with the note “DAVE, you’re my PENGUIN”; or a personalized coffee mug that reads “You are as precious to me as a roll of toilet paper during the pandemic”, memories of the proudest moments of their citizens, etc.
All the emblems of their most cherished moments in their journey together.
The museum should be at the heart of the family tradition after Interdependence Day. One, it should be the first school for the children. The museum teaches them history, the history they ought to learn long before world history, the history of their family. One way to do that is through the word of mouth, but in comparison to a family museum that is dull, uninspiring. The overriding message you communicate in only telling the family history is that you do not cherish the memory enough to care to save it from going down the drain into oblivion. The family museum, on the other hand, with all the pictures, keepsakes, memorabilia, letters, funny notes, brings history alive.
Instead, take the child on a field trip to the family museum. Carry her in your arms and show her around. Let the warmth of your joy and love contained in the memorabilia splash on her face. In her inquisitiveness, let her ask you questions.
“Papa, what is it?” pointing to the Where-We-Met Map in a frame with the location marked in red heart, with the inscription, “Where It All Began” along with the latitude and longitude of the location.
“That is where I first met your mom, honey”.
“How did you two first meet?”
“Hmm…there are two versions to that story, I will tell my version. I will let mommy tell you her version”.
Let the toothless five-year old child giggle at your silliness. Let her see the frail, vulnerable human beings that you are, and not the god and goddess she would otherwise take you.
The tour around the family museum is a civic education, too, when the children are educated on the values and principles of the family and thus become good citizens of the family.
The room should be held to higher reverence than just a memory room. It remains locked at all times save in the family ‘national holidays’ such as anniversaries and birthdays. The room hosts these special days in the presence of family and friends. It soaks up the warmth, the energy of the events and stores it in the invisible spiritual memory.
The museum is a spiritual room, a source of spiritual energy. When the conundrum of everyday life depletes the vivacity in their marriage, a saunter down the memory lane of the museum in each other’s arms, watching their younger, happier selves smiling at them, sharing chuckle over their mischievous letters of their courtship days, snapshots of the accomplishments they have made with their children etc would replenish their spiritual energy.
The room is most useful during difficult times, when the going in life becomes difficult, when affliction besets the family, as life is certain to do down the line. Perhaps one of them is laid off work. Worse the death of a loved citizen. At such times, grief drives out all joy, hope, love out of their heart. During these dark hours, they should seek refuge in the family museum, spend several days sobbing in each other’s arms over the loss of their loved one. The room shall put invisible, spiritual arms around their grieving souls and offer solace abundantly.
In the end, this painful experience, too, the museum captures in its spiritual memory.
The ultimate purpose of the family is to rear its citizens into productive ones that will establish states of their own. Ultimately, the couple disintegrate into the dust they came from and Mother Earth collects them into its loving embrace.
