“Do you see that house in the mist, Mom?”

I pause briefly to look, particularly careful as the snow whips the windshield. “Hmm. Where?”

“Out there.”
I see an arm in my peripheral vision, pointing westward from the seat behind me. A shape takes form, almost ghost-like, against the gray.

“Oh, way out there. I see it now.”

“Well, that’s kind of what history is like.”

I perk up. “What did you just say?” I observe the shapes in the distance with new interest.

“Well…that’s how history goes. See how you can barely see it? Right now you can see the shape of a house and a few trees, but then it fades. And soon it’ll be forgotten. Soon enough nobody will even know about it. That’s how things like Pearl Harbor are.”

We had just visited an elderly lady from church, where memories of Pearl Harbor and the Great Depression and the KKK presence in Illinois were shared by someone who had actually experienced them. The girls sat on the floor and heard how a cousin was stationed in Hawaii on the “date which will live in infamy.”
Four brothers who fought on separate shores in World War II.
A mother who prayed beside her bed every night.
A family dog who raced to meet a returning soldier.

Driving home, we talked about collective memory: its importance, and the shrinking ability of historical events to hold national attention.

Several minutes passed when she noticed the distant farm house and made her observations.

This, for me, is where historical literacy starts: it’s an intentional posturing TOWARDS the past which normalizes these kinds of connections and observations. There are no study guides, work sheets, or tests which prompt us for this level of interest and empathy.

It’s lofty.
But it’s real.
And it makes you a student for life.

{repost 12/2023}

historicalliteracy #historicalempathy