It is still early morning as I sit at the kitchen table, pecking away at the keys on a borrowed laptop. And hopefully I can recapture some of the ideas that had tumbled around in my mind while my body was trying to assemble itself into a functional whole.

Lying in bed half awake I recalled what I saw last night on the wall of my daughter’s living room. It was a painting my wife Margo had painted some decades ago, a painting I could at first not even remember. I should have, though, after all I watched at least some part of every one of her hundred plus paintings being born.

Her paintings are now scattered here and there. Many were bought by unknown buyers, but most have been given away to relatives and friends in Germany, the US, and even in Russia. Just five or six stayed with us at home. I wonder what the fates of her paintings will be as the generations follow each other. Somebody years from now might explain to a friend that the painting on his or her wall was painted by a relative several generations ago.

I wish I had something tangible in my possession to connect me to my forefathers. But I am not aware of any mementos at all. The ones before me must have had their triumphs and successes, their ambitions, their failures, their sorrows, and their joys. I know nothing of them, except for a few names, and yet I know that they were men and woman of flesh and blood.

There is one notable exception, one single person about whom I know a bit. He was a general at a time when people of his high social standing were committed to history books. He was talked about with much pride by my mother, as though some of his fame had rubbed off onto us. And poor General Laudon was the person for me to live up to. I however, had absolutely no intent to become a military officer.

Will someone a few generations from now be interested in the people who came to the US to start a new life? I don’t really know. Friends, however, urged me forward to start pounding the keyboard, writing down some of the stories of our life, to leave a window looking back into the times long before their present.

There might well be members of our clan, who like me, yearn for a connection to the ones a few generations before them. Wondering, as I do now, what their triumphs and successes were, their ambitions, their failures, their sorrows, and their joys.

Will the book I wrote be a good enough window to tell not only of events? Will it tell of emotions? I do not know.

Will some of Margo’s paintings be cherished, gracing someone’s living room? Who knows.

I only know that Margo and I left something tangible of our lives behind for our clan’s future generations.