It is not exactly a revolutionary idea that families are important in a person’s life. Many of us point at what was supportive in our families and what was not as reasons for our strengths, excuses for our failures. I believe (and some day I feel certain the sociologists/psychologists/geneticists will prove my thesis) that we are born with a certain character (genetics) and that we react to certain dynamics within our families and cultures (environment/sociology) according to those predetermined genes. That our reactions are mostly within our control is also predetermined by chemistry (genetics) that predetermines that we have that control.

To prove that point, there may be a study out there that tracks families in which one child is a real mess (the Gilmores, the Kempers, the Daumers, the DeSalvos) and the others are, you know, regular guys who pay their taxes and pursue happiness in constructive ways.

My theory does not come from a formal study but observation of my own reaction to many influences in my family. I believe that one of the reasons I am a writer is that my mother was a storyteller.

Just when I though I had heard all the family stories—many times—she remembered and told me another. My mother always loved to read. Her voice echoed that of many great authors—which I hardly noticed—and many super-market romances, which I did. She described people she has met or only observed from across the waiting room at the doctor’s office. Her words painted a picture down to the last detail like a paragraph carefully wrought. So, did I inherit a genetic trait for detail, for stories, for memories? Or were those interests and/or abilities nurtured?

The general question is still being argued but I do know that at one time I did not value my mother’s tendencies toward storytelling.

"Her hair is as thick as a mane,” she would say. She would detail a woman’s beauty from the shape of her eyelids to the way the tilt of her nose changes as she ages. When she told a story she repeated it back in dialogue, even when it happened years ago--as if her mind were a tape recorder and had stored every nuance. I would roll my eyes, or sigh or shuffle my feet. With that attitude you can be sure I did not intentionally follow her example.

A moment of self-actualization.

I was also influenced by my culture. My father’s side of the family was Mormon and very interested in genealogy. I was raised in Utah, a state permeated with an interest in family history. That was probably not genetics but influence-- unless one thinks that what is in the air influences a person at the cellular level. (This is an idea that I do not fully dismiss.)

Mother was elated, of course, that I decided to write her stories. But I was the greater beneficiary of the decision I had made (or was it of the genes I had inherited? Or was it the influence that she had over me?)

It’s an interesting problem. The truest solution probably is a combination of the possibilities. The point is, I didn’t run away to Europe to avoid what I thought I hated. Instead I wrote what I had heard, filtered to be sure through my own sensibilities.

Two books have been made from my memories, the harkenings of my mother and the storytellers and genealogists in my family. I liken the process of recording them to a child who listens to adult conversation with nuances that she doesn’t quite understand so she must fill out the meaning with her own experiences. It is a bit like a child who tries to stand upright after twirling herself into oblivion; the pictures blend into a blur like a pinwheel and then—with time- reassemble themselves in the living world.

That I chose to give in to my destiny, whatever its source, has brought me more “self-fulfillment” than any other aspect of my life. Marriage and children are “other-fulfillment” and I’m glad I had those, too. Taken together they are what many call happiness.