This holiday season, take time to listen. The stories you’ll hear might surprise you.
The older I get, the more I’ve come to appreciate the quiet moments — the ones that used to get lost in the chaos of family gatherings.
When I was younger, my grandmother, Berdean Ring, was always moving. She hosted holidays, cooked big meals, and made sure everyone else was fed before she even sat down. She was steady, capable, and in constant motion.
Today, she turns 96 — a lifetime of stories, memories, and quiet wisdom that I’m lucky enough to still hear firsthand. These days, she sits back and lets the rest of us handle the cooking and the bustle. And in that stillness, something beautiful has happened: the stories have started to come.
She talks about growing up in southern Nebraska during the Great Depression, when dust storms rolled across the prairie and turned the sky gray. Her family did their best to farm the stubborn land, but rain was rare and water was precious. There were good days too — games, chores, and laughter — but always against a backdrop of wind and dryness.
Eventually, her parents packed up and moved east to Iowa, where the ground was greener and creeks ran through the fields. For Berdean, seeing those creeks and ponds was something new — the first running water she could remember. I imagine it must have felt like a promise: that life could begin again.
She tells me about her mother rushing the children through chores so they could go down to the river to swim while she mended clothes on the bank, or about the stubborn pony that once crossed the river and refused to come back, causing her to have to take off her brand new shoes to cross the river and ride that pony home. They’re not dramatic stories, but they’re real ones — the kind that make you stop and see a person you’ve known your whole life in a new way.
Seeing Her Differently
I’ve always been fascinated by genealogy — tracing names, dates, and records back through time. But lately, what I’ve realized is that genealogy isn’t just about those details. It’s about people.
And sitting with Grandma, hearing her talk about her childhood, I find myself seeing her as more than the matriarch who kept our family steady. I see her as the child she once was — curious, determined, shaped by a world that was harsher than I’ll ever know.
When I think about the way she is now — practical, frugal, uninterested in gifts or fuss — it makes sense. Her stories fill in the “why.” A new refrigerator seemed unnecessary to someone who grew up in the Dust Bowl years and learned to make everything last. What looks like simplicity today is really the legacy of endurance.
These conversations remind me that every person we research once lived in the full color of daily life — they laughed, worked, worried, loved. Their stories aren’t just history; they’re the heartbeat of where we come from.
A Living Time Machine
When I’m deep in research, I often catch myself thinking, I wish I had a time machine so I could ask my ancestors all the questions I’ll never know the answers to.
And then I realize: sometimes, I still can.
My grandmother is my time machine. She’s the voice of experience, the living thread that connects the past to the present. Every time we sit together and she shares a piece of her childhood, I’m reminded how rare and precious that is.
Start Asking Now
The holidays are the perfect time to begin — or to go deeper. When families gather, it’s easy to talk about plans and weather and food, but this year, try asking something more.
Ask what life was like when they were little.
Ask what the house they grew up in smelled like.
Ask who they admired, or what made them laugh.
Ask what the holidays were like when they were young.
Ask them what their favorite Halloween costume was, or their favorite Christmas present.
Ask them about their favorite holiday foods, and what they did to celebrate.
If you’re already building your family tree, these are the stories that bring it to life. And if you haven’t started, this is the best place to begin — not with records, but with people.
Featured Photo: Berdean (left, wearing the white bow) with her brother and sister in Nebraska, around 1938. A reminder that every person in our family tree was once a child with a story of their own.
