• Facebook
  • Youtube
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Mail
Contributor Login
  • 0Shopping Cart
FolkWorks
  • Home
  • Events
  • Features
  • Resources
  • About Us
  • Archives
  • Contact
  • DONATE
  • Search
  • Menu Menu
... That Reminds Me

TRUTH IS RELATIVE

... THAT REMINDS ME / Valerie Cooley

That’s my Cousin Zoë," my mother always said, pointing her out with possessive pride. If I were lucky, she would repeat the old story for the nth time, starting with, "Zoë was not only the most beautiful woman in town but she was also kind, cheerful, smart, and funny. Everyone loved her. She sang wherever she went."

I grew up picturing Zoë as sort of a female Saint Francis with birds fluttering about her and meadow flowers springing up in her footprints and I envied my mother her perfect cousin.

She died young and tragically, of course, ensuring her an unsullied memory. If I pawed quickly enough through our pirate’s chest, I could find the panoramic pictures of Heppner and get my mother to tell me the rest of the story. In "Before the Flood" she’d point out tiny Willow Creek flowing through town and past Zoë’s house. "After the Flood" spoke for itself: the town’s center is reamed out, with houses, hotels, and stores scattered on the banks or gone entirely.

"Zoë’s house floated away and broke apart," my mother would say. "Robert Hynd, her husband, got home too late either to save his wife and children or to die with them." From her voice I learned that dying together was preferable to surviving alone.

"What did he do?" I’d ask.

"Oh, he was devastated," my mother would assure me. "He wanted nothing more to do with Heppner and moved to Portland. Eventually he married again and had another family."

"How awful!" I’d say. Survival was bad enough. How dare he be happy too? But my mother would soothe my indignation.

"On his deathbed," she’d tell me, "he told his sobbing wife ‘don’t grieve, my dear; I’m happy. I’m going to be with Zoë and the babies again’." Somehow that made it all right.

Thus I learned many of my family stories, in moments snatched from whatever chores had sent us to the basement or attic. In later years I began un-learning them. It started, once again, with pictures. I’d inherited Aunt Mabel’s collection in which were many pictures identical to ours but also many different ones. The most important – and heart-breaking – difference was that her pictures were neatly labeled with names and dates. A short, stocky un-prepossessing young woman with a mass of kinky, honey-colored curls was labeled, to my horror, "our beloved Mrs. Hynd."

Surely it’s a mistake, I prayed. It must be Zoë’s mother-in-law. But no, I soon found a photo of a young man labeled "Zoë’s brother Bert" and damned if it didn’t look just like "our beloved Mrs. Hynd" with the same kinky hair and stocky build. There was no way I could make this woman into the lovely creature in my great-grandmother’s garden. I felt more devastated than Robert Hynd – his Zoë had just died; mine had never existed.

That was the worst blow. I got another, lesser one when my mother and I drove to Heppner to meet with her cousin Elaine (Uncle Bert’s daughter, Zoë’s niece). We visited the cemetery, of course. Half the death dates on the headstones were June 14, 1903, the date of the Heppner Flood, nine years before my mother’s birth! Clearly, she had never walked in the path of flowers left by Zoë’s footsteps nor heard the birds harmonizing with her sweet voice. For some reason, this saddened me, as if the distance between Zoë and me had widened. It did, however, explain how Mother could have mis-identified the picture. I’ve wondered since how consciously she chose an identity for her lovely cousin. Did she tell herself it was true? Or did she do it for me, so I’d have an image suitable to the legend?

Since then I’ve moved back to the state of my ancestors. I see family names in phone books, local histories, and even on a bridge. Last week I Googled the Heppner Flood and got 31,800 entries, including a song about it. Some of the stories match my mother’s and some don’t. Zoë was born Izoriah, which isn’t romantic at all. My great-great-uncle George and his wife, Lily, rode their house downstream till it lodged safely on the bank. Why didn’t my mother ever tell me that story? I’ve forgiven Zoë for not being the doe-eyed beauty I thought she was and have even decided the kinky-haired chick was pretty cute. I’m not sure, though, that – if it ever comes to it — I’ll have the moral strength to check out the truth of any more family stories.


Valerie Cooley is living in Coos Bay, Oregon. When she’s not playing with her beautiful and brilliant young granddaughters, she paddles her kayak on the bay, watches birds, gardens, and contradances once a month

Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Pinterest
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share by Mail
https://folkworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/logo_thatremindsme.png 200 200 Steve Shapiro https://folkworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/FolkWorks-logo-large.png Steve Shapiro2007-07-01 08:00:002020-11-18 10:25:45

TRUTH IS RELATIVE

All Columns

Featured Columnists

  • Art Podell
  • Chris Wilson
  • David Bragger
  • Lindsey Terrell
  • Roland Sturm
  • Ross Altman

FolkWorks Partners

Join our E-mail Community

As a valued member of our e-mail community, you will receive updates on events, stories, performances and more in our monthly newsletter, along with the occasional special announcement to give you the latest news in folk/roots. We promise your e-mail is safe with us.  We don’t sell or share our database with any third-party vendors.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

  • LIKE US ON FACEBOOK
  • JOIN THE FOLKWORKS FACEBOOK GROUP
  • BECOME A FOLKWORKS DONOR
  • ADVERTISE WITH US
YOU TUBE INSTAGRAM TWITTER EMAIL PRIVACY POLICY

All Material Copyright © 2001- 2021 FolkWorks. All rights reserved. Website by: Integritive

Scroll to top

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website, analyze site traffic, and show event times in your timezone. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

Accept

Cookie and Privacy Settings



How we use cookies

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

Essential Website Cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

Other external services

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

Privacy Policy

You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy Policy Page.

Privacy Policy