Middle Class Normal

We appeared so normal. We were all dressed well, the sun was shining and everyone seems cordial. The true family story is much different. Or maybe it's exactly correct. Each member of our family tells it differently depending on his or her generation, position and perspective.
I wonder if the same has always been true for every family. If so, how did the peoples that were so dependant upon historical record-keeping through oral means make it? Did they learn lessons by telling it the way it was or by telling the lessons learned? -the ones that skewed slightly to one side of the truth or another.

I'm convinced that history in and of itself is largely inaccurate, one-sided and or one dimensional and that the pursuit of accuracy in history is what makes it such a compelling study. Sometimes, I wonder if there is such a thing as qualitative truth in history of if quantitative truth is the best we can expect to grasp.

My brother was born in the summer of 1968. I remember my Mother going to the hospital and my sister and I waving to her up in the window of her room from the lawn below. After they were both home again, there were new family pictures that included a new little person.
I remember my Mother keeping the house very quiet. My brother slept a lot as babies do and we couldn't wake him. We whispered in the kitchen as my Mother and I made dinner in the afternoons. The television where my Mother watched "As the World Turns" was moved to the other side of the living room. He needed sleep. All babies did. But maybe it was my Mom who needed a break.

Was it just too much for her, having another child? Factual history say, "No." She married, had children and loved us all very much. But from my perspective, according to my version of history, a third child only added to the life sentence of obligation that my Mother resented so much.
Now that I'm old enough to understand her pain, I know what it's like to want just five minutes of privacy in your own house. I know how hard it is to battle daily and sometimes hourly to retain your identity while the rest of the world seems to migrate their interpretation of you from "her" to "their Mom." All these social shifts are lost in the two dimensional history of photographs. They make life much simpler, much easier to remember and much less cumbersome to have to catalog.
There's always the possibility that we actually were what we appeared to be. Completely normal. Maybe every family has their understory that isn't really fit for public display.
Thank God for photos!