In the Shadow of the Valley: A Memoir

by Bobi Conn

What is history anyway? A story: The last man standing holds the pen. A sense of place: I am on this path that is hardly comprehensible. A birthright: I may be from, but I am not of that world.

The heartbreaking history my father told me through his stories, bits and pieces both recent and distant, now had a context—we suddenly fit into a narrative, and that brought us a little closer to making sense. For the first time, I saw myself as a great-granddaughter, a descendant—not just a self. But it made my self more complicated than I ever had conceived of it being.

I grew up so poor, I told him, panic rising inside me. I don’t want to be poor again—I want a better life. But Jacob said he knew what it was like to be poor, too. He had lived on fifty dollars a month and had lived under bridges with the young girlfriend. Who bought you that truck? I asked. He had bought it himself with money from selling his car. Who bought you the car? His parents. And where did you get that fifty dollars a month? His parents. Where did you go when you didn’t want to live under a bridge anymore? To his parents. I tried to explain that being poor means there is no car to sell, no certainty in any income. And most of all, there is nowhere to go when things get too hard or you get too tired. There is no one to call, no saving grace. Just the fear of losing your children or your home, the fear of freezing or starving. Dignity is far from important, and in the throes of poverty, the need to survive outweighs all else except the need to forget your misery.