Family accounts for a lot in your life – the person you eventually become, your values and norms. After all, it is their influence that molds and shapes you.
No one knows that better than Ralph Thorne. It is those moments in childhood, those key memories that are sometimes locked in our memory vaults, that Ralph chose to chronicle in his childhood memoir Whispers Of Peace To My Soul.
“The title reveals a lot,” says Thorne. “Writing the book proved to be very therapeutic. Revisiting childhood offers up a lot of emotion that went with the past.”
That past, which he detailed quite thoroughly, recounts moments of joy, pain, boyhood memories with his siblings and friends, and interactions with his parents and teachers at school and church.
“This book was an expedition in identity,” he said. “The sum total of a man is his experience and you must never ignore or forget your experience because that is who you are.”
It was a family reunion that sparked Ralph’s determination to write the book, which he did over several months after hectic days in the courts of law.
“I hadn’t planned to publish the book because it started out as a private family project and my family is not given to drawing attention to itself,” he said.
“But it was really my wife Jackie who pushed me to get it published.”
Sharing intimate details of one’s childhood isn’t always easy, especially when you’ve grown up in a society that relishes privacy, but Ralph felt it was important for himself and even moreso for his two children Benjamin and Toni.
“Parts of the situations with my dad were amusing because you look back and recognize that although he was extremely strict, we had to be creative in enjoying life within the confines of a strict father,” he said.
“Looking back and writing about it was amusing. Some of it was sad, too, because you recognize that somebody made a strong contribution to us and he left us very quietly and very modestly. Much of what he had was his pride in spite of the very few material possessions that he left behind.”
According to Ralph, writing the book helped him to understand and in many ways appreciate his parents more.
“What we had achieved was due in large measure to him and my mother because I don’t separate the two,” he revealed.
“They were a real tag-team which made us subject to a more authoritarian regime. Life was strict. It was about home, school and church, and anything outside of that was to be experienced in limited amounts.”
Though Ralph grew up in a strict environment and admits to having traits like his father’s, even sounding like him at times, he differs from him in many ways.
“I find myself consciously avoiding that strict regime with my own children,” he admits.
“A strict regime is not ideal, but a lot of parents at the time felt that was the best situation.
“I am not into a lot of flogging. I recognize the value of a strong reprimand and giving a child a tap.
“I am not against tapping a child, but I am against the brutality that passed for corporal punishment in times past.”
As an adult looking back on his childhood, Ralph admits to finding peace with himself and his past.
“If I had done this book 15 years ago, I don’t know what would have been my perspective” he said.
“I don’t know what would have been my emotional relationship with certain events. I’ve reached the stage where I can look back and find resolution in all the experiences.
“I can accept the truth of my past; I can accept that it was a past that was intended to make you a good person and that it made you a good person. I think I did it at the right time.
“I’m more settled spiritually and think this is the time to write, especially before I forget the stories and the anecdotes.”
Now in his 50s, Ralph prides himself on having an excellent memory.
“Such easy recall means that you were shaped by these early events. There must have been some reason why these events stayed with me,” he said.
But for Ralph, this endeavour has been more about his children being able to chronicle his journey of life and knowing that he too had to travel that road into adulthood.
“The book was written largely for my offspring,” he said.
“There is a loud silence in people not telling their children about their past and giving their children a false identiy. A lot of people do it.
“Children love their parents to tell them what they did. I’m proud of the book because it tells a story to several of the children of my siblings. It gives the child a sense of his own identity.
“We live in a society that is trying to create an identity in the children that is disconnected from the generation that has gone before and that is injurious to a child. It is like a ship without a rudder.
“I want my kids to take away a consciousness of who they are. I want them to know that wherever they go, their destiny did not begin with them. Their destiny is traceable to people who went before, like their grandparents and great-grandparents.
“I want them to know they are connected to something that was invisible to them so they can a feel a sense of their own relevance in the world.”