Latest / Stories That Live In Us / Laugh 'Til We Cry (with Scott Seiffert and Lisa Dyson) | Episode 19

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Laugh 'Til We Cry (with Scott Seiffert and Lisa Dyson) | Episode 19 · Stories That Live In Us

0:02
Scott Seiffert: All stories are about people, I mean, it's about the human experience, and the big part of that human experience is who you are.
0:13
Scott Seiffert: And who you are is an echo of how you grew up, where you grew up, and it's an echo of the things that were brought down in a genealogy kind of way, but brought down from generation to generation that you're not even realizing.
0:31
Crista Cowan: Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future.
0:39
Crista Cowan: I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist.
0:43
Crista Cowan: I've spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything.
0:51
Crista Cowan: Have you ever met a couple that you just wanted to just hang out with because they were so much fun?
1:02
Crista Cowan: That is how I feel about Scott Seiffert and his wife, Lisa Dyson Seiffert.
1:08
Crista Cowan: You're going to get to meet them in just a few minutes.
1:11
Crista Cowan: I just met them right before I recorded this episode, but Ancestry has been working with them for a little while.
1:20
Crista Cowan: My producer, Lisa, had the opportunity to meet Scott and Lisa when she did some family history research for them as part of the HGTV television show Revealed.
1:32
Crista Cowan: Now, in that show they incorporate a little bit of the family history of the family into the home remodel, and Scott and Lisa will talk about that.
1:42
Crista Cowan: But one of the things that I loved about my time with them was just how much fun they were and how much story plays such an important role in their life.
1:53
Crista Cowan: Lisa is a middle school librarian and an actress, which sounds like the most brilliant combination for every child that comes into her library to be able to feel and hear about her love of story in a way that I imagine probably captivates their imagination.
2:15
Crista Cowan: And Scott is the vice president of animation at DreamWorks, and if you think about the last DreamWorks film you saw, you probably know a little something about his skill in shepherding stories as well.
2:29
Crista Cowan: So please enjoy my conversation with Scott and Lisa Seiffert.
2:35
Crista Cowan: Scott and Lisa, thank you so much for being here.
2:38
Crista Cowan: Thanks for having us.
2:40
Crista Cowan: Yeah, absolutely so.
2:42
Crista Cowan: I understand that you are both storytellers and I would love to hear a little bit more about that.
2:49
Crista Cowan: Your career journey,L isa, why don't we start with you?
2:52
Lisa Dyson: Well, right now I'm a librarian in the middle school, which is all about storytelling.
2:57
Lisa Dyson: So I'm completely involved with all of that and with getting the proper books in the hands of all the kids that deserve to see themselves represented in books.
3:07
Lisa Dyson: And I go around and I'll actually read aloud because I feel like that's super important and we've sort of lost that actual listening to stories as you're telling them.
3:16
Lisa Dyson: And so I go around to different classrooms and, you know, have them read, have them imagine, you know, and actually ask questions about what's happening and and introduce them to all different kinds of books.
3:28
Lisa Dyson: It's like first chapters to get them hooked on a different author or something that they may not have expected to like, you know.
3:35
Lisa Dyson: So that's, that's my storytelling as of right now.
3:38
Crista Cowan: I love that.
3:39
Crista Cowan: Did you read stories to your daughter when she was little?
3:41
Crista Cowan: Was that a kind of a part of your family culture?
3:43
Lisa Dyson: Absolutely, absolutely.
3:45
Lisa Dyson: From the time, yeah, even before she was born, I would just start reading out loud, and so, and breakfast time was always reading a chapter for me while she was eating her breakfast.
3:57
Lisa Dyson: So yeah, that was that's part, and obviously before bedtime.
3:59
Lisa Dyson: But yeah, that is part of our family, our family history.
4:01
Crista Cowan: I love that.
4:02
Crista Cowan: Did you have a favorite or did she have a favorite book or set?
4:05
Lisa Dyson: of books we love.
4:07
Lisa Dyson: We used to love the Sandra Boynton books, the ones, and so we, you know, like it's pajama time and we make up songs to go with it and click, clack moo, you know, I mean just oh she loved click clack moo.
4:21
Scott Seiffert: Oh, click clack moo.
4:22
Lisa Dyson: Oh, she loved Click Clack Moo oh.
4:24
Scott Seiffert: Click, clack, moo so fun.
4:27
Scott Seiffert: She also loved all of the Disney anthologies.
4:30
Scott Seiffert: She loved them.
4:31
Scott Seiffert: We had the little hardback Disney anthologies that covered all their movies and we read those all the time.
4:41
Lisa Dyson: And then Scott would read her.
4:42
Lisa Dyson: Edgar Allan Poe, as you do, as you do, and she loves horror.
4:46
Crista Cowan: That you do as you do and she loves horror.
4:48
Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
4:48
Crista Cowan: I love that we had to give a full round.
4:51
Scott Seiffert: You can't just do click, clack and moo, You've got to balance it.
4:53
Scott Seiffert: Apparently Click, clack and moo with Sherlock Holmes and a little Edgar Allan Poe, that's so great.
5:01
Crista Cowan: Scott.
5:01
Crista Cowan: What about you?
5:02
Crista Cowan: What's been your journey in storytelling?
5:03
Crista Cowan: That's so great Scott.
5:04
Scott Seiffert: What about you?
5:05
Scott Seiffert: What's been your journey in storytelling?
5:07
Scott Seiffert: I come from a long line of people who drank at bars and told stories.
5:13
Scott Seiffert: Actually, I come from a performing background, an actor background and a writing background no-transcript that was full of storytelling, true or untrue.
5:56
Scott Seiffert: After a couple of drinks.
5:57
Scott Seiffert: There's always stories.
6:00
Scott Seiffert: Yes, because I grew up in Montana and I knew my, my grandparents.
6:10
Scott Seiffert: Obviously I knew my great grandparents and they would tell stories about, you know, when they were, when they were kids, what was happening, you know, and when they were kids it was still the Wild West in Montana, and they would tell those stories and we would hear those stories, especially at our cabin, because up in the cabin there was no radio, there was no television, there was just a piano and people sitting around talking, and so they told those stories all the time.
6:34
Scott Seiffert: And so I had an inkling of where I came from.
6:38
Scott Seiffert: I'm also several generations in Montana, but I had an inkling of who my immediate ancestors were, and they were fun folks.
6:51
Crista Cowan: Sounds like it.
6:52
Crista Cowan: That sounds delightful, right.
6:53
Crista Cowan: Have you tried to create that environment in your own home?
6:56
Crista Cowan: It's kind of hard right With the distractions of modern conveniences, but to carry that tradition.
7:03
Lisa Dyson: He tells stories, sometimes more than once, so he is passing down the storytelling Fun.
7:16
Lisa Dyson: We laugh.
7:17
Lisa Dyson: He'll tell stories and, just you know, make us laugh till we cry and just relive moments of his childhood.
7:27
Scott Seiffert: But yeah, there's lots of storytelling that goes on in our house.
7:28
Scott Seiffert: We actually we are lucky that our daughter works fairly close to us and so she comes over for dinner several nights a week and we talk about what happened during the day.
7:39
Scott Seiffert: We talk she works in a storytelling medium.
7:42
Scott Seiffert: We talk about what happened, you know during the day what story things she's working on, what's happening in her life.
7:49
Scott Seiffert: But we actually do sit around the table literally like you should do, and no phones are going.
7:55
Scott Seiffert: It's sit around and talk and chat and tell stories and laugh.
7:58
Scott Seiffert: It's part of our family, it's part of who we are.
8:02
Crista Cowan: Yeah, there's something so important about that dinner table space and what it creates for families.
8:09
Crista Cowan: I love that you have a strong, strong tradition of that.
8:11
Crista Cowan: So Lisa Scott mentioned his roots in Montana and some of how he grew up.
8:16
Crista Cowan: What do you know about your own family history?
8:19
Lisa Dyson: My family history is based outside of Philadelphia, so I grew up outside of Philly.
8:24
Lisa Dyson: My grandmother on my mom's side was originally from New Rochelle up in New York, so then she managed to get down to Philadelphia I still don't know how and the Irish side, which is my dad's side, was definitely Philadelphia and my grandfather was a conductor on the Reading Railroad and so just, and he played in a, he played saxophone in a big band, and so I kind of learned sort of that history through them.
8:49
Lisa Dyson: But I really I wasn't as close to them they were.
8:53
Lisa Dyson: They were alcoholics, so I think my parents kept me away from them.
8:57
Lisa Dyson: But I kind of wish I'd known more about them.
9:00
Lisa Dyson: You know, which is funny, your parents kept you with the alcoholics.
9:03
Lisa Dyson: You were all drinking on on your side.
9:07
Lisa Dyson: I wasn't allowed to go near them.
9:08
Lisa Dyson: Um.
9:09
Lisa Dyson: So uh, it's just um, it's just interesting to find out, and I and and and actually learning a little bit of the stuff makes me want to learn more, you know, and actually go back to my roots of trying to figure out.
9:21
Lisa Dyson: I remember what the house looked like.
9:23
Lisa Dyson: I wish I'd known then to ask questions, but you know, when you're two years old you don't really know.
9:29
Lisa Dyson: So what was it like back then?
9:31
Lisa Dyson: But I'd be curious to learn more about the Irish side and the Albanian slash Italian side, which was something new to learn which my husband will never let me live down, because I have to say I'm a baby and I'm not Italian.
9:49
Lisa Dyson: Just kind of knowing things and then really realizing how much you don't know is really what happened to me.
9:55
Crista Cowan: So you guys, had the opportunity a couple of years ago to be on a show called Revealed, and part of that show was about redesigning your home to reflect your heritage and your family culture and what did you know?
10:11
Crista Cowan: I mean, you've shared some of the things, but kind of going into that show, what were some of the things that you learned in that process?
10:21
Lisa Dyson: We dug up between both of us.
10:23
Lisa Dyson: His mom had a whole bunch of pictures that we found in Montana, cause we were, we were actually in Montana, we were digging through research.
10:30
Lisa Dyson: My mom had passed away but I had gotten all her photo albums from that she had kept, which some of them I hadn't even seen before, of really old pictures, and the sad part is a lot of times they have the pictures on both sides.
10:44
Lisa Dyson: We found this out and then there's no names that go with them.
10:48
Lisa Dyson: So you're like, well, this is a really cool picture.
10:50
Lisa Dyson: Who was that?
10:51
Lisa Dyson: You know, and there's nobody to ask.
10:52
Lisa Dyson: So we found tons of pictures, like I found my grandparents on my mom's side their wedding picture from the 1920s was really cool and then in his mom's house my mom had a.
11:04
Scott Seiffert: She had a memory.
11:05
Scott Seiffert: Her memory was so sharp she would say oh, that picture of so-and-so's of your great grandfather is on the third drawer down underneath this, underneath the scarf We'd pull out this thing.
11:20
Scott Seiffert: Oh, that's a picture of him when he was the police chief.
11:23
Crista Cowan: So, Lisa, when you sat down with the genealogist before the show to learn some things about your family history, some of it was things you didn't know right.
11:32
Crista Cowan: Tell me a little bit about that experience.
11:34
Lisa Dyson: I think we focused on my mom's dad, my grandfather, who passed away when I was just a baby and I knew, going through his paperwork, that he had been in the army in World War I and then World War II and I think I remember my mom saying he had tried to enlist for the Korean War but they told him he was too old.
11:53
Lisa Dyson: But he came from what I thought came from Naples.
11:57
Lisa Dyson: When he came to the country and we discovered that he had come by himself and he was young, that he had he had come by himself and I and he was young I mean, he was just like a little like maybe I can't remember 13, maybe or maybe even younger than that I can't remember by himself.
12:18
Lisa Dyson: He came to the United States, went through Ellis Island and then went immediately enlisted in World War for World War One for the United States and then he was listed as being he'd.
12:25
Lisa Dyson: I think he stayed with his uncle and maybe that's how he got to Philadelphia and they were told he was killed in action.
12:30
Lisa Dyson: Come to find out that he was a prisoner of war and that he was still alive, but they're getting a telegram that says he's dead.
12:39
Lisa Dyson: And then, when he was wounded.
12:41
Lisa Dyson: They tried to enlist.
12:43
Lisa Dyson: He went back and enlisted again.
12:45
Lisa Dyson: I mean, you know, went back into.
12:46
Lisa Dyson: I mean it was just like this whole fascinating thing of this sort of self-made kid, because he's really just a teenager.
12:52
Lisa Dyson: You know, at that time and and I knew my mom adored her dad and um, and he'd had a grocery store, a little grocery store, and, uh, when they were growing up and I know that they had a victory garden in their, you know, backyard for World War II.
13:08
Lisa Dyson: But seeing pictures, we had pictures of him in his uniforms.
13:12
Lisa Dyson: He was quite handsome, I have to say.
13:14
Lisa Dyson: Everyone was like, oh, he's very handsome.
13:17
Lisa Dyson: But it was just it's so interesting to learn about him and what that meant for him to fight for this country.
13:23
Lisa Dyson: That wasn't the country he was born in.
13:25
Lisa Dyson: You know that it meant so much to him to protect the freedoms here.
13:31
Lisa Dyson: You know that he would be willing to just, you know, put his life on the line every single time.
13:35
Lisa Dyson: And I thought, wow, that's something I would have loved to have talked to him about and you know, didn't get a chance to and we talked about he had lung cancer, when, you know, and then those days everybody smoked a ton anyway, but I thought I wonder if it had to do with any of the chemicals that they, you know, were using in World War One too.
13:51
Lisa Dyson: I mean, you just don't you start thinking about those things and it's just.
13:54
Lisa Dyson: That's a part of history I would have liked to have delved into a little bit more.
13:58
Lisa Dyson: It's just learning more.
14:00
Lisa Dyson: Being able to talk to him.
14:01
Lisa Dyson: I wish he hadn't, you know, and maybe he wouldn't have talked about it, because a lot of those, those soldiers didn't want to talk about what they'd seen in World War One or World War Two, so maybe I would never have learned anyway.
14:13
Lisa Dyson: But it's just, it's just kind of fascinating because he's got all these honorable discharges and all the you know the stuff that it's like, wow, he was that.
14:21
Lisa Dyson: That's the stuff that was kept, that was really important to them.
14:23
Lisa Dyson: So it's it's kind of an it.
14:26
Lisa Dyson: That was interesting.
14:26
Lisa Dyson: It was very, very interesting.
14:28
Lisa Dyson: And I didn't know it wasn't told to me.
14:30
Lisa Dyson: My mom never said a word.
14:31
Lisa Dyson: I'm like he has a purple heart.
14:33
Lisa Dyson: You know I was like you could tell a person these things, like that's kind of important.
14:38
Crista Cowan: Yeah, it's interesting what families choose to share and not to share, whether it's intentional or not, right?
14:44
Crista Cowan: Yeah?
14:45
Crista Cowan: Yeah, lisa, you mentioned those photographs and not knowing who the who the people were, is that something that you've since been able to uncover at all, or do you still have a lot of question marks there?
14:58
Lisa Dyson: I still have question marks.
14:59
Lisa Dyson: I it's.
15:02
Lisa Dyson: It's very busy life, life happens, so I still have them and I will get to them eventually, but for right now they're all in a nice little safe place, so I've actually organized them.
15:15
Lisa Dyson: So at least, hopefully, someday I'll be able to track them.
15:17
Lisa Dyson: They're not just like sit around, you know, in the garage anymore.
15:21
Lisa Dyson: So so yeah, I'm still curious, I still would like to know.
15:24
Lisa Dyson: There's a lot of paths I'd like to follow, but I haven't had a chance to do any of that Because, you know, life Sure absolutely.
15:33
Crista Cowan: Is there anyone left in your life?
15:35
Crista Cowan: You know there's this kind of strange things that happens as you start getting involved in family history.
15:40
Crista Cowan: And, lisa, you alluded to this earlier like there's questions you wish you would have asked but you didn't know to ask them at the time.
15:47
Crista Cowan: And by the time you finally get interested in family history, sometimes anybody you could ask is gone.
15:54
Crista Cowan: And, scott, you mentioned that your mom had the sharp memory and that she was able to share some things.
15:59
Crista Cowan: Do you think, lisa and this is super philosophical, I guess but do you think that not having access to that information makes you more curious?
16:09
Lisa Dyson: I don't think so.
16:10
Lisa Dyson: Yeah, because maybe I'd take it for granted if I, you know, could just talk about it or be bored with it or whatever.
16:17
Lisa Dyson: Yeah, you know how you, you know when you're a kid and stuff, it's like whatever.
16:21
Lisa Dyson: It's ancient history, who cares?
16:22
Lisa Dyson: And and the older you get, the more interested you are where you came from and the things you learn, you know or what your perceptions are.
16:34
Crista Cowan: Yeah, for sure.
16:36
Crista Cowan: And Scott, it sounds like your experience has been entirely different, maybe with your extended family.
16:41
Crista Cowan: Is that a fair assumption?
16:44
Scott Seiffert: with your extended family.
16:45
Scott Seiffert: Is that a fair assumption?
16:46
Scott Seiffert: It was really fun to go back and learn things, not just sort of facts, but here's an article that actually explained you know, gave it a little feeling of like who they were, not just a fact of like, oh, they were born here, it was a church here, it was this here.
17:00
Scott Seiffert: There was an article about my grandparents when they got married.
17:04
Scott Seiffert: There's an article about my other side of my grand, my great grandparents, during prohibition.
17:09
Scott Seiffert: There were things that those were the things that were super interesting, that I wish.
17:17
Scott Seiffert: I kind of wish that I thought about this years ago when I had my first relative passed away.
17:21
Scott Seiffert: I thought about this years ago when my first relative passed away, and I thought, oh, it would be fun to write a little biography of them, of not only what they did but who they were, because some of those obituaries are very dry and very like oh, this person died of this.
17:38
Scott Seiffert: They were a hard worker and they are survived by these people, but it would be fun to be able to say this person, this is who they were, this is who the person was, this is what excited them about life, this is how they lived their life.
17:55
Scott Seiffert: This is what was important to them.
17:56
Scott Seiffert: That person was interesting.
17:58
Scott Seiffert: That person was.
17:59
Scott Seiffert: You can uncover stuff that that person is funny.
18:02
Scott Seiffert: Oh, you know, maybe uncover stuff that that person is funny.
18:07
Scott Seiffert: Oh, you know, maybe you know my sense of humor is from a long line of you know, these people that have something wrong inside their head.
18:11
Scott Seiffert: Maybe that's where that comes from.
18:14
Scott Seiffert: And I also thought, I thought about this when I was a kid.
18:18
Scott Seiffert: All the people that had to connect over the centuries you know, going back centuries and centuries had to connect.
18:27
Scott Seiffert: All these people that had to connect all this way, had to get married, had to have kids, and these people for us to sit here, I mean that's, it's like a big thing to think about.
18:39
Scott Seiffert: It's like, oh, if you could go back and talk to each of those folks you know a hundred generations back, because all that had to happen for us to be alive and be here today.
18:52
Scott Seiffert: So we're connected.
18:55
Scott Seiffert: I also think that we don't.
18:57
Scott Seiffert: I think there are some cultures that their ancestors are important and they cherish their ancestors.
19:04
Scott Seiffert: Their ancestors are important and they cherish their ancestors.
19:06
Scott Seiffert: I don't think there are certain folks in the United States.
19:10
Scott Seiffert: I think that there's certain cultures that, do that and most don't, and I think it would be interesting if more of us did.
19:20
Scott Seiffert: Maybe we'd be a little nicer to each other overall.
19:21
Scott Seiffert: Maybe we would be.
19:22
Scott Seiffert: There's your philosophy, your morning philosophy.
19:27
Crista Cowan: I love that concept, though, of that moment of perspective when you realize I am the result of how many millions of people and the choices they made coming together in the exact right combination to create me and who I am.
19:43
Crista Cowan: And then the two of you sit here and you came together from opposite sides of the country and you have a child and the person that she's become because of the environment that you raised her in, with everything behind you.
19:57
Crista Cowan: That moment of perspective that hits is, I think, a really important moment in people's lives, and it sounds like maybe you had it early, scott, and maybe it's kind of an ongoing thing in your life to have that realization in your life to have that realization.
20:16
Scott Seiffert: Yeah, I think it's part of because there were so many generations in Montana and I knew them and those stories and those people and also the places we would go with my grandparents to go to go see.
20:25
Scott Seiffert: You know, my one set of grandparents had the mile away restaurant in Billings, montana.
20:30
Scott Seiffert: It was a mile away from the city center and would tell stories about that.
20:34
Scott Seiffert: The other set of grandparents we would go to this little what's now a ghost town, practically Marysville, where they grew up.
20:40
Scott Seiffert: My mom would go to this one place and it's a.
20:43
Scott Seiffert: The building is collapsed but she said, oh yeah, I used to play in here when I was a kid and that those in Montana, a lot of those places, are still around, they still look like the way they looked back then and so I really felt that connection with you know, with Montana.
20:58
Scott Seiffert: That's still a huge part of you know who I am and knowing that it then reaches back when we found.
21:05
Lisa Dyson: You know we talk about people keeping stuff forever and ever and ever, but but we found this box full of stuff from his that his grandparents would have kept from their grandparents, maybe I don't know, like letters from the late 1800s.
21:19
Lisa Dyson: I mean it was because everybody just wrote that was there was nothing back then in Montana.
21:23
Lisa Dyson: You know, to me it's, you know it was frontier land or whatever, and they would just they just would write pages and pages and pages.
21:30
Lisa Dyson: It's all still legible and it's all and and the just the way it was kept is just just floored me.
21:35
Lisa Dyson: Just you know the full names and who was dating who and who was doing whatever, and it's.
21:40
Lisa Dyson: It's really kind of fun that we got to explore that and find that, which we wouldn't have if this wasn't a part of the show.
21:46
Scott Seiffert: Also we hit they have in that same box.
21:50
Scott Seiffert: They have postcards.
21:51
Scott Seiffert: They sent pictures that were postcards of them and then wrote on the back and I thought, well, at first I saw this why is this on a postcard?
21:59
Scott Seiffert: Then I realized, oh, it must have been a thing in that time period that you would send a postcard of yourself and write on the back.
22:07
Scott Seiffert: You should get that and put it all in order.
22:24
Crista Cowan: That would be fun to do.
22:25
Crista Cowan: Put it in chronological order and just see what that story tells chronologically.
22:28
Crista Cowan: It'd be fun.
22:29
Crista Cowan: Newspaper article Sometimes it's something that somebody intentionally writes Hopefully, hopefully, those obituaries are written maybe a little bit more to tell us who that person is.
22:38
Crista Cowan: Sometimes it's a photo and a few lines on the back with their own writing.
22:42
Crista Cowan: But there's something important, I think, about recognizing our ancestors as something more than just names and dates and places that they were real people and that they were whole people, that they lived whole lives.
22:55
Crista Cowan: Sometimes that's kind of hard to see and so as you start to look back and think about that, like, is there any particular ancestor that pops out for you as a character with a whole personality?
23:13
Lisa Dyson: Many.
23:13
Lisa Dyson: Do you have a favorite?
23:18
Scott Seiffert: Hard to say a favorite.
23:19
Scott Seiffert: It's hard to pinpoint one because so many of them are fun, so many of them are interesting.
23:26
Scott Seiffert: My grandfather I saw pictures of him and even my great-grandparents, and once they were there were pictures I know it was their Sunday best sometimes but they were dapper, they were very.
23:37
Scott Seiffert: I was like, wow, they looked very.
23:40
Scott Seiffert: They had they had not only dapper clothing but they had a dapper attitude.
23:44
Scott Seiffert: It was like it was like a very fun, like oh, I said I want to know that.
23:49
Scott Seiffert: I would like, if I could go back in time, I would like to sit down and know that person, because it looked like they'd be interesting to talk to.
23:55
Crista Cowan: Yeah, and so what I'm hearing you say, though, is that this is, rather than any single individual standing out, that there was a family culture and a family narrative that was created.
24:06
Crista Cowan: That becomes kind of this foundation that you've built your life on, scott.
24:11
Scott Seiffert: Yeah, it all goes back to our cabin, when we would be at the cabin and my grandmother would start playing the piano and I one time saw my both sets of grandparents were there and my grandfather, who I never saw dance before, got up with my grandmother and cut a rug, saw him in all those years, never saw him day never.
24:35
Scott Seiffert: Think you look at the man, think this is not a dancer, this is not a guy that's gonna get up.
24:39
Scott Seiffert: He and we were all just our jaws just dropped because he was smooth, he was smooth and and she, he was leading her and she and I was like, oh, you saw a glimpse of them when they were 20 years old and it was, it was, it was awesome.
24:59
Scott Seiffert: It was awesome to see.
25:01
Crista Cowan: That's amazing, Lisa.
25:02
Crista Cowan: You come from such a different family experience.
25:05
Crista Cowan: It sounds like marrying into this family and then making this conscious decision to start a family of your own.
25:12
Crista Cowan: Were there things from his background that you wanted to make sure to incorporate in your family, and was there anything from yours that you also wanted to make sure you brought forward?
25:22
Lisa Dyson: I think we both have pretty strong game playing.
25:26
Lisa Dyson: I mean, that's a sitting around the table playing cards we both had, and then just laughing so hard that you have to leave the table.
25:33
Lisa Dyson: I mean, I know he didn't sort of experience that with my growing up years, but that's, that's what I remember and that's obviously what we still do today, because we just did it yesterday.
25:43
Lisa Dyson: We were laughing really, really hard.
25:46
Lisa Dyson: So I think it's just the idea of being together and playing games, that is just it's ingrained in both of us and that.
25:54
Lisa Dyson: And now Maddie does it with her friends and so you know, it's sort of we're passing that along.
25:59
Lisa Dyson: It's not something that we all have to do, it's just a really fun thing.
26:04
Lisa Dyson: It's, you know, because she's an only child as well, but she brings her friends together and they play games and they, you know it's just she's carried on that tradition too, because it's just fun, you know it's just, she's carried on that tradition too, because it's just fun, yeah, and kind of like the storytelling around the dinner table.
26:24
Lisa Dyson: The laughter around the game table is something that just deepens those connections between you as a family.
26:27
Scott Seiffert: Right, it's also pretty strong competitions going on between my husband and my daughter over gin rummy, which is a tradition from his family.
26:34
Scott Seiffert: At the cabin we used to play gin rummy all the time and that's where I learned to play gin rummy.
26:37
Scott Seiffert: I taught it to my daughter, so we played gin rummy about every night and we play 50 cents a game and we tally up at the end of the year.
26:52
Crista Cowan: I'm behind.
26:53
Crista Cowan: That's delightful.
27:08
Scott Seiffert: That's delightful, that's fantastic.
27:10
Scott Seiffert: So as part of the show you did sort of one specific thing.
27:14
Scott Seiffert: We have wood beams in the back, in our back we call it the stone room because it's got a big stone floor and on those wood beams our DNA said that I was mostly, just by a smidge, mostly Finnish, even though I was also almost all Scottish too, and that Lisa was mostly Albanian.
27:37
Scott Seiffert: Now in our backgrounds with our parents nobody ever mentioned that and assuming in our genealogy that didn't come up.
27:45
Scott Seiffert: But you know, dna said that.
27:48
Scott Seiffert: And so on our beams they stenciled to look at her Albanian background, the Albanian flower, it's a little poppy, right, a little poppy.
27:57
Scott Seiffert: And on either side of that they stenciled little fish to represent my Finnish background.
28:07
Scott Seiffert: And so that's on our stenciled on our wood beams.
28:09
Scott Seiffert: And I made a joke at the time, which again didn't make me shut up, I was killing that day and it didn't make the show.
28:14
Scott Seiffert: I looked at the beams because I'm also mostly Scottish, almost equal amount Scottish, and I said, well, I'm just glad there's not haggis stenciled all over my wood beams.
28:27
Scott Seiffert: So that's what they did Incorporate the genealogy into our house and honestly, it's kind of pretty back there.
28:35
Scott Seiffert: It's the way they did it.
28:36
Scott Seiffert: It's really pretty.
28:36
Scott Seiffert: I really like it.
28:37
Scott Seiffert: The fact that it represents our DNA.
28:42
Scott Seiffert: It's sort of like is it our genealogy or is that just our DNA sample?
28:46
Crista Cowan: Yeah, it's interesting, when you start looking at DNA, that it's looking so deep, which is usually way deeper than the genealogical records can take us, and so for some people it kind of pulls you into further exploration because you want to know and understand that.
29:02
Crista Cowan: For other people, it's just kind of an entertaining fact that you can share at a dinner party.
29:09
Scott Seiffert: I will say that my mom, when I told her what the genealogists had uncovered, and she said well, you know what your aunt used to call her uncle, my little Finman, and she never knew where it came from.
29:24
Scott Seiffert: She goes, well, maybe that's where it came from, maybe they were from Finland, and so she was interested in that fact.
29:30
Scott Seiffert: So did we Finish Interesting.
29:35
Crista Cowan: With both of you being storytellers.
29:37
Crista Cowan: You know reading to your daughter, exposing her to a lot of different genres of storytelling, and now you have this like family history concept in the mix.
29:46
Crista Cowan: What is it Like?
29:47
Crista Cowan: What is it about family history stories that you think are important, that they need to be told and shared?
29:54
Scott Seiffert: Well, I think it's because all stories are about people.
29:59
Scott Seiffert: I mean, it's about the human experience, and the big part of that human experience is who you are.
30:06
Scott Seiffert: And who you are is an echo of how you grew up, where you grew up, and it's an echo of the things that were brought down in a genealogy kind of way, but brought down from generation to generation that you're not even realizing.
30:24
Scott Seiffert: Wow, that was handed to you 155 years ago.
30:29
Scott Seiffert: You know, your sense of humor, that sense of timing, that sense of compassion, that sense of timing, that sense of compassion, the sense of empathy, the sense of loyalty, the sense of honor was handed down, was, you know, coming across, you know, by yourself as a teenager and making your way in a brand new country, fighting for your country, for freedom.
30:53
Scott Seiffert: Those things are ingrained in us because they were ingrained by the people who lived them and passed them down from generation to generation.
31:02
Scott Seiffert: That's why it's important, because we are who we are, because where we lived, it came before us, and that's what makes the human part of the story so important.
31:20
Lisa Dyson: It's universal, I mean, it's just something everybody can relate to.
31:21
Lisa Dyson: I think the more we share the stories and this is not just us, this is everybody, they're sharing their stories with each individual family that it makes them more human.
31:28
Lisa Dyson: I tell that to teachers a lot too, because it's just you're not just teaching, share some of your own personal history and then you appear more human to the kids.
31:36
Lisa Dyson: And the kids aren't like, oh my God, you're just like giving us the same lecture.
31:39
Lisa Dyson: But if you make it personal and tell stories that way, then it's like oh, I would never have thought of it that way, or maybe that's how I.
31:48
Lisa Dyson: Oh, that's what my grandparents did, or that's what my parents did you know, or that's what my parents did you know, or that's how they've learned.
31:53
Lisa Dyson: It's just, it's a connection, like you said.
31:54
Lisa Dyson: So the family connection is important and some people don't know.
31:57
Lisa Dyson: You know their family connections and that's there's something about that too, you know, for the kids.
32:02
Lisa Dyson: There's kids who don't know where they come from, and so I just think storytelling all even if, even if you're adopted, even if you're a foster kid or whatever, if you're just hearing stories about different lifestyles and different experiences, I think that's just really important to share.
32:18
Crista Cowan: As you kind of have had this family history journey, as you've got those boxes of photos waiting for you.
32:24
Crista Cowan: When you have the time to start to go through them and uncover some more stories, what is it that you hope for the future with your family as you contemplate this family history journey you've been on?
32:37
Lisa Dyson: I think we'd like to leave it more in depth for Maddie, so that she doesn't have to go.
32:42
Lisa Dyson: I don't know who these people were.
32:43
Lisa Dyson: It reminds you to to like let people know who's in the pictures with you so you can go, as opposed to just years later.
32:51
Lisa Dyson: Who was that?
32:51
Lisa Dyson: And for ourselves as well.
32:53
Lisa Dyson: So it's just more documentation, I think, along the way.
32:58
Lisa Dyson: So then, in case she's interested she may not be, she may be like who cares, but in case she is, that she won't be wondering like we were like, well, what was that?
33:11
Lisa Dyson: Or maybe you know, especially for us it was when you go back to the turn of the century, the not the 2000 turn of the century, the 1900 turn of the century.
33:16
Lisa Dyson: There's so much that was happening back then that they weren't aware, you know, I mean that they were involved in, and then so much happened while through their lives that it's just kind of like it.
33:24
Lisa Dyson: You know tricks your brain.
33:26
Lisa Dyson: And the same can be said for us.
33:27
Lisa Dyson: You know, as we're moving into whatever technology that we're moving into.
33:31
Lisa Dyson: So you know, we had wall phones on the wall.
33:36
Lisa Dyson: You know, with cords, you did.
33:37
Lisa Dyson: You did too.
33:40
Lisa Dyson: I had a color TV.
33:44
Scott Seiffert: I didn't Black and white two channels.
33:48
Crista Cowan: That's how I grew up, scott.
33:56
Crista Cowan: You had mentioned writing little biographies for your ancestors, and it got me thinking about this concept of who writes your obituary.
33:59
Crista Cowan: Right and you know, are you the one telling the story or other people telling the story?
34:03
Crista Cowan: And if they're telling your story, are they telling it through a singular lens or are they incorporating how other people saw you as well?
34:09
Crista Cowan: And while it's probably decades off, is that something you've ever thought about, like how you would want to be represented toward the end of your life, and is that something you want to undertake, or do you want to leave that for Maddie?
34:23
Scott Seiffert: Oh, hell, no, I'm writing it.
34:24
Scott Seiffert: I'm writing it.
34:26
Scott Seiffert: That's the last blog post thing I'll ever do and that's.
34:32
Scott Seiffert: I'm writing it.
34:33
Scott Seiffert: I'm going to look and I'm going to look amazing.
34:35
Scott Seiffert: Honestly, I have thought about it.
34:39
Scott Seiffert: My mom during this process she never got to see the show she passed away in In writing her obituary.
34:50
Scott Seiffert: I actually thought of it, I actually thought, and so I actually wrote it as the person that she was and the things that she liked.
34:55
Scott Seiffert: I actually thought of it, I actually thought of it, so I actually wrote it as as the person that she was and the things that she liked.
34:58
Scott Seiffert: And I've got a lot of things like oh, my God, she sounded like an amazing woman and and and and she was, and she was so incredibly generous, but that we try to get that across in the in, the in.
35:08
Scott Seiffert: I remember one line of that thing that said and she survived, instead of she survived by blah, blah, blah, she survived by three rotten kids.
35:16
Scott Seiffert: Because that's something she would have said and it is so many people mentioned that line because it sort of speaks to who she was.
35:24
Scott Seiffert: But I think about that, but I'm writing my own.
35:27
Scott Seiffert: Oh, believe me, it's.
35:28
Scott Seiffert: I'm going to write every day.
35:33
Lisa Dyson: I can guarantee that.
35:38
Scott Seiffert: She's going to die before me.
35:39
Scott Seiffert: All her's going to say is like I'm not Albanian.
35:45
Crista Cowan: You guys are delightful.
35:46
Crista Cowan: I feel like I want to come to your house for game night now.
35:50
Lisa Dyson: Anytime, door's always open.