Having read this a few times (and it takes a few before things start to "stick" in my head), I think the idea of secrets is one of the most difficult, but fascinating, issues that Griffin raises.

My family has its share of skeletons in the closet, and I am sure that it has effected the relationships that I have had with relatives BECAUSE I know there are secrets. I was married when I was 20, as most young women in LaGrande did 20 some years ago. My paternal grandfather wrote me a letter telling me that he was not coming to my wedding because it would upset both my maternal and paternal grandmothers (he had married both of them at different times in his life...yes, it means my mother and father were step brother and sister--my brother in law has a field day with that scenerio every Thanksgiving) Apparently, my paternal grandmother suspected that my grandfather had murdered one of his wives (the man married several women over the course of his life), and had shared the story with my maternal grandmother. Those two women were not about to show up to an event where he was.

I knew something was up, but no one was talking. I was always wary of my grandfather, probably because the women in my family all were. The silence around that man was thick enough to cut with a knife, and it definately effected my relationship with him and with my grandmothers.

Still. It is hard to get my mind completely around the idea that silence creates something. That nothing is something. I know that she is right, but how can that work with an entire country like the with the citizens of Germany who lived around the concentration camps or filed cards with registration information? What do you think of it?