Papa called me and announced that after years of tireless labor, my Aunt Bernie had completed the family genealogy.

I am not sure how long the whole process took, but I suspect that "years of labor" may have been an understatement and counting in decades may have been more accurate.

The term "completed" is also a likely misnomer. Truth is, a genealogy is never done, at least not while the family is still spitting out kids, which ours is doing at an alarming rate.

Printed on both rolled and sheet paper, our family tree stretches out to nearly 20 feet and fills a large, three-ring binder.

A student of mine once showed me the electrical schema for his motorcycle; I swear this is more complex.

The "tree" was impressive enough, but on my next visit, Papa brought out the photos, black and white and faded with age.

The faces that stared back at me were mostly austere. The oldest photos were portraits of folks dressed in their Sunday best. Smiles were few and far between. Clearly, this was a different era; times were tough, money was tight, and the photo shoot was an event in and of itself.

As cameras became more affordable, photos from family gatherings became commonplace. "The shoot" was no longer an event; instead the camera became a tool and the resultant photos a record of life as it was lived. Never campy, there was an accessibility absent from earlier photographs. Most shots remained staged and still black and white, though the dress and the expressions were decidedly lighter.

But no expression could match that of my father as he told his colorful tales of times passed. With each picture came a story. There were the two grandmothers he loved so dearly, one who lived in Kaka'ako whom he referred to in the traditional Portuguese manner simply as Vovo and the other who lived in Kalihi that he affectionately referred to as Ding-Ding Vovo. Comically named after the trolley he would take to visit her, Ding-Ding Vovo baked her own bread and had a ready supply of Cracker Jacks for visiting grandchildren. Then there were his uncles who traveled on horseback from the deep recesses of Kalihi Valley all the way to Kaimuki to visit with my father's family.

Every once in a while Papa would tilt his head to the side and gaze at the ceiling, as if retrieving some long-lost memory. Sometimes he would share his thoughts, at other times he would simply shake his head and return to the present. Mostly though, his stories were animated and spontaneous as if they had happened just yesterday.

The photos were black and white, but in my father's mind, they were in color. Slowly, with each story, the people on the page, folks I had never met in my life, came to life. Faces that were once austere and hardened softened in the telling.

When we finally rolled up the family tree and closed the three-ring binder, my own memory and my father's had blurred into one. His stories were now my stories. The photos, with their light and dark edges, were transformed revealing colors I had not noticed before. The ghostly gray faces blushed under the storied light.

No, I was not there for the freshly baked bread or Cracker Jacks, not really.

Still, the story of my father's life is as much mine as it is his. We are the same the two of us, bones, blood and stories passed down across generations. I remember.

Michael C. DeMattos is on faculty at the University of Hawai'i's School of Social Work. Born and raised on the Wai'anae Coast, he now lives in Kane'ohe with his wife, daughter, two dogs, two mice and 1,000 worms.