Sometimes when I pick up or drop off my daughter at her dorm I visit the old neighborhood and think about some specific moments in time or just get lost in things I expect to happen.
Someone called that memories of a blue dress but I can’t remember who, when or where. Might have to sit at the keg, play some Johnny Cash and think about it.
Figure the combination ought to make things pop up and harden my clarity.
That is worth something, clarity, that is.
Understanding the who, what, when, where and how makes it much easier to map out a path or at least a general direction.
Sometimes you need that one kiss with destiny, that one kiss that changes everything and provides you with a north star to shoot for.
Because if you ache because you are alone and apart that north star can lead you back to where you were or at least help your ship find the shore one more time.
The Adventures We Share
Been wrestling with finally doing a DNA test to get some more information not only on who I am but who I am connected to.
I keep wondering what life was like for relatives who came here from the old country at various times during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Did they venture out on the deck when their ships reached US coastal waters and see the Statue of Liberty greet them?
Were they in awe and excited about the prospects or were they scared?
Maybe they were all of those things and then some.
I never tire of seeing Lady Liberty when I fly over or nearby.
Will taking a test help me connect with the children of lost uncles and aunts? Will I find anyone and if I find them will they be interested in connecting?
Will we fill in the gaps in our history or will they prefer to let things be as they are? Not everyone cares about this and not everyone is interested in being found.
There have been moments where I have thought about starting over and building it all from scratch. Moments where I looked backwards and figured I never wanted to see, hear or think about some of those things again.
Moments where I knew I could do it because it is in me to just keep walking. Not everyone deserves our time or needs to be part of our lives.
Sometimes you say you are done chasing that one dream and you let go of it because it has run its course.
We Only Get One Shot At This
I watched my son take on a series of online puzzles and tear through them with far less effort than it took me to do them.
He felt me staring at him and asked what I was doing and I said I was watching the three year-old and the man he has become work it out.
Don’t think he understood it and that is ok, he isn’t a father.
But I remember the three year-old who could beat most adults at matching games. He had and has a particular knack for some of this.
So I asked him if he just saw it in his head and he answered affirmatively.
I told him that is how writing is for me.
The words just flow from my fingertips and I don’t have to put much effort into making them appear. I hear them inside my head and output it onto the page.
Sometimes I know I have tapped into the magic and they roll faster and more freely than usual. Sometimes I hear them and I know how some readers will interpret them and I smile.
Smile because I know a few catch the multiple layers and others don’t because they don’t have that kind of connection.
They don’t feel the magic and I can’t figure out how to connect them nor do I put much effort into trying to make that happen.
That is not how it works.
You can’t just jam it in and expect it to fill the places it is supposed to not like you can with those who are connected by ethereal telephone lines.
They see you and you see them, sometimes more clearly than anyone else.
That is part of the rush and joy of life.
It scares some, but if you open yourself up to possibilities that fear serves as the angel that connects you to pillars of fire in the night sky and pillars for cloud during the day.
Just have to board the train and enjoy the ride.
I would guess it is not just a black thing, but one that people who have been through collective trauma at some point share.
I found out earlier this year about relatives who were murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust.
We always assumed that we lost some because not everyone came to the states and I come from a large family on both sides. But we didn’t have details about many and now we have filled in some blanks.
I am hopeful the test will help connect me to relatives who can fill in some gaps.
I also found out that one of my aunts gave up a baby in the early ’40s. Apparently the family that adopted him knew aunt and presumably the rest of the family as her son grew up knowing his birth mom’s last name.
He tried to find out more details about where he came from and had some success, but unfortunately died a couple of years ago.
I know this because one of his son’s found me and filled me in on the details, including the adoption papers.
But my aunt and everyone from that generation that would know something are all gone now. Don’t know who the birth father was, just that he wasn’t my uncle.
I suspect there are more stories about people like your great grandmother and my aunt in all of our backgrounds than we realize.
People are people and endlessly interesting.
You mentioned the DNA test, which means I had to comment. I’m not sure if this is just a black thing, but my participation in one of these turned out to give me more questions than expected.
First, it was a DNA test on my mother’s side of the family. The results turned out not quite what I expected, but that’s because it turns out I knew less about Mom’s side of the family than I thought I did. This particular test showed that the patriarch of the family was Irish, and the matriarch was from the West Indies. Based on that particular information, I was a mixture of black and European… but not much.
That’s because it turns out my great grandmother, the mother of my grandmother, was married 4 times but had children with 6 men (oh my!), and 13 of them at that. My grandmother’s father was part of this particular DNA train, but my grandmother wasn’t, and only my grandmother’s younger brother and her were part of it.
So… I still have no idea about my grandmother’s lineage, and there’s actually no one left to ask for check out. I don’t even want to think about trying to track my grandfather’s lineage on my dad’s side because it’s drastically complicated, but I do know that he came from a slave family… that’s as much as I want to know (and I didn’t want to know that).