How It Is

“I get that genealogy is your hobby, but couldn’t you do something more constructive with your time? Just saying.”

<Ouch.>

My youngest adult daughter, now grown and all forty years of her, remains totally unimpressed with what I do. End of story? Let’s hope not! I can’t imagine any other way to spend leisure hours during retirement. Even online Scrabble with friends pales in comparison. I’m busy! Otherwise occupied!

Enlisting the help of close family, and/or distant cousins and online “genies,” we solve countless mysteries but in twenty years, I’m still stymied by who might be the parents of my dad’s paternal great-great-grands.  In a mid-nineteenth century census, one of my great grand aunts reports that John Crandall and Phebe Freeman were both born in Massachusetts. They were married in Bristol County in 1801 according to Dighton Town Record and their birth years are estimated to be 1778 and 1785, respectfully, but nothing more. Nada! Should you have any leads, please feel free to comment.

Meanwhile, I’ll delve through tattered files of pedigrees, unearth “new” old photographs, or check recent DNA matches on Ancestry. Such treasure hunting is my 24/7 passion for which I thank my lucky stars. One of my finds is a 1944 photograph of my brother captured for posterity with our parents in black and white. No matter that pictures of me entering this life in 1947 aren’t nearly so good, growing-up years remain spectacularly clear and unique in memory.

When I’m three, my nuclear family occupies a tiny one-story ranch-style house where I scurry down a narrow hall leading to the kitchen. Mom prepares breakfast stirring a pot of oatmeal as a ceiling light casts eerie shadows through the doorway onto the living room wall. I look over my shoulder to see rows and rows of human figures and faces smiling down at me. Some wave, so I wave back. In the kitchen, I say nothing to my mother. If these people are visible to me, surely they are to her, too. After all, doesn’t everyone have family living in their living room? Why not?

My sister, born twenty-two months after me, is not well. Sometimes we visit her in the hospital because she’s so sick but soon enough, my brother starts school and my sister joins me in the sandbox. We play with our cocker-spaniel puppy Rusty and dress up on Sundays in clothes our mother sews. On holidays, we visit grandparents or they come to see us.

One Easter vacation, an aunt and uncle plan to spend a weekend with us but disaster lurks. Mom spells, “a-c-c-i-d-e-n-t” aloud for me, even if I’m not sure of all my letters yet or what the word means.

Uncle Robbie and Aunt Ella Mae are driving from Andrews Air Force Base outside of D.C. to our house in Lombard, Illinois.

“They’re okay,” Mom explains. “But they’re going to sleep on the couch in the living room and stay with us a week or more until their car is ready to drive home.”

Fine with me. “So, Robbie and Ella Mae won’t be up on the wall but on the couch, instead. Which ones are they, anyway?” I ask.

“WhAT?”

Something in the tone or timber of Mom’s voice isn’t right.

“You know,” I explain. “Of all the relatives on the wall, which ones are they? Everyone’s friendly but I haven’t learned anyone’s name yet.”

Mom scooches low, her eyeballs next to mine. “There are NO people on the wall. Do you understand?”

I nod my head yes, and you know what? My mother is right.

Pretty soon I don’t see them. No one is projected across the living room wall anymore.

My aunt and uncle who are supposed to sleep on the couch come and go. We have other visitors and for a whole year my sister remains healthy except for when we all three catch the chicken pox. Somewhere during this time, we move to a bigger house in another town. When Rusty dies, we get a new dog from the pound naming him Captain Happy or Cappy for short. We kids grow up. Skip ahead a number of decades. I’m old, it happens. Happens fast.

A younger cousin of my father who lives in Michigan posts a family tree on his site and sends me a link. All those relatives! Faces loom across my computer screen with their names neatly printed underneath. What a lot of work, and so interesting!

Now, to answer my youngest daughter succinctly, I need to put names and dates with the all the images collected on my laptop, images like the ones that once appeared on the living room wall.  You see, it’s something I’ve wanted to do since forever, just saying.