I’ve been thinking.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve updated this blog. Life has been pretty complicated and it seems when I finally do get some free time. I’m so emotionally and physically exhausted that the last thing I want to do is write. I really do enjoy it but it’s not easy. I never got to take a writing class or anything but English 101 in college. Please be easy on me I just write like I talk. I guess I should find some adult class to clean up my writing but again who has the time ?

I also took time off from my ancestry research. But the last few days I’ve been all over that computer. Finding facts and trying to string them together into a real person is a lot of work. Time flies and I find myself with more questions than answers.

I was listening to NPR today. It was some show about how the brain works and all the amazing things science is revealing to us. Somehow they got on the subject of how important it is to know where you came from. Who were your great great grandparents and how did your family get to this country? Why is that so important? What I got out of the show was that it gives us roots, a place in this world, a group that we belong to. It gives us memories of people you loved and hopefully the memories you’re making with the people you still have.

I lost two of my most beloved friends in 2024. I can’t help but wonder if I will I ever see them again. Will I ever get to feel that love again. I certainly hope so. I miss them both so very much.

It made me think about what we leave behind when we’re gone. Suddenly someone who was such a big piece of my heart was just gone. They are never coming back. They’ll never be one more hug or one more laugh. Does that make that love disappear? It sure doesn’t feel like it. That love is the only thing you get to keep. And memories are the only way to bring them back just a little.

How many generations will it take  until no one even knows my name. I wonder what my great grandparents we really like. Beyond that most of us don’t even know their names. They gave us life. They often worked and sacrificed for us before we were even born. And we don’t even know their names no less their stories.

Back in the day, people kept diaries or journals. What a gift it would be to have something like that from one of my ancestors.

I think I’m part of the last generation of families that spent Sunday afternoons sitting around the kitchen table while the grown-ups told stories. When we learnrd who they were, we also learned who we are. We heard about scandals and hard times The kids now really don’t have that. There’s not much visiting the way we used to. Maybe we go out to dinner together, but there’s always another group waiting to be seated and we have to pay the bill and be on our way at home. When my family visited, it was never planned. There was a fresh pot of coffee on the stove. Often the coffee was spiked with whiskey. The Italian side of the family didn’t even bother with the coffee. It was just the bottle of wine sitting on the table and glasses being kept full What I remember most about those days is feeling connected, feeling connected to past generations and distant cousins, I never felt alone in the world. I was part of a family.

The family was a safe place to make mistakes and say stupid things and we knew we were still loved. We had a place in the world. Life was much less scary when your cousins lived just down the street or a short car ride away. When my mom went to work, my aunt‘s just stepped in as our mother for a few hours. I never felt alone.

I think about now when I can finally get together with my family, the kids go in the other room and play video games. None of them hang around to hear the new gossip or the old stories. Our families are spread out all over the country. Kids don’t even know their cousins. And nobody knows their ancestors.

My cousin‘s daughter Bryanna had a baby this year and she asked all of us to put less emphasis on gifts and more on making memories with this new little person. I love that idea. I don’t want to be forgotten when I’m gone. I want the kids to remember how much I loved them and how much fun we had together.

I’m lucky to have cousins that vacation together and have pot luck dinners. We act stupid and make fun of one another. We’re there to help each other when times are hard. No paybacks, that’s just what family does.

I hope the next generation has at least a little bit of this wonderful gift. And when I feel that I’m just too busy, I need to stop and make the time, because that’s the important stuff.

I want the kids to know how much they are loved. Not just by their mom and dad but by all of us. I want them to feel safe being who they are and the family sticks together, no matter what.

I want them to know where they came from. It will help them find where they are going. I don’t want to be the aunt who puts money in a card and calls it a day. I want to hear about their problems and their worries. I want to remind them how special they are. I want to be the aunt that hugs them too long and gives them a raspberry kiss on their neck while they struggle to get away.

Cousins share so much DNA. We’re more alike than we’d like to admit. People say I look like my grandmother and I certainly know that I act like my dad. Genetics don’t last for just one or two generations. They go on and on. I can see personality traits, four and five generations back. They are so much like me. I came across a five times great grandfather who was a preacher and many of his sermons were published in local newspapers, so I got to read them. He sounded so much like my dad. I found my grandfather‘s uncle who was a con man. And I can honestly say all my uncles and my grandfather too, were all hoodlums. Don’t get me wrong. They were all good hard-working family men. But they were always itching to get into a fight. The whiskey didn’t help.

All these things are reasons why knowing where we came from helps us be who we are. Sometimes I think that because we are a country of immigrants, our families often didn’t talk about the old country and why they left and now so much of that information is just gone. So many people I know aren’t even sure of their ethnic background. Friends serve traditional family food at the holidays, but don’t know what country the tradition came from or how far back it was when their ancestors came here. Italians know they are from Italy and the Irish know they’re from Ireland, but we don’t have that. Our family could be from anywhere and if we don’t talk about it, we will never know that information or those stories that make them come alive. I think that’s one of the reasons ancestry and DNA testing is so popular right now. We are people that just drift in the wind. It easier to be angry with strangers and intolerant of people that seem different.

The more we know about our background, it makes it harder to be prejudice. You may suddenly find out your great grandparents were Jewish or a distant cousin came from Africa or that you are not American Indian like you always thought you were. My research has turned up information that all kinds of people are distant relatives. I can connect us to Betsy Ross, Anderson Cooper and even Ann Boleyn

I can’t help but feel how much we are all connected.

We really are just one big family.