My family is the standard ‘Boring Immigrant from Europe’ story. No one went on to have huge success and most couples only produced ONE offspring. My sister and I are the last of the line...and that’s probably a Good Thing, Martha!
You’re lucky if you got Grandma’s old Roasting Pan and her bread recipe in my Family Tree. I got them both - no one else wanted them, LOL!
Whatever, Grandpa, LOL! But, I got a lot done today! Rose cuttings planted, 'Saychelles' green beans re-planted where needed. Lawn got mowed; Beau did the pre- weed whacking for me before he left to visit his wife and kids in Canada (JOKING!) Everything looks nice and neat.
The puppies spent the day chasing one another around and complaining LOUDLY when one had a toy that the other wanted - because it doesn't matter WHO has WHAT at any given time - the other one wants it. They also got some nose-to-the-ground training from Dolly (Beagle) in two separate bunny hunting treks through the woods.
Waiting to hear if any of my dogs did well at the Water Race, today. Shasta, Sioux and Mandan attended. All are very athletic and LOVE to swim and Shasta is nearly always a 'ringer.' She looks like an English Coon Hound, but is really just a mutt. Don't tell anyone; even Shasta doesn't know! This is exercise training for Bear Camp which starts after July 4th...and if they win a little BLING, so be it. :)
It was A Good Day all the way around. Rain tomorrow, so indoor activities - most likely making Pie Filling from the gazillion Blueberries my neighbor scored for us.
Immigrant from Europe can be quite exciting. The main problem, I find, is that you’re limited to great grandparents or so for information and that when you go down and deep in research, you find too many records in languages you can’t read or find the records have been destroyed in a war.
What got me interested in genealogy was that I came from a family of storytellers and was raised on my maternal grandparents’ laps. Our families on that side were usually 2 kids and not much interest in their ancestors.
But I’m a researcher so I have 4 newspaper subscriptions and periodically do scans of name variations of ancestors and do find wonderful newspaper stories, even of mother’s side.
Father’s side was rich and famous and brilliant. But as father wrote in one of his poems:
Outcast men of the world are we,
Sunk in the depths of iniquity
Detested by all and loved by none.
A blot on the face of the kindly sun.
Men of training and breeding and birth
Who knew full well what the game was worth
Who played their hands — and lost —
— and then
Lost themselves from the world of men.
We hid ourselves in the Island world
Where the flashing coils of the “Snake” are curled
We sought the depths to hide our shame.
The “thing” we had made of an honored name.
We swam the Bay in the early dawn
But the Shark came not, and we lived on.
We sought the end in the bolo’s steel
But hearts wounds live, while flesh wounds heal.
We went unarmed to the Moro’s “jil”
But they called us “mad” and they would not kill.
And the Padre came with his tale of Grace
But we knew better, and laughed in his face.
We twined our hearts in a woman’s hair
Then tried to forget in the din and glare
Of a “tienda down on the opal bay
Where many men come and some men stay.
We lost ourselves in the Army then,
Our identity merely “Enlisted Men”
But in the dusk, when the shadows start to crawl
In their weird, wild dance on the barracks wall
A ghastly pageant that comes to stir
Our memory again to what we were
And we bow our heads and stifle a cry
For we don’t know how and we’ll never know why.