ancestry

ancestry \'an-ses-trē\ n 1 : a line of descent that traces family history, often symbolized as a tree 2a :  My mother’s tree is a myrtle.  My father’s, oak.   Her myrtle has been shaped by Pacific coast winds, weathering many terrible storms.  Struck by a disease that stunted descending branches, it grows short, though its crown is broad. The oak grows taller, its crown round, branches stout.  Between the two, the oak has a healthier 100 year history. Nurtured in rich southern soil, its presence is strong and stable.  One would not find these two trees growing in the same part of the forest, but my ancestry is unusual, my roots a tangled curiosity I often share with strangers who appreciate the peculiar, see QUESTION b :  I was born into an ancestry historically at odds in American society.  My ancestors would never have come together for dinner or worship.  They would not have been neighbors.  Still, were it not for social conditions, I believe they would have gotten along well enough.  This is why I set them together on my ancestor altar.  No one’s picture has been set aflame or fallen without explanation so I assume each side is content in the company of the other  c :  My great grandmother was English, her husband Swiss German.  They settled on the coast of Oregon.  Together they had one son, my grandfather, still living, though I wonder when he dies whether or not I should make a separate place on the altar for him, see GRANDPARENT.  He married my grandmother, also English and very much alive despite decades of chain smoking.  They had seven children, three boys and four girls.  One boy died of multiple sclerosis, and it was later revealed that one girl, my youngest aunt, was not my grandfather’s daughter, a truth my grandmother hid for 35 years.  My mother is the oldest daughter, though she wishes she were a son so she might command the same level of trust and respect as her older brother who is in line to inherit control of the much loved estate on the river, see CABIN d :  My grandfather and grandmother on my father’s side both died of Alzheimer’s. Their ancestry is not as certain due to the history of slavery.  My grandfather told me both he and my grandmother carry a small percentage of Native American in their lines, Chippewa and Quapaw.  This is one of the first distinctions people recognize in me, see APPEARANCE.  My grandparents were both born in Arkansas where they married and had two sons, my uncle, now deceased, and my father who managed to spread the oak seed from Oregon all the way back to Africa  e : The stories of these two families come together at my conception, not a gentle loving union as the river meets the sea.  More like a tsunami comes upon a desert city.  Violent. Unnaturally.  I left its people with no choice but to accept me.  It was my blessing that they did so without shame; the storm cannot be blamed for its creation.  It just is, as I am – an oak branch grafted to a myrtle tree.  Odd, but growing 3 : It is a wonder why God places certain spirits within a particular context; ancestry a casting designed to mold a person just so. Why this family and not another?  How is my genetic combination necessary in the big scheme of things?  If not by chance, for what reason did the Lord determine I should be the result of such a coupling?  The bible often describes lengthy chapters of ancestry, this man and woman begot this child who married and begot that one and so on.  Such precise record of lineage is clearly significant, enough to include in the sacred text. Each name an imperative connection, one leading to another, stretching back to the beginning, when God first created man and woman, their likeness reaching forward with the next begotten son or daughter.  Perhaps it’s just that simple – I was born to maintain the connection, to continue the likeness of her and history.   I am one name of many, an image of those before and those who will come after me, an added detail to a larger picture of which I cannot know the whole, for it is still developing.  In this sense, it is less my ancestry and more the continuation of God’s story.