Day 208: This week has been swerving from pioneer times to modern day, along the genealogical trail of my life. Even genealogy has made its way into modern day.
When I was very young, my mother sat me down with a brand new Book of Remembrance. It was very wide for my little arms to carry. I carefully copied my mother's records, page by page, in my 8-year-old handwriting. I felt very important. The names were odd. Some of them were unpronounceable. I didn't have to go back very many generations before the locations were in other countries, which was shocking, because I thought we had been living in Idaho for forever.
After I had my charts completed, I accompanied my mom to the genealogical library to do some research. We drove into Idaho Falls, somewhere downtown, to an old brick building. The library was in the basement. It smelled strongly of mildewy books and film and dust. At first impression, I was not impressed. I feared there may be creepy crawlies lurking in the corners. Or ghosts. It smelled like a place where ghosts might dwell. But then my mother taught me how to research a name, and the whole place became magical.
There were entire cabinets of tiny drawers that housed microfiche slides - four by six sheets of clear film that looked like x-rays. You'd carefully take the film by the edges and sandwich it between two panes of glass, turn on the microfiche reader light, and the tiny x-ray would show on the screen. There were dozens of records on one tiny x-ray. Page after page of newspaper articles and parish records in the most amazing handwriting I'd only ever seen on the Declaration of Independence.
There were also drawers filled with microfilm. It used a different machine that you'd crank and it would roll the film across the screen and to the other side. I remember that I was helping Mom look at ancestors in Denmark at the time, and one of the ladies there said "There's something rotten in the state of Denmark" and they all laughed and laughed. It was pretty stinky in that basement, so I laughed along. I didn't get it until I was old enough to read Hamlet and came across the line. I have to admit I was fairly impressed that those Idaho ladies in the basement genealogical library had been quoting Shakespeare. I hadn't given them enough credit.
Today, we can spit in a tube and mail it off to any number of companies who will analyze our DNA and tell us where we came from and what medical secrets could be lurking in our bodies. That's miraculous, really. I can research genealogical records on my phone. I can let databases do the work for me, telling me who my cousins are and what traits I can assign to an ancestor. Nifty.
We learn much from finding out where we came from. We gain a better understanding of ourselves and our family members. Maybe we find out that an ancestor did something incredible. And maybe we find out they were horse thieves. Those are the genes you can use as a scapegoat when you make a bad decision . . . "I couldn't help myself. It was the horse thief DNA."
When I look in the mirror, I see a compilation of traits from all of my ancestors looking back at me. I exist because of them. Making sure I remember them is the only way I can say "Thanks for that."
Comments