I am a line.
Change is in the air.
Can you feel it?
Can you feel the way that the air is different? It smells cleaner now. But not new.
The adolescence of summer is giving way to the maturity of fall.
Then comes the senility and, eventual, death of winter.
Only to start over again in the spring.
An entire life cycle in one year. Like a bumble bee.
I met a long lost relative this week. My mother’s birth-father’s nephew. Long story.
He gave me a CD of family history. Pages and pages and unending scrolling pages.
Black and white. Linear branches. Fat typing and scrawling handwriting. Both difficult to decipher.
Dates and names and birthplaces that I don’t think anyone in the modern world can pronounce.
My family.
But to me, really, nobody at all. I know nothing of them but the names and the dates.
What does that mean?
That hundreds of years from now.
That will be me.
A line on sheet of paper.
Will I mean ANYTHING to person on the line far below mine?
How is it that genealogy can make one feel so small?
Like a bumble bee. No, less.
Less than a bumble bee, because they are alive. Even if they only live for a year.
We know bees. We hear them. See them. Define them.
If one dies, it’s bee posterity will be just like it.
Is that the key?
What part of me came from my ancestors?
Who on that long list gave me my blond hair?
How far does the tell-tail chin dimple go back to?
What line? What name?
Will I ever know?
Will I meet them someday and know?
Great poem. Love family history. Nice to see you online.
I love love love this post.
Melinda, you are truly a talented writer! And just so you know, you may just be a line to your ancestors in 100 years, but right now you are a very significant being in the lives of those around you….I know you’ve touched my life!
Awesome post. And yes, they will know you because you write beautiful stuff like this.