Beyond

I hope I never lose my sense of wonder. If that makes me naive, then so be it.

Wednesday 25 April 2007

family trees as told to the saplings

The girls and I had an interesting talk yesterday about some of their ancestry. They were wondering about their great-grandparents, and of course it all got slightly confusing. Today we're going to sketch out a family tree so they can understand how it all fits together. They have great-grandparents who were something like 7th-generation Canadians, another set descended, I think, from Loyalists, and one set who came over in the 1920s from Scotland.

I've often wondered what those people would think about the little girls who carry some fraction of their genes today. And I wonder in turn what those people themselves were like. Genealogy is a funny thing; mainly it's the hunt for names and dates but that only gives a shell, really. I would very much like to know who they were: their hopes, their likes, their ideas, their faith, their foibles. History is, after all, the story of people. Not just dry dates and bloody wars, but there were everyday people living their everyday lives.

On to my own everyday life.

3 comments:

sue said...

love the titles of your blogs...
how are "things"??

barb said...

Things are good. I'm going for a run today, which is good for me and helps with the whole getting in shape thing. Had the awful realization today that the Try-a-Tri is less than a month off.

sue said...

I actually ran for 2 minutes on the treadmill this morning.... that is so weird for me - I hate running....
glad things are good