History

As enjoyable as mall/shopping trips are, they require a day to recover. I learnt, during my visit home recently, that I can push that and do activities for several days in succession, but the resultant crash is longer. Today I relaxed, mostly with a small dog on my lap. He tried, still unsuccessfully, to mooch cookies from me. Don is glued, as usual, to sports; the gentle snores from the sofa are clearly only a sign of his intense concentration, not that he's asleep!

Exciting news! Ok, not that dramatic. Last night I was on Facebook, and saw a post pop up on my timeline from one of my groups. It was a photo of my great-great-grandmother; it was a cropped version of a photo that hangs in the living room of my late grandmother's house. Imagine my surprise on seeing that. I sent a PM to the poster, asking "Huh?" (I can't write accents; just fill in the details..) Five minutes later, I've met a distant cousin who knew my grandmother and her daughters, and who's been researching the family history. Normally, in a situation like that I'd call Auntie Ming to check their bona fides and fill in gaps in my knowledge. Without her, I called another cousin and got some info. My newfound cousin and I were up late texting and trading info. She's promised to make the family research  available to me, which I find exciting. We've always been somewhat closer to my maternal grandmother's family than any others. I learnt last night that the family's European roots date back to the early 1700's in Trinidad, but the ties go much further and deeper as we're also Indigenous. The ancestor whose photo was posted was a mixed Indigenous (Carib) and Spanish, born in 1835. I learned about her parents, who had always been shadowy figures before. Although Granny often spoke of her grandmother and aunts and uncles, details were sketchy. That, I've realized over the years, is due to secrets and scandals. Those would have been discussed away from children- Granny among them at the time- and not in English, making it more secret. Ah, family history and drama!  (Although the family was heavily Spanish and French, my grandmother and my mother’s generation only ever learnt English, so secrets were often shared in other languages)

My younger cousins all roll their eyes at any attempts to explain family links. "Those stories are so looong! It seems like we're related to everybody!" they say. That's on both sides of the family, too! Perhaps because I spent so much time with Granny and my aunts as a child I picked up a lot of the info. Plus I'd often sit with Auntie Ming and go through hundreds of photos dating back to at least 1910, asking about the people. From those I'd recognize my grandfather, who died when my mother was an infant, if I were ever to meet him! (Incidentally, my brother resembles him quite strongly) In recent years I've got to know more about my father's side of the family, and it's great. I am sometimes sorry that I wasn't able to add to the families myself, but I hope that I've contributed to the development of the next generation anyway... At the least, I've learnt so much from my aunts (mostly; the uncles don't seem to keep track) and cousins (again, mostly the women!) that the shadows of the past are real people, and not just names on a page. No, genealogy isn't likely to be a major hobby, but it is interesting to learn, isn't it?

Right, I've got an early morning tomorrow, so I'm off to see if I can get some decent sleep. Good night!