My Ancestors

“Writing with the Ancestors” (SomaticWriting.com) was the perfect class for me in January. It is a tough month because my mother and sister have passed, and both of their birthdays are in January. My mother passed away in January, and my birthday is in January. 

Also, I’ve had family on my mind because my great-niece is having a baby this summer. Since this is the first child born since my mother has passed, I felt the pressure to do something matriarchal. In my family, that usually meant something crocheted as my mother was an avid crocheter. Thankfully the baby will inherit other baby blankets because my crochet skills are very slow. A blanket would not be done by the time the baby gets here, or, frankly, gets to college.

The idea though, that immediate matriarchal feeling, left me awash in thoughts of family and ancestors and what we give each other – materially and otherwise. And, how I’m someone else’s ancestor and what will I leave for them?  

I have an awkward relationship with my ancestors. Since I have extreme social anxiety, family gatherings were intense for me and I avoided them as I got older. I also always felt a bit like an outsider, which I now know is partially due to autism and ADHD. The family history and genealogy didn’t interest me when my sister and mother got deep into it. All of their research awaits me in a storage unit. 

The storage unit holds most of my material possessions and the items I kept that belonged to  my mother and sister. I’ve basically been in denial about it for years now, avoiding moving the contents from South Carolina to Wisconsin. Relocating to Wisconsin was tentative at first, so I only brought a pickup truck load of stuff with me. 

In the writing class, I realized I’d brought quite a few items with me with strong ancestral ties. 

My baby quilt

My great-grandmother made a baby quilt for my sister when my mother was pregnant with her. Granny Boling gave the quilt to my mother saying, “You’ll probably have another baby after I’m gone, so I’ll make a quilt for that baby, too.” Before I existed in any way, my great-grandmother thought of me. Knew I was coming. Wanted me to be warm in a blanket stitched together with love. Her hands created warmth holding all the DNA of her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. I keep it on my couch as a reminder of my creative lineage. 

My uncle’s wallet

A box of family jewelry and sentimental items made the trip to Wisconsin, and in it I found my Great-Uncle Jube’s wallet. I know this wallet from my childhood. He kept it on the window sill beside his recliner in his and Aunt Mert’s living room. He’d had polio as a child that left him paralyzed from the waist down. At home he used a homemade, wooden, straight-back chair with wheels added to the legs as a wheelchair. A small image of the wheels, cut from a catalog, with the item number written on it, was in his wallet. Also, a photo of two of my younger cousins, a photo of Aunt Mert, and his mother, obituaries of his parents, offered glimpses into his life decades after his passing. 

A ring

My parents dated in high school, and my dad made my mom a ring out of a quarter. I have this ring and love to wear it. It’s a band with uneven edges, and on the inside there are details from the quarter. Though they divorced when I was twelve, it was their love that got me here, and I’m so grateful. As a writer, rings are my lucky charms, and this one holds all the symbolism of family love for me. (See “I go back to May 1937” by Sharon Olds below.)

Notebooks of quotes

Also, while in high school, my parents kept notebooks with their favorite quotes and sayings. Some of them are solemn and wise. Others are outdated humor about the roles in marriage. But, again, I can hold the proof of their young love and let it resonate into my life. 

Prayer books as journals

I have several old, tattered prayer books with no name in the front to identify the owner. Throughout one book, the owner has pasted birth and wedding announcements, as well as obituaries. In another the owner has written in the margins and other empty spaces. Sometimes the writing is simply a list of all the food served at supper. Other times there are details of who visited. The line that haunts me refers to the state of poverty and lack of education available to the writer: “The educated say we either do not know, or we do not care. The truth is we do know and we do care.” 

When I pulled the books off a shelf to revisit them for this piece, I gasped when a tiny, yellow and purple pressed flower fell out. It happened so quickly and unexpectedly I wasn’t able to tell which book had kept it flattened for years. It’s now framed for inspiration. A reminder from my family that little acts of creativity, love or beauty can have an impact later. A reminder that they are with me as I write my way through life, leaving stories for my ancestors. 

A poem about family and writing:

I Go Back to May 1937

By Sharon Olds

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,

I see my father strolling out

under the ochre sandstone arch, the   

red tiles glinting like bent

plates of blood behind his head, I

see my mother with a few light books at her hip

standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,

the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its

sword-tips aglow in the May air,

they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,   

they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are   

innocent, they would never hurt anybody.   

I want to go up to them and say Stop,   

don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,   

he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things

you cannot imagine you would ever do,   

you are going to do bad things to children,

you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,

you are going to want to die. I want to go

up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,

her hungry pretty face turning to me,   

her pitiful beautiful untouched body,

his arrogant handsome face turning to me,   

his pitiful beautiful untouched body,   

but I don’t do it. I want to live. I   

take them up like the male and female   

paper dolls and bang them together   

at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to   

strike sparks from them, I say

Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

Sharon Olds, “I Go Back to May 1937” from Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 1980-2002. Copyright © 2004 by Sharon Olds. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Source: Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 1980-2002 (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004)