Writers Block Challenge # 27

I wish I had a camera that could show the view from me:

Peripheral and everything I do and do not see.

And it would have to focus without zooming, and should stay

Attentive to the details and wide angles of each day.

 

Photographic memories!  I’ve heard some people have them.

Not me, though, only words are stored, retrievable at random.

I cannot tell you what I saw unless I first told me!

Word pictures I’ll remember.  That’s why I write poetry.

Poem by Rani Kaye, All rights reserved.

How I got addicted

I have always looked at the world through my grandmas’ eyes. I’m the only blue-eyed child of my brown-eyed parents. But my grandmas all had blue eyes.

You can’t tell that any of us are blue-eyed in these black-and-white photos, but trust me – our eyes are all blue.

When I was in high school or college I remember my dad showing me The Wenger Book. “My dad’s in here, but I’m not,” he told me. That was my first sip, and just goes to show you that like alcoholism, genealogy addiction is a genetic predisposition. My Mennonite ancestors have been recording every marriage, every birth, every death, every departure from the faith, since 1727.

But that first taste of pure genealogy didn’t hook me. Oh no. Even though my own father tried to tempt me, through the years, with stories about Grandma Hammond’s farm, I stayed in my own century.

Daddy knew, though. He recalled that when I was very, very young, he drove me past Grandma Hammond’s old place and I looked at him and said, “I think I was born in the wrong century.”

“Flossie’s got the Wenger Book,” Dad would remind me from time-to-time. “She keeps the genealogy for our line.” I would ask him again who Flossie is, and how she’s related to me, but I never tried to contact her.

In 1977, ABC aired the miniseries, Roots. I’m not generally one to watch much TV, but I watched every second of that show!

After the final episode, I called each of my oldest living relatives and asked for the names of their parents. I drew out a family tree with the info that they gave me. The original copy that I wrote that day got lost, but it looked something like this:

Well, now, that was intoxicating! Aunt Sissy told me that her grandpa was a son of Kaisar Wilhelm! She claimed to have seen a picture of him “on a high horse.” She said he married a commoner and was disowned. So he came to America.

When I quizzed the rest of my great-aunts, they all said, “Oh, Sis tells that to everybody.” When I asked my mom, she said she had never heard such a thing. (Mom was lying. Wait till you get to the end of the story ;-))

So, my husband went around telling people that I descended from Royalty, and I followed behind denying it; and I tucked the original Family Tree into a book or something, and I don’t know where it is anymore.

Then, on July 28, 2003, I was using AOL to check my emails, and they put up a banner ad that said, “Where were your ancestors in 1930? Free look at the 1930 U.S. Census.”

I had never followed a link before, but I typed in the name of my great-grandma, and up popped a Census page!

My great-grandma was already a widow, and taking in Lodgers. My grandma Wilma was 18 years old and still living at home. And the man she would eventually marry was one of the Lodgers!

I used this census image to start a little family tree on ancestry.com, filling in the names of all the people that I knew.

And then I called my mom, to ask her, “Did you know that your mother and dad lived together before they were married?”

I was intoxicated again, but I still wasn’t hooked. I may have been genetically pre-disposed to genealogy addiction, but it was a stranger who entered my life a few days later that pushed me over the abyss.

I signed on to AOL, and heard the familiar, “You’ve got mail!”

Somebody named Adrienne said she had found my little “Hortense Mae White” tree on the internet. Adrienne claimed that Hortense Mae White was her aunt. She said she was very excited to find me, and would I please write her back.

She said her grandfather, Jacob White, was Hortense’s brother.

She said she had already found one of my cousins – Rob – on Cousin Connect.

I called my mom. I had never known anybody to call my cousin Bob by the name of “Rob”, so I thought there was something fishy about this Adrienne.

Mom told me, “Bob is Roy’s son. But Rob is Carl’s son. You don’t know him. He moved back East. And yes, grandma did have a brother Jake.”

So I wrote Adrienne back. Apparently she was hovering over her keyboard waiting for me to respond. (Adrienne is SO intense!)

She immediately rapid-fired a succession of emails with picture attachments.

I had never opened an email attachment in my life! I was so scared my computer would catch a virus, and yet I was terribly curious what this Adrienne character was sending me.

So I held my breath. And clicked.

Slowly this image appeared:

It was a photo identical to one my grandpa had given me when my grandma Wilma died. On the back of my copy of the photo, my grandpa had written, “Wilma’s uncle Albert.”

So then I knew that Adrienne really was my cousin.

Adrienne put me in touch with cousin Rob.

Rob told me that Aunt Sissy had given him all the details on the Woodrick side back in the 1960s.

Since Rob was much older than I, Aunt Sissy had not found it necessary to sanitize the Kaisar Wilhelm connection.

Turns out great-great-great grandpa was the illegitimate son of Kaisar Wilhelm.

I called my mom.

“Oh, I knew that,” she said.

Adrienne and I are now the best of friends, and we have had many adventures together in the past decade. My mother (grr) is not particularly helpful. She feigns disinterest. When I ask her things, she says, “Oh. I don’t know.” When I find the answers on my own, Mom says, “Oh. I knew that.” Sometimes, some times, at that point she will begin to tell me stories …

“Why would you want to know that?” is her usual response, though. She’s a dear woman. I love her with all my heart.

“Oh those Mennonites of your dad’s. They HAD to keep track of their genealogy you know. And I know why! To keep from marrying their first cousins!”

… Oh, Mom. If you only knew what I know now in YOUR tree …

to be continued

Currently reading: YOUR blogs

Thank you, WordPress bloggers, for filling my email inbox while I spent a week networking with the fine folks at Microsoft.com who really did, free-for-nuthun’ FIX my computer with a great deal of patience, good will, and expertise!

I have begun to catch up on my reading tonight. (My husband has to work the holidays – but fear not: we celebrated Christmas Sunday afternoon.)

I have deliciously read through about 50 of about 100 email notifications about what ya’ll have been thinking these past 7 days. I am a reader first, and a writer second. And I really appreciate each and every one of you!

Merry Christmas, cyber-friends!

🙂 Rani

Finished my Christmas shopping

Finished my Christmas shopping tonight; and finished (I sincerely hope) resolving my computer’s “issues” thanks to a TON of support by very nice people in India who are employed by Microsoft. My computer’s issues were escalated to “Tier 2” and I had about 72 hours worth of free support. God bless Jim (in Canada, I think, and then Sudan and then Prashandt, both in India, I think).

So: I have shopped. Tomorrow I must wrap gifts and prepare food. On Sunday, after church, the family comes to my house. We are having food: ham on buns, shrimp cocktail which my sons will fight over, spinach dip & Triscuit crackers, Vegie Dip & vegies, devilled eggs, potato chips, and olives (both black & green – hubby LOVES olives).

What are YOU doing for Christmas?

Besides preparing food tomorrow for Sunday, I have all those gifts to wrap.

Merry Christmas, WordPress friends!

Christmas heirlooms

Nothing exciting to say tonight. I just wanted to share some of the ceramic Christmas items my mother made for me several years ago.

How NOT to prune the family tree

Marauding Squirrels

 

Acrobatic squirrel on the walnut tree’s whirly-jig!

 

Porch-trashing squirrel on the railing!

Squirrels live in my back yard for two reasons:

1.  To throw down, rip open, bury, lose, dig up,  eat, and make a general mess with walnuts.

2.  To taunt my cocker spaniel.

“SQUIRREL !!!!!” cries my son.

Dog HUUURLS self against sliding glass door.

“Woof ,woof, woof, woof, big-bad-I’m-a-fierce-dog woof !!!!”

Squirrel sticks out tongue.

Squirrel comes up on porch and looks in sliding glass door.

Dog HUUURLS self against sliding glass door.

“Woof ,woof, woof, woof, big-bad-I’m-a-fierce-dog woof !!!!”

Squirrel munches walnut. Sticks out tongue at dog.

Sometimes, just for kicks, a couple squirrels tag-team-torment my dog.

Once, my husband actually let her out to chase them.

(The squirrels simply climbed the fence,  flipped their tails, trotted up to the neighbor’s garage roof, stuck out their tongues at the dog, and then sailed down the street from tree branch to tree branch.)

But never mind: the dog thought she was TRULY big-and-bad.

“Kicked some squirrel butt. Guess I showed that squirrel. Hmph. Mess with me, will ya?”

Squirrel

A shared secret

English: Blanche Fisher Wright’s cover artwork for the Rand McNally 1916 book The Real Mother Goose (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My literary career began before I could read or write, and I suppose that Mother Goose may be partly to blame since I learned of rhyme and rhythm from the sing-song-y verses Mama read to me at bedtime.

It’s the wanting to REMEMBER, though, that birthed the writer in my soul.  More specifically, it’s the COMPENSATING for FORGETTING.

And it is as simple as this:  I often heard songs, I often heard poems, I often heard stories that I loved.  I loved to hear a well-told tale.  I loved to hear a lovely song.  I loved to repeat a well-turned phrase.

The stories my Mama read to me, she read over and over again; and I could remember every word.

The songs my grandpa taught me, he sang with me over and over again; and I could remember every word.

But there were OTHER songs.  There were OTHER stories.  I would hear them once.  I would want to tell them.  I could not remember the words.

I would try to sing a song I had heard.  (This was generally for my own amusement.  At that point I was a toddler, and for the time being, an “only” child.)  I would recall a phrase or two, but not the whole.  So I would think.  I would try to remember. I would wonder what comes next. “Now what word sounds like sky?” I would say to myself.

Then I would sing, and just PRETEND my new verses were how the true song went.

I needed to memorize my made-up verses as I went along, though.  So I would do two lines, and get them to rhyme, and then repeat them again and again before making up the next two.  Repetition like that is how my grandpa always taught new songs to me.

Sometimes I would remember almost nothing of the “real” song, and I mustneeds make up MANY verses, in order to go with all the notes.  It seems I could naturally remember the tune and how long the song should be, even if I heard it only once, but I couldn’t memorize the words fast enough to keep them forever.  And I mustneeds keep them forever.  That I cannot tell you why, because I do not know.  I have simply always wanted words to be kept forever.

When I got older and went to school, I loved to share songs; but at first I continued to pretend these all were songs I’d learned somewhere.  I ashamedly hid the truth that I had “written” them myself.  At that young age, I somehow felt it was wrong of me to selfishly make up words just so I could teach myself to sing the pretty songs.

Eventually, however, when I was nine, a teacher found me out.  I had escalated my criminal behavior to include teaching my songs to a girlfriend whose daddy played guitar, and this little girl had a charming voice.  Her daddy had her sing for people, and she liked to do that.

Our teacher played piano, and our whole class sang at the beginning of every school day.  My little entertainer girl friend volunteered to sing my songs in front of the class and dragged me up front with her to sing along.  I could carry a tune, and she could sing like an angel.  Our teacher loved music, and she encouraged us to perform this way every time my girlfriend said that she and Rani had a new song.

Without my knowledge, that teacher started writing down some of my words, and she gave typed-up copies of my “poems” (as she called them) to my mama at parent-teacher conferences.

When my mama showed those “poems” to me, I was stunned to discover that it pleased my parent and my teacher that I was doing this dishonest thing of making up my own little stories and rhymes.

Well needless to say, my temperament being such as it was, I was all about pleasing the parent and the teacher; and heck, by that time I could make a rhyme out of anything, any time it struck my fancy to do so.

So that’s my story
Each word is true
And I have remembered it here for you.

My girlfriend’s name was Mary Lewis.  Her voice sounded just like Mary of “Peter, Paul and…”  I just this moment remembered her name.  The school was Malcolm, the town was Sault Ste. Marie.  Mary, if you’re out there, write to me.  You moved away before I did, and I never knew what became of you.  I wonder if you knew that I was “making up” the songs.  I do not think I told you.

 

The words my mama taught me and the songs my grandma sang

This is Your Brain on Music (Photo credit: brewbooks)

 

“Music is an outstanding gift of God and next to theology … I would not give up my slight knowledge of music for a great consideration … and youth should be taught this art … for it makes fine skillful people … I would certainly like to praise music with all my heart as the excellent gift of God which it is and to commend it to everyone.”

— Martin Luther

I woke up this morning to this music in my memory:

My mommy told me something
A little girl should know
It’s all about the devil and I’ve learned to hate him so
He’ll only give you trouble if you let him in the room
He will never, ever leave you if your heart is filled with gloom, so:

Let the sun shine in.
Face it with a grin.
Smilers never lose,
And frowners never win.

Let the sun shine in.
Face it with a grin.
Open up your heart and let the sun shine in.

Here’s another one:  Does anybody else know this to be the first verse to Rock-a-bye Baby?

Rock a bye baby, your cradle is green.
Daddy’s a nobleman, Mommy’s a queen.
Sister’s a young lady who wears a gold ring.
And Johnny’s a drummer who drums for the king.

Rock a bye baby, in the tree top.
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle and all.

Rock-a-bye Baby!! (2) (Photo credit: Jeanette’s Ozpix)

In adulthood, I heard that some think the cradle in that lullaby falls and crashes to the ground, injuring or killing the baby … but by the time I grew up and heard that interpretation, it was too late to stick that ugly picture in my memory because I already saw it floating gently to the softest of landings on the notes my grandma sang to me as she rocked me in her arms.

Remember to sing to your children!

Have a joyful day, my friends!

More on Albert and Jay

Here’s Albert and Jay in 1901, with their sisters.  The oldest sister is my great-grandma.

Here’s another of their military photos:

And here’s their daddy’s (and my great-great grandpa’s) military headstone.  My grandpa Charles served in the Civil War.

For those of you who do genealogy research, please appreciate the difficulty of researching the last name of White!  As they say about Pokemon, “Gotta catch ’em all!”

I have, in fact, collected data on nearly every White family in the counties and states where my own ancestors lived in the 17 & 18 hundreds.