My Ancestry is Like an American History Book

Since fourth grade when Mrs. Harris told us to find out where our ancestors came from and no one in my family could tell me, I have had a burning desire to find out.  I had only the sparse information my living grandparents could tell me, some of which turned out to be based on truth, but not correct.  I discovered a distant relative of one branch of the family who did genealogy research in libraries in the years before the internet became available, and she shared what she had on the Shields clan. But that didn't tell me much.  I still had eight known family names to research.  We had that family rumor that we were part Indian, which today we call Native American.  Grandpa thought he was Scotch-Irish.  Okay, I thought.  When I retire, I'll work on that.

Fast forward through all those working, child-rearing years and suddenly I am retired.  I realized it was time to make good my promise to myself and begin tracing the family tree with all its branches.  I was interested, but I didn't really know where to start. Then I met a distant cousin of my grandfather's at a family reunion and  she told me of a source for information. A few years later, I met Mom's cousin at the same family reunion.  He told me his daughter, who was just about my age but whom I had never met, was working on the family tree. So I emailed her and introduced myself.  Bless her heart!  She began sharing her research with me and unlocked the path to all the genealogy any one person could ever want to know.

From my Cousin, I know about the DeMohans who were given title to lands in England for winning a war for a Scandanavian King.  They lived as Knights and the name became Moon.  Several of them accompanied William Penn to the new world to found Pennsylvania.  Meanwhile my many-greats grandfather Miles Standish and my ancestors, the Allerton children, came over on the Mayflower with the Pilgrims.  Someone from our family tree was involved in the Salem witch burnings.  We had Revolutionary War relatives and quite a few Civil War relatives, both sides. We had a whole host of pioneers who kept moving further west.  We had some who lived where there was an Indian Massacre.  We are related to famous people.   My Cousin has collected so many ancestors, I just know there is a book in there somewhere.

Today, I made another interesting connection on my own.  Last Christmas my parents replicated a Christmas tree my dad had when he was a kid.  His Grandmother used to help Dad and his 10 siblings make a tree by wrapping a bare branch with pink cotton cloth, then hanging icicles and tablet paper chains on it. She remembered it from childhood.  I did a little googling and discovered what they had was a traditional Pennsylvania German Christmas tree.  I had done enough research to know that Grandma's family came from Pennsylvania.  Her daughter, my dad's mother, had once told me the grandparents came from Amsterdam, she thought. I put the two things together and wondered whether they could have been Pennsylvania Dutch.  I googled and discovered that theirs was indeed a spelling variant of a Pennsylvania Dutch name.

There will be much research ahead to verify this connection.  But I feel like I have won the lottery. That little fourth-grade girl is overwhelmed by all this family information.  My ancestry is like an American History book.  Say!  That sounds like a good title for that book my Cousin and I want to write.

What is Wrong with Me?

     I spent the morning thinking about and researching the purchase of a carpet steam cleaner. If I bought a carpet cleaner I could do the rugs myself.  In fact, if I used it twice it would pay for itself.  I wouldn't have to follow the professionals' rules about moving out all the furniture. My friends and family could borrow it. I wonder which one Consumer Reports recommends?
     A CARPET CLEANER!  What is wrong with me?
    What is wrong with me is that I have been home too much.  I'm a stay-at-home uh ......  I'm a substitute teach.....  OK, here's the truth:  I'm retired, although I'm way to young to fit the profile of a retiree.  Well, too young in spirit, anyway.  And because I'm retired, I am home enough to actually see things that need to be done around the house.  That causes me to make myself lots of work.
     When a person is working, home is basically the place to eat, sleep, and get ready to leave.  Housework may need doing but you aren't home enough to notice it much.  You keep the house picked up, the cleaning lady comes a couple of times a month, messes get shoved in baskets and hidden behind closet doors.  You understand.  It looks nice; just don't look behind any closed doors.  But when you are home all day, you tend to notice things like the basement with the path through the junk,the laundry overflowing the hamper, the streaks hiding the daylight that is trying to stream through the windows, and the dust clinging to the drapes.  You especially notice the spots on the carpets.
      Who would have thought I would ever have this need for a carpet steam cleaner, let alone have time to pursue it. But I have already reorganized the basement, cleaned out all the closets and cabinets, washed the windows.  Hey, what if I took up the carpets and had the hardwood flooring extended into the bedrooms?
   

A Good Story

I read a lot.  I always have some book or other going, sometimes two.  I read mostly for entertainment.  In my adult reading life there have been only four books that, as soon as I finished them, I immediately wanted to reread.  My four favorites are To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe by Fannie Flagg, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells, and my newest find, Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool.

All four books tell a good story and a first read can be enjoyed for entertainment.  All four books are what I call a Southern genre.  But all four books have a deeper theme.  And the story in each has threads of meaning interwoven throughout.

What is amazing to me is that Moon Over Manifest is Clare Vanderpool's first novel.  No one would ever guess that, given the skill with which it is constructed and the wonderful storytelling involved.  The story unfolds in the Great Depression with flashbacks to the World War I era, as it unveils the secrets of a little town in Kansas and its colorful characters.
 
Moon Over Manifest has already won awards and has been compared to To Kill a Mockingbird.  On my bookshelf it will be in good company with the other books I mentioned, and I will revisit it from time to time, just as I do those others.  You will want to give it a try yourself.

Just Our Usual Thanksgiving

     Thanksgiving 2012 started out with plenty of excitement as the smoke alarm went off while I was in the shower.  I heard a voice through the door shout, "Mom!"  Then someone pounded wildly and yelled, "The fire alarm is going off."  Did you ever try to pull your pajamas back on when your body is dripping wet and sudsy?   Before I could get the door open, I heard daughter say, "Nevermind.  It stopped."  And son-in-law determined it was caused by steam from another bathroom where someone had just showered.
     Meanwhile a guest in pajamas had decided to launder the jeans she had worn to our house, since she forgot to bring any others.  Wouldn't you know it!  When she had transferred the wet laundry to the dryer and pushed the button, nothing happened.  I was beginning to wonder what else might happen.
     My mind brought back memories of the year the glass dish of stuffing was placed on a stove burner that had not been turned off.  Luckily everyone made it through the buffet line and into the dining room before the glass exploded.  Food nearby was in pans that had lids on them.  More stuffing was in the oven.  Most food was across the room on the bar. 
     And then there was that year that the person taking the turkey out of the oven grabbed the rack handles and not the pan.  Two steps across the kitchen, the pan full of drippings dropped to the floor, bounced, and splashed the broth and drippings across the room.  But hey, the bird was safely on the counter waiting to be carved by then.  There wasn't much gravy that year.
     My friend shared just such a story.  She had her daughter set the just-mashed potatoes on the back of the stove to stay warm.  No one knew that burner was on either, until they tried to pick up the bowl and tupperware was stuck and had melted all over the burner.  But they were able to salvage a few potatoes for everyone.
     I guess most families have had some of these same experiences.  Let's hear it from you all.  What is your most memorable Thanksgiving incident?

Who Knew I Was a Writer

Out of the blue one day in a meeting, a colleague pointed at me and said, "We need this one to do the writing.  She writes like a dream."  That was the first I knew about it.  Then I began to wonder why she'd said that. 

In a later meeting, the same friend read something and said, "I can tell you wrote that.  It's your style."  I pondered that.  I had a style?  I didn't even know I had a style.  But it made me feel like maybe I was a writer.  Whatever....

Over the years I continued writing what I needed to.  I took a writing class one summer and learned a little something.  Once in awhile I wondered if I could write a book, but never tried.  I decided I was a non-fiction writer.  I figured I would be best as a ghost writer--someone else would create the ideas or live the life and I would write about it for them.  And that's as far as I got.

But I did find myself writing comments in a Facebook Group made up of women from my old high school.  And I got comments about my writing from them.  Actually I got some compliments.  And then one day, one of them said, "You should write a blog."  A second one agreed.  A week later another one asked whether I had my blog going and on the same day a different one told me to stop messing around an write a blog.

So, after some investigation, here I am, a mere beginner.  And I have already learned something new about writing.  I have learned that it's hard to find a blog title and address that is available. We'll see what happens now.