Roots: The SMGFS (Sprawling Multi-Generational Family Saga)
Emily didn't want to be embalmed. In accordance with her wishes her body was cremated and the ashes divided, a portion to be scattered in Colorado, which she loved, and a portion to be interred in Minnesota, which was her home. For pure tear-your-guts-out misery there can't be much that beats getting down on your hands and knees and lowering the urn containing the ashes of your child into a hole in the cold, cold, ground.
Her mother, my first wife, picked a beautiful place for her. It's in the yard of her church, in a very old, very historic cemetery that dates back to pioneering days. There are entire generations of large families buried here, in plots that go on for rows and rows.
The group that always catches my eye is a small one, off to the side, in an older part of the cemetery. Two ornately carved markers stand there, made of some soft white stone that is slowly crumbling away under the weight of years and lichen. One is for Lizzie, who died on September 11, 1880, just a month shy of her 16th birthday, and the other is for her father, William, who apparently died just a few months after his daughter, at age 54. Slightly off to the left stands a third stone, small and very plain, with just a name and two years. It marks the final resting place of Sarah, Lizzie's mother and William's wife, who somehow lived on for another 34 years after the loss of her daughter and husband. I wonder how she did it.
I wonder what their story was.
The SMGFS has been a staple of literature since the invention of the novel. I remain unable to appreciate them, let alone write one. I sometimes wonder if this is part of the impulse that drives people to read and write science fiction: this uniquely American rootlessness, this loss of a sense of historical place, this profound disconnection from those of your line who went before. We have no history, therefore, we must invent one.
My family has never been much for putting down roots; at least, not in the past two centuries. We know that great-great-grandfather Gottlieb was a farmer, and we know approximately where in what is now Germany his family farm was. We know that he, Maria, and several of their younger children arrived in America as refugees from one stupid 19th Century war or another, but beyond that, the area from which he came was for much of the past century a part of East Germany, and when my father tried to begin searching for living relatives there in the 1950s he received a curt letter from our State Department telling him to give it up and not try again.
I never knew my father's father. Anton was 26 and working as a farm-country stonemason when he eloped with the 16-year-old daughter of a farmer and customer. While neither family seems to have minded that part much, his family apparently was unable to forgive his marrying a Protestant, and never spoke to him again. He died from cancer when my father was a child, after which my grandmother—
Well, let's just say she led an interesting life. It seems she had dreams of being an actress, among other things, and made it as far as doing character voices for advertising in the early days of live radio. She later wrote a book about her life, and according to other people who were there at the time, some parts of it bear some resemblance to the truth. She spent decades bouncing back and forth between the Midwest and California, and on her c.v. listed among her many accomplishments that she had studied metaphysics under Swami this, Guru that, and Enlightened Master somethingorother. More interestingly she was a longtime acolyte of legendary quack and con-man Colonel Professor Doctor Dinshah Ghadiali, and that certainly makes for an interesting ice-breaker at parties.
As far as my grandmother's roots went, they didn't go far. Her father first appears in our history as a babe in the arms of his young and unwed mother, freshly arrived at Ellis Island, and the family name comes from the kindly farmer who married the mother and adopted the son. If my great-great-grandmother ever told anyone who little Albert's real father was, it was never written down, and that knowledge is lost forever now.
In her later years my grandmother became obsessed with tracing her genealogy and spent an inordinate amount of time in old libraries and cemeteries, chasing down the only solid lead she had: her mother's side. In this effort she was remarkably (or perhaps suspiciously) successful, and eventually produced an amazingly elaborate family tree, as it seems the trick when tracing genealogy is to hook into a European royal family that has already traced theirs, and her mother was arguably the descendant of some sort of royalty. If you've read any serious history at all, though, you know the behavior of royals hasn't changed much in the past thousand years, and that sooner or later most European royal genealogies peter out into flimsy fabrications manufactured by sycophantic scholars for the benefit of the latest locally successful semi-literate warlord-king, for the purpose of legitimizing said thug's grip on power, and therefore have roots about as stable as Birnam Wood.1
Frankly, I'd have an easier time believing my father's ancestry is traceable in a direct and unbroken line back to Shemp of the Three Stooges than to Shem, son of Noah.
Roots, Part II: Night of the Undead Voters
On my mother's side, things get a bit more interesting. We know that we are descended from a long line of at-times wealthy English ship-owners and ship's masters; we like to claim kinship with Henry Jennings, because what the heck, it might be true, and how often do you get to have an authentic pirate in your family tree? We know for fact that we are directly descended from a particular English whaling ship captain who was such a rotten s.o.b. that all of his sons went to sea with him and every one of them jumped ship and took off with a native girl before completing the voyage; in that family line there are people all over the world and in every color of the human rainbow who share our family name and ancestry. Some people like to claim they're a brother to all mankind. In my case, it's true—or at least, they're all distant cousins.
Our particular branch of the family stems from the son who jumped ship in Boston and took off inland as fast as his feet could carry him. In time his descendants ended up in Chicago, and rose to prominence and affluence in the railroad business, only to be wiped out in the Great Panic of 18something-or-other. As a result my mother was raised in that peculiar sort of genteel poverty you sometimes find in people who were once rich and have not quite adjusted to being not-rich, in a big old house in Chicago full of maiden aunts and bachelor uncles, a disproportionate number of whom were named Charles. To this day, this peculiarity continues to contribute to my lack of understanding of my mother's family, as the telling of family stories always seemed to be interrupted by a moment when one of us kids asked, "Wait a minute, Mom. Are we talking about Uncle Charlie, Great Uncle Charlie, Cousin Charles, Charlie Z., Great Aunt Charlotte, or Grandfather Charles?"
"No, this story is about Charles Everett. Pay better attention."
As much as I have deep roots, I suppose they're there: in Cook County, Illinois. The old family plot is still there, and I could go look it up and visit it if I wanted, but I haven't done so in decades and would rather not. Excluding we children, the last of my mom's relatives died 50 years ago, and yet every November they still rise from their graves and go looking for voting booths. Frankly, it's kind of creepy.
...to be continued...
1 Genealogy, climate research: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, n'est-ce pas?
FAMILY MATTERS posts at 7 a.m. each Sunday and is dedicated to serious discussions of marriage, family, children, human sexuality, and all the other things that writers ignore when they cocoon in their offices and try to create fiction. This series will run until we either run out of things to talk about, solve all the problems in the world, or you tell me to shut up and go get some professional therapy. If you have a question you'd like to ask or a topic you'd like to expound upon, send it to slushpile@thefridaychallenge.com and we'll work it into the queue.
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