Topic 149: Mental Precipitates

Carol:

Plumbing the Family Gene Pool   

John Marshall

 I turned  on my computer this morning at 5:30 a.m  and  opened up the genealogy site to fill in some missing dates of the southern ancestors in Virginia. When I got to the Randolph family, I recognized a name worth investigating. Could it be, I thought, that we are related to someone that my lawyer husband will appreciate, John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States?

My sister-in-law has been working on our family genealogy for over 20 years, and she is very serious about it. She has taken classes, traveled around the country visiting family gravesites and hometowns  and belongs to a genealogy group. She sticks to direct family lines and relies on direct evidence from official records, census reports, veterans’ documents, etc, which is why her files on the Scott, Malone, Caldwell, DeWitt, Grassmyer, Fike, Edwards and Olssen families are more reliable than mine.

Other than a total lack of training or discipline, my problem with doing genealogical work is that I get excited when I see a tangential but famous connection. These serendipitous finds  precipitate hours of wild, connect-the-dot research to show how I am tied to this famous academic or that slaveholder or—omigod, to a guy who died at the Alamo. I’m not really a historical snob as I get kind of excited when I find anything unusual about our ancestors, like the poor woman whose census reports show she spent 20 years in a mental hospital or the farmer who put rocks in his pocket and drowned himself after his health failed.

I get most excited when I get even a hint of DNA connection to a literary figure. This week’s “find” was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  If I follow one family line, Longfellow is my 5th cousin 5 x removed, and if I follow a different family line, he is my 3rd cousin 5x removed. Samuel Clemens is my 5th cousin 4x  removed, and Louisa May Alcott is my 6th cousin 4x removed. Like I said, such little forays into genealogical dreamland not only generate hours of frivolous computer time, but precipitate frustration from family members and neglect of more important activities such as completing my book project or playing with Bella the beautiful and Milo the magnificent.

One benefit of all this genealogical dabbling is that it has rekindled my  interest in American history. I used to say that I didn’t like history classes because they seemed to focus on famous generals and famous battles, and war, war, war. But, when I’m looking at the enlistment and pension records of ordinary people, or when I read their written accounts of the day-to-day life of a lonely soldier, I begin to see the Revolutionary War or the Civil War with greater interest. As tedious as my “Guess who we’re related to” stories get, Marc is now reading books about Gettysburg and watching Ken Burns’ Civil War series with me.

I really admire my sister-in-law’s fastidious approach to uncovering our family roots. And I really admire her self-discipline in being able to spend so many years on a project without letting it become an obsession. Sometimes when I trip across a really surprising genealogical link, I call her to share the news. She never gets as excited as I do because, frankly, she doesn’t really care as much as I do about the 2nd cousins   6 x removed or their in-laws.. But, maybe it will be different when I tell her about John Marshall because she is a retired attorney. She can go to her genealogy class and proudly announce that Chief Justice John Marshall is the grand- nephew of the wife of her husband’s first cousin 9x removed.

Law and literature. They’re in the genes.

Megan:

Mental Precipitates

I initially interpreted this topic as meaning a sort of a ‘mental storm’ (after all, precipitation means rain), but according to Merriam-Webster, precipitate can also mean “to bring about abruptly” or “to move or act with violent or unwise speed.” In other words, impulsively - sort of like how I acquired my puppy.

I have had Bella for a week now and some things are better, some are worse. She sits on command, her accidents are less frequent and usually by the door. She spends most of the night in her crate, and is very sweet and cuddly when she is tired. I’m getting used to my new sleeping arrangement and schedule. I woke up in the middle of the night at the foot of my bed, with my fingers twisted through the bars of her crate; I must have passed out in the middle of trying to soothe her. Milo loves her and she adores him, and mom is already talking about how sad they will be when they are separated.

Worse is her destructiveness. She feels comfortable enough in our home that she’s now ready to tear it apart. Our screen door has a Bella-sized hole in the bottom. Her hound blood, which, with the exception of her long legs, does not really show in her appearance, is obvious in her howling and her sense of smell. I left some treats in a pair of pants and she chewed through the pocket to get to them. She likes to bite and then hang on to anything that dangles, be it hair, earrings or poor Milo’s penis.

I’ve never been completely responsible for an animal before, and I forgot how much work a puppy can be. Sometimes I look at her and feel only a panic that I am no longer free – I imagine this feeling is a cross between buyer’s remorse and post-partum depression (and now my friends with children want to punch me in the face.) I think about the commitment, about how if she lives as long as our other pound-puppies, she may see me into my mid-40’s. She will be a part of everything I want and need to accomplish over the next decade, including finding a way to have a family of my own.

It’s hard to think about anything else right now, which has kept me from dwelling on the disappointment of not getting that job, of not feeling completely settled. But when I look at her and see everything I still need to do, for a moment it feels like a fist is squeezing my heart. 

But then she’ll grunt in her sleep and push her nose into my neck and be the most adorable thing ever. And that pulls me back from the panic and the what-ifs into the present moment (in that Eckhart Tolle sort of way).  Maybe I acted too quickly by introducing this dog into this untethered and transitional period in my life, but now that I have her to account for, in the future I will avoid acting abruptly or with violent and unwise speed.