A fork in the road
A)
B) C)
or None of the Above
A family Tree
Choices all but I think I
will go with the tree…my Family Tree.
Too, too many greats back so
let’s just refer to her as Grannyancestor and I’ll call her Molly. There she
is, brown-eyed, almost tiny, four and half feet tall, but wiry, strong,
securely upright, sure footed as she runs through the high rough savannah
grasses with her cousin Lucy. She turns
to look back at the trees and for a moment remembers when her people lived in
them and swung freely from branches. What fun that must have been! Her tiny
fists curl in memory but soon she spots an interesting looking stone nearby,
sharp-edged that might be good for digging roots. This is a new idea! Stooping
to pick it up she is suddenly swept by an urge and turns again and looks
forward.
She cannot possibly
understand what she sees there in the future but she is intriguied, curious,
and makes the decision that will in eons of time lead to ME. Choice after choice, “Oh, he looks strong and
brave, let’s go with him,” or “God, he’s pushy, dragging me by my hair into his
cave, but, you know I bet he’ll make strong babies!”
And so it goes, on through that long, difficult trek out of Africa,
rounding the Mediteranean Sea, up through northern Europe ,becoming Celtic, eventually
seasick in a frail boat Molly’s Mollys
sail the channel coming home to what
will be named far into the future, The British Isles. She’s taller now, she
loves the words that form a language known and spoken by many, she understands
a wider world beyond what she can see, she learns to read to write and communicate
with others far from her small place in the scheme of things. But she is still
brown-eyed and still making one good choice after another, picking not only
what pleases her but which will lead unbroken to She/Me.
And now we have writing and
records so I see for the first time the one of Molly’s sons that becomes my
Grandpancester, William Clerich, fifth Chief of the Scottish Clan, MacLeod born
in 1432. There’s actually a book which
shows the choices down the years leading to a last, so far, paragraph listing
me and my children!
Here’s an offshoot, one of
many branches, that tells of Molly’s son, Richard Floyd of Wales, sailing to
America (we are really getting around!), who boasts of his son William who is
the thirty second signer of the Declaration of Independence from New York.
His daughter Catherine was
wooed by James Madison who followed her on horseback halfway from Philadelphia
to New York pleading for her hand. Just
thin if she had said ‘yes’ I would have the 5th
president of the United States in my family tree. But she spurned him in
favor of a little known reverend, William Clarkson. Poor choice, perhaps, but then I would not be
Me would I?
Here’s another, Rutgers
Clarkson, with his connection to Rutgers College.
All lovely people I’m sure but we begin to peter
out some becoming more ordinary everyman/woman
into the present but still carrying the genes, excitement, the courage the
strength and the brown eyes of our own intrepid Molly. We’ve all been pretty
much Anglo-Saxon, Scottish, Irish and Welsh, with just a minor infusion of
Dutch and maybe a soupcon of French.
Decision time again, it’s up to me now to choose the next fork, the next
branch of the tree to explore. And I do.
We are all richer now, I
have chosen an ancient proud, renaissance heritage that, along with green eyes and great mathematical ability will send Molly
forward again, brave and curious, as always into the future. I have married an Italian!
