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Given a time machine, this is where I want to visit. I have sat at my desk, observing photographs, wondering, creating in my mind stories. I want to join her on the wall. In reality, I can tell you nothing, not the time, place, what she is thinking, nor whom she may have shared the moment. On the back of the photo I read, “M Thomas.” There is an aspect present that I rarely observe in most other pictures. She was not a fan of being photographed. There is no one alive that can offer a clue what is behind the smile.
The picture is the “line in the sand” that separates us. The knowing I’ll never know, never have answers to this frozen moment, a vexation, a loneliness. This is God’s plan. Why? It feels like a cruel joke.
I imagined the universe I now occupy is sitting in a jar on a shelf in a student’s bedroom, collecting dust, an unclaimed science experiment. Sealed, snubbed until eventually tossed or boxed by the disinterested owner. A failed experiment. A childish image, but one I have long held onto until a better one, a more reliant one, comes along. I know mom, a believer in her indoctrination, baptized twice just to make sure her sins were forgiven and salvation ensured, as was I. Guilt. Mom once told me that most people confined to mental institutes were religious. Christians. I thought this was a strange, or certainly an unexpected, declaration. She believed in a Heaven and Hell, all I see is a jar.
Here, in this photograph, I see an independence, a happiness missing in many future photographs, those to be taken shortly after this image, to be revealed as we journey forward.
Recently I read the following, Born 1912, Everett had better things to do as a child than find out who his distant greats and grands and aunts and uncles were.
But, as birthdays will have it, he got older.
“I didn’t get interested until 25 years ago. I was getting older, and I began wondering who my ancestors were. I know virtually nothing about my family at the time.”
“My father and grandfather, who I could have asked at one time, were dead. Andrew, of course had long since died. I had to start from scratch,” he said.
Traces roots to Mayflower
By Jerry Kuyper
Head staff writer
Northwest Herald
Sat, Jun 6, 1987
Newspaper.com
I must give credit to my sister, Kathryn (Maynard) Nelson, supported by her husband Rick. In her words.
“During my vacation last year the notion of documenting our family tree began forming in my mind. The main goal of our trip was to visit Niagara Falls, but along the way we stopped to visit with relatives living in Ohio (both mine and my husband’s). It was somewhere along this road that I realized how little I really knew (and how much I had forgotten) about my heritage. It then occurred to me that the people left who could tell me of my past wouldn’t always be there: if I waited to long my past would be lost entirely. That woke me up. Shortly after that, I realized that the day would come when my descendants would develop curiosity I have now about their past and it would be left to me to answer their questions. That got me motivated.”
My Family Tree
Kathryn I. Nelson
Manassas, VA 20110
November 1, 1998
Dear Kathy,
I understand. You have motivated me, but I am overwhelmed by the task. For each note, newspaper announcement, photograph I observe, consider, I leave with more unanswered questions, more threads to be pulled. There is no end.
Sincerely,
Keith
P.S. What I know, the line in the sand draws closer, day-by-day.
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