Once upon a time, two young people fell madly in love, married, and within the year had their one and only child. A little girl who would grow to love her family and extended family and become a gatherer.
Her father would tell her that during her infancy, her parents were so poor, that they had wall paper for walls in a big square room, and an outhouse for bathroom... The first winter, he would have to break the ice crystals off her blanket where her breath had frozen. Then when she was a toddler, she lived through the devastating event of her father having his leg cut off in a logging accident. Unknown to him, it gave her inner fortitude watching his recovery progress as well as how he conducted himself through life, never feeling sorry for himself and helping others. In her beginning school years, she saw her mother finish college and begin teaching, and her father go to trade school and become head of the heating and air conditioning department at the local College. When she learned to drive, she and a close friend, who travel through the state of Oklahoma to see where family lived and learn about her roots. Although she had grown up knowing her many cousin, and aunts and uncles, it was a discover for her as she sought out areas on her own and developed her relationship with them by herself. This was the beginning of her deep love of family and desire to hold them close. She moved away to another state to become a registered nurse and fell in love to marry in an area that was 10 hours away from friends and family. At first it was lonely, but as her own family grew to 6 children, she wanted them to know her family. Her parents moved to live near by so her children learned from her and their father the joy of having family close by. She and her husband would alter Thanksgiving and Christmas with the families. When she began studying about Family History and how to do genealogy, she was elated and began reaching out to all she knew to discover anything she did not know. She was blessed that some shared family treasures she did not know about and some shared stories that she was amazed to learn about. It was glorious time, her husband would take her on trips to visit earlier areas that early ancestors had lived in. Her love of Family continued to grow. When Facebook was introduced to her, she was working with FamilySearch to create Pages for each of the Untied States, and various Countries. This gave her an idea to create her own families Group that would allow for reaching out to new found cousins that because of circumstances of separation, she had never gotten to know until as she had worked on her Family Trees, and blogged and they connected. This has been a joy in her life and her children now are excited to find where their distant cousins are and have fun with them...
I have learned in life the joy comes from the ordinary things we do and the joy of being connected.
Thank you Amy Johnson Crow for your persistence in getting people to write. I have been trying to get back to blogging. I hope I can hang on this time.
#52ancestors
