Where do we come from?

"Where did I come from, Momma?" Years ago, when we asked that question we'd be given the classic answer, "Well, honey, I found you in the garden under a big cabbage leaf." That was the answer I was given, and it was always satisfactory. Then I grew up and discovered the only thing under cabbage leaves were slugs. I was back where I began, wondering where I came from. But I was young. School and friends occupied all my thoughts.

I'm not sure when the fuzzy, slightly puzzling questions began to slip into my more quiet moments. Maybe it was when I started slowing down. When backaches and headaches and a bit of extra pounds around my middle forced me to "sit a spell." That's when I began asking myself the question again, "Where did I come from?" Only I couldn't ask Momma, she was gone to her reward. So was Gramma and Grampa. And at first, it was only questions about people in my own generation. And it was only in the sit-a-spell moments. They were few and far between so, again, I didn't give it much thought.

Then along came the middle years, and the question came back again. This time I wanted serious answers. Over the years, in bits and pieces of contemplation, I'd developed a need to know where I came from. This "dangling" feeling began in my 40's. It was more of a notion. The not-to-clear image of myself, hanging like a leaf way out on a limb on a big tree devoid of any leaves within my reach. Suspended by...what? Nothing touches me, but I exist. And that image began to grow into a search for who I was.

Why do some of us need to know where we fit in the grande scheme of things? There's lots of answers---cut and dry answers---but what about the intangible answers? I remember the dangling feeling I had when I didn't know my ancestors beyond my grandfather and grandmother. Sort of like the edge of a genealogical earth, so to speak. It went to my grampa and gramma and dropped off. Many people are perfectly content to accept the fact that they're here. End of story. I couldn't. I had to know why.

And you know what? You can chase that question in your family line back to the beginning of recorded time. No. Before recorded time. Because aeons ago, somewhere on the earth, a man loved a woman and they had children. If that man had not loved that woman, I wouldn't be here.

Do I want to know so I can thank them when I see them someday? I'm not sure, but I think that's part of it. The biggest reason, though, is so I'm not dangling out there on that limb all alone. Somewhere, down through time, the tree of my family was full and all the leaves joined hands. Even though they're gone, their spirit lives on in the leaves of books and records and pictures. It's that need to put all the leaves of data back onto the limbs so the tree fills out and I can again grab the hand of my past and say I belong. This is the reason I draw breath. Because my mother, Alice Gertrude Traver, loved my father, Lamar Joseph Stonemetz. Suddenly, two leaves burst forth very near me on my branch. And another leaf appears. It's my gramma, holding the hand of my grampa. And they hold the hand of my mother, and suddenly I'm not alone on the branch any longer. I belong, and I'm gaining strength through the knowledge of the existence of my family.

Most of them weren't famous, and most didn't even live eventful lives. They were farmers and blacksmiths and ship captains. They fought in the civil war, WWI and WWII and the Revolutionary War. But their strong hands seem to reach out through the generations and take mine and remind me of who I am. I'm no longer dangling. I'm part of the centuries and the people who inhabited the centuries before me. Yes, I think I will thank them. Not for being whatever they were, but for loving each other enough that today, I'm here.