Don't think! Just Write!

I started and stopped this post about 6 times yesterday. I am not quite sure what direction to take this blogging thing. Do I start with what I came here to do, write about my ancestral journey? Do I start with how I began my family tree on Ancestory.com, or how I utilized Familysearch.org to find information for free when I couldn't afford the subscription fees to the other site? Do I tell stories of each mystery, how I solved them, and what I did to get the information? For some reason I feel that those who would be inclined to read this (the genealogically minded) may have already "been there, done that". They perhaps, like me, are only searching other genealogical blogs and websites trying to find a cousin with information they need in their quest to fill in all the empty leaves of their ever expanding family tree.
I question why I am here writing this at all, other than if I don't just start writing, I never will. I need to purge from the confines of the yellowing paper with manual typewritten words and white out, all the information that my grandmother spent decades of her life gathering.  I need to share what I have spent the last 4 years discovering on my own, not related to HER direct ancestors. There needs to be a place where I can put my virtual hand up in the air and get a high five from others like me, when we have that "A HA!" moment.


It really does feel like I am being Sherlock Holmes at times, allthough I am not as quick to a solution as he is. It takes me a while to solve the puzzles, maybe I am more like Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther, often clueless. After all, I did have to teach myself everything on how to be an online genealogist. My grandmother was very methodical and old school in her research techniques, and with snail mail it is no wonder it took her decades to gather as much information as she had. She took her time, read a lot, and learned as she went along. But I have the internet, so it should be easy, right? Well yes, I must say, we've come a LONG LONG way in this sharing information thing, but when you don't know what you are searching for exactly, it makes finding it that more difficult. So round and round I go, exhausting every path I can think of going on until I hit enough dead ends. At that point, I throw my hands up and surrender in frustration, pour a glass of wine, then move on to something else for a while.

Photo by: Daniela Nobili

When I took it upon myself to start entering my grandmother’s research into a digital format, and creating a family tree, it amazed me how much information she had right. Time and time again I was able to find documentation to confirm her conclusions, and more often than not I found the missing data or answers to her hand scribbled question marks, and the "circa" or "about" when it came to birth and death dates were finalized. It was moments like those that I wish we had started this internet project together long before her passing. I tell myself she is with me, watching my progress, and stimulating the synapses in my brain while I am sleeping telling me where to search next. When I am really deep into the research, I do dream about it, unconsciously trying to piece together the puzzle of the day.

The surrendering in frustration and moving on is also a helpful technique. For some reason when I do come back, I always find something new even when treading over old ground. Perhaps it was always there, but with fresh eyes I see the information differently, or it connects in a new way and I follow a path not known of before. Filling in a name where previously it said "unknown" is such a gratifying feeling.

The writer that used to live inside me had always wanted to take a family narrative and create a historical fiction novel; maybe a murder mystery or a ghost story? I still feel like some purging needs to happen though. Too much information... too many family members... just “too much” spinning around my head to buckle down and focus on one thing.

So I needed to remind myself of rule number one in creative writing: 

 Don't think!

Where do I even begin?

   

Grandma Jean as a baby

My maternal grandmother, Jean, was born in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles in the year of 1926. After her first marriage in 1947, she moved around a lot, because my grandfather was a teacher, and they had to go where the work was. Which explains how her son, Michael, was born in Eugene, Oregon, but a year later my mom was born in Berkeley, California. By the time I was 2 years old, "Grandma Jean" had remarried and was moving around a lot again, due to her new husband working in Construction.

She would travel to visit me during holidays and birthdays. It was a way for me to spend time with my mother as well, after my parents divorced and my father had custody. 

My memories of my grandmother are fond ones. 

In the summer around my mom and I's birthdays, we would visit this place in Los Gatos, CA, called Vesona Park.  It had a lake, a river that ran through the park, a giant playground, and while we were eating our picnic I could feed the geese. There was also a miniature train that traveled through part of the park. It was always a great place to meet up.

During Christmas, if we didn't travel to her house for a visit, she would swoop into town in her faux wood paneled Station Wagon, with black garbage bags filled to the brim with presents. She believed that quantity was always better than quality. I think she just liked to wrap presents. So what you unwrapped was always a mystery, I mean seriously some really random things, but she did make sure that at least one or two of the gifts were from your wish list. My list was always simple, coloring pens and paper. A brand new set of colored ink pens in every color and hue was the BEST thing in the world to me. One year she agreed to pay for my piano lessons as a birthday gift. That had a profound affect on me, for I was able to learn to read sheet music, sing along to songs I could play, and it set me up great for my later years in Choir and being a singer/songwriter. She gave me my first camera, an automatic. The kind of camera that was easy for a novice, and all you had to do was make sure you put the film cartridge in correctly. It did the rest. Had it not been for her taking pictures of me during our visits, I might not have anything to remember of my childhood. Every couple years after that, I would get the next upgrade in automatic camera, and unofficially became my family's photographer.
            She also gave me my first complete sewing kit, cross-stitch patterns, and crochet needles and yarn. It was always fun to figure out how to use them and to see what I could make, but the usual default was Barbie clothing. She was an avid clothes maker herself, she made all her own clothes, but she gave up making me clothes when I became a "tween". Thank goodness for no more polyester bell bottom pants. Thick Polyester seemed to be the perfect fabric to her, perhaps because it hung nicely and didn't need ironing? I am not quite sure.
            I remember I was 10 when I took an airplane all by myself to spend my first summer with her alone. She had a swimming pool, AND she was living in San Diego. There was always some place for us to go during the day. The ocean was warm, and the beaches were inviting. We could go to the Zoo, the Wild Animal Park, or to Sea World. In the evenings we would drink diet RC Cola, eat Cheese-Its and spend hours playing Scrabble or Gin Rummy. She loved everything Hawaii related, so I learned to play on her Ukulele. She said San Diego reminded her of Hawaii. I loved it there so much I went to college at San Diego State University as a Comparative Literature major, and my first job was working the summer at Sea World next to the Dolphin Show.
          When we had down time, during our visits, she would share her office sanctuary with me, which was half sewing room and half genealogical library.  I was regaled with the wonderful adventures of our ancestors who came from exotic places, made perilous voyages across a big ocean, and then lived harsh lives as America's earliest pioneers. Mostly I was interested in the "exotic places" they came from, because there were Castles, and possibly leprechauns.  I was young, but the writing bug was starting to creep in on me.
           This summer visit became a ritual all the way through my teenage years (the mid 80's). Each summer, I would read at least a dozen books, mostly of the murder mystery variety. I loved Agatha Christie, Nancy Drew, and Stephen King. I had also discovered The Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. If we didn't stay in San Diego we would road trip up through Yosemite, where she would tell me about her teen years as a camp counselor, which sounded exactly like the set up for Dirty Dancing, and then we would settle in at Lake Tahoe for a week of fun and reading. That faux wood paneled Station Wagon only played 8-track tapes, by the way. Her favorites were Wayne Newton, Barbara Streisand, Big Band music of the World War II era, and groups like the Andrews' Sisters. The journey from San Diego to Lake Tahoe, with only that to listen to, made for a long ride. But of course, I ended up learning each song and sang along with enthusiasm.
            As I grew older, and she felt I was responsible enough to care for them, she began to send me binders full of her genealogical findings. She wrote narratives about the families based on her research, to make it easier to understand, and filled out each family tree by hand on large scrolls. All her research was done by going to libraries, traveling to Mormon Churches that had genealogical data, and writing (via snail mail) to multiple State and County Departments in regards to Census Data, Birth Certificates, Death Certificates, Probates, Property Sales and Land Transfers; anything historically relevant to help her meander her way around the ever looming questions and perpetual dead ends. It was decades worth of work.
            An outsider might look in and wonder why does a woman spend all her time doing this? What does she have to gain? Well, her husband worked, and aside from the occasional secretarial work she did to assist him, she needed a hobby. She loved to garden, that was an ongoing pass time of hers, and she always needed to live where there was sunshine most the year.  I didn't know this at the time, but she suffered from depression, and she did say once that she had to take a "happy" pill each day. I get it now, because I too suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. I didn't have to wonder about her inspiration though, I saw the wonderful places her imagination could wander to as each clue led to the unraveling of a family mystery. It was detective work. It was addictive. It was fulfilling.
          The further and further she would go back in time, the more fascinating the stories became, and the fact that these characters were our family, well that made it even cooler!  It made me feel I belonged to something larger than just my mother and father, and all the dysfunctional relationships circling around me. Time with her also offered me a safe warm blanket of stability; for I knew she was always there for me.
            When I grew older, had children of my own, and moved around, she understood. It saddened her that we didn't have that time together anymore, but through genealogy she continued to send me more research and more stories for us to share - always with the thought, that someday I would continue where she left off. I had known for a long while that I wanted to take these narratives and use them as inspiration to write a novel of some sort. She thought that was a great idea.
            In April of 2010 she passed away of Congenital Heart Failure. In her office sanctuary a large box had been set aside with my name on it. In it was even more research, but it turns out this was her first husband's family information on behalf of my mother. I inherited this quest as well. 

A couple years later, I finally sat down and started trying to figure out how to digitize all this family information for posterity. My first thought: where do I even begin? So I started with her.

http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/53599200/family