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Friday, July 17, 2015

Ancestry

I am the descendant of a slave owner.  I am the descendant of Italian Catholic immigrants. I am the descendant of a man killed in action at the Battle of Shiloh fighting for the Confederacy and buried in a mass grave. I am the descendant of the first baby born in the United States after the family had been separated for a decade by an ocean.

I am the descendant of a young war widow and mother whose home and land seems to have been confiscated by the Federal Army. I am the descendant of a man who died drunk in the snow and his dead body was carried back to his family. I am the descendant of the second wife after the first wife died too young. I am the descendant of the second husband when divorce and remarriage was taboo.

I am the descendant of a railroad man who died in the line of work. I am the descendant of an alcoholic. I am the descendant of a couple who married because they had to. I am the descendant of a small town Southern man whose enlistment brought him around the country, to the Pacific theater, and around the world. I am the descendant of a lineman who handled high voltage electrical lines.

I am the descendant of a man who would have never allowed his daughter to marry a Protestant if he had been alive to stop it. I am the descendant of a woman aghast at the notion of her son marrying a Catholic.

I am the descendant of a high school dropout because her mother needed her to work for money. I am a descendant of a wife who had to work to support her family when married women didn't work because her husband drank all his money.

I am the descendant of a man who spent his life in the integrated Army and whose children went to integrated schools and for whom integration was a material good. I am the descendant of a Southern woman who used the n-word in casual conversation, not out of active malignancy but because that's how you identified people. I am the descendant of a Southern man who abhorred the n-word and disallowed it in his house.

I am a descendant of a woman who paid her full tithe to the church even when her children suffered for it. I am the descendant of a man who rarely went to church. I am the descendant of a teacher. I am the descendant of an engineer.

I am the sum total of all these people. Some of them are sympathetic and some of them are horrid. I have some measure of affection for all of them. How can I not? I would not exist except for them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I remember my horror when I came home from college and realized that my beloved grandparents were using racial slurs, like you mentioned, just because that is the word people used. That's why I do identify with the Scout in Watchman, perhaps more so than the perfect Scout/Atticus in Mockingbird. Maybe those of us who grew up loving people of a certain generation in the South can appreciate the complexity in a way some of my Northern friends can't.

Meredith