My mother always told me our history was important, but I never really listened. I did what I wanted without thought of the past and sometimes without thought of the future. When I was thirteen, she got very serious about our ancestry and started going to the library several times a week to use their free version of Ancestry.com. She became obsessed with our ancestors and found everything she could about marriages, deaths, children, occupations. As the years went on, my mother delved deeper into our lives and history and almost lost herself in the process. She sometimes forgot to pick me up from school, to make dinner, the worst upset was when she forgot my sister’s birthday all together.
I began to wonder what she was really after. Was she really this interested in our past or was she searching for something? Her father left when she was five and I sometimes wondered if she was searching for him. Maybe she was searching to see if he had started another life somewhere else. Then one day, she suddenly stopped searching. When I asked what had made her stop, she refused to answer, but to this day, she has not checked her ancestry once. Maybe she finally found out my father had another family in Texas. I had known for years.
Standing Room Only 