Have you ever come away from a situation and questioned what you're doing in life? Not in the negative way we're used to, where you lay out the list of comparisons and see nothing but failure. But questioning in a way that is actually helpful. Like asking yourself "Hey, you once had dreams right? What were they and what stopped you from going after them?" Or when you realize that the sounds of children running around and being silly was a different (and absolutely preferable) kind of loud compared to the tv blaring Hallmark movies and old westerns all day. Last night, I spent the evening with people I'd never met in real life (though Twitter is another story entirely). We shared a meal around the table, laughed as the boys performed skits between slices of pizza, had my first experience with a Jessie tree, and heard myself saying "THIS (the family moments) is what I look forward to the most." I drove home thinking about the different ways in which hope a...
In a chat about DNA tests and family, I started thinking about what we know about those who've gone before us and how those tales affect us. For years, I didn't know much about my family. I knew that my parents weren't married, that I was given a name separate from theirs, that my grandmother was the first person to hold me, and a few scattered memories that remained confusing until I was an adult and able to ask questions. Later, there would be stories only told at funerals: The grandmother who chased her grown grandsons past the fire department, brandishing a bb gun; the estranged alcoholic who showed up as his ex's home after the bar closed, demanding to search the house while verbally berating the mother of his children; The cousin of a relative who was put on disability for being racist. However, the stories that took their toll on me were the ones from my time in the Midwest. Slow, quiet threads woven in the fabric of our day-to-day which ended the same every time...