Complex Numbers

Heritage

Tell us a fact about one of your ancestors. Where does your family come from? How far back can you trace your ancestry?

Real family or birth family?

It only matters in terms of what you're trying to prove for yourself, I suppose. Birth family contributes genetics, obviously. As I've noted before, though, I have no real interest in seeking them out. Last thing I need at my age is to find another mother. Yes, I know who she is. As of a couple of years ago, she was still alive. Still no interest in contacting her.

As for real family, I talked about them in my last entry. So here's a fact I don't think I've disclosed: One of my grandmothers died in 1918. Dad never told me how; I think the memory was always too painful for him, even though he would have been too young to remember her. From what I've been able to piece together, I suspect it was the flu epidemic that was rampant at the time.

And that's as far back as it goes. Like most people, I suppose, I got curious after a while, and when the internet made it possible for me to be lazy and still determine my heritage, I tried tracing it back. My legal name is extremely rare, so I figured it should be easy, right? Nope. Grandparents, end of story, as if they sprang from the ether to which my lineage will return when I'm gone.

Well, that's not entirely true. I know who my maternal great-grandfather was. From him descended not only my grandfather and mother - neither of whom was in any way famous - but a particular family who shall remain nameless for security reasons, but whose influence on the world is decidedly malign. Sometimes you learn things you'd rather not.

In the words of both Popeye and God, I am what I am. I don't need to trace lineage back to find myself; I'm right here. I might as well be a child of Earth; apart from visible features such as the pale skin and blue eyes that marks me as primarily of Northern European extraction, there's nothing to prove anything for or against a heritage from anywhere on the planet. I am, in short, a lineage of one, world without end, amen. Even that is merely an accident of genetics, which I've already argued against as a meaningful measure of anything.

There's a freedom in that, you know. I'm not boxed in (well, apart from having a fractured relationship with the accursed daystar, which keeps me from frolicking in the outdoors - pale skin, remember). There are enough factors keeping us apart from each other; why not just acknowledge our shared humanity and not worry about artificial divisions? Go back far enough and we're all descended from the same (relatively) hairless ape, anyway.

I mean, I get wanting to know where you come from. I just think it's more relevant to know where you're going.