:: sweettalk ::

:: Monday, May 12, 2003 ::

God, I offer myself to Thee to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do Thy Will. Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of Life. May I do Thy Will always.

Oh, that You would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would always be with me, and that You would keep me from evil.

Thank You for keeping me sober today. Amen.

The family endures because it offers the truth of mortality and immortality within the same group. The family endures because, better than the commune, kibbutz, or classroom, it seems to individualize and socialize its children, to make us feel at the same time unique and yet joined to all humanity, accepted as is and yet challenged to grow, loved unconditionally and yet propelled by greater expectations. Only in the family can so many extremes be reconciled and synthesized. Only in the family do we have a lifetime in which to do it. -- Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Family and Politics

Yesterday was definitely a family day in at least a couple of ways. I basically waster weekend accomplishing little of what I had planned to do. I awoke feeling very sad for some reason and still thinking about my email conversation with Tucker.

I finally managed to shower and dress and went to buy two dozen tulips and a Mother's Day card each for Mom and Granny. I drove out to Tony Roma's in Grapevine where our family was meeting for lunch. We had a very enjoyable time, but I struggled to even break a smile. My brother Bart and his family had spent the weekend at Lake Texoma and drove in to meet us.

My nieces Hailee and Grace and nephew Brooks were as entertaining as ever. Hailee is nine and seemed a bit put out with her siblings as I often was at that age. Brooks is four and has a fondness and encyclopedic knowledge for many animals but a particular fascination with worms and ladybugs and a definite aversion to spiders and crocodiles. Grace just turned one and is taller than 100% of children her age. I fear that she may be an Amazon Queen as our paternal grandfather was 6'7". Still, she's adorable right now.

I drove home and checked my email to find that a woman had sent me a message regarding one of our ancestors who fought and died in the Battle of Culloden during the Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland. That line of our family tree stops with him. It seems that her son-in-law is also a descendant of him, and she offered to send me the information that she had.

I ran a Google search on the ancestor and found a response to one of my posts from long ago from another supposed relative whose email address is at the Scottish Parliament. I hope to hear back from him soon.

I immediately pulled out my genealogy files and started going through them. I haven't done much work on our family tree in the past couple of years since I bought my new computer. The Family Tree Maker file still resides on my old Packard Bell computer which now refuses to boot up. I found a place in Dallas that performs data recovery and hope to retrieve the file soon. I'd like to begin researching that again now that I have a couple of new leads.

I've already researched a maternal line back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in England where one ancestor was married to King Henry VIII's niece Lady Mary Grey, sister of the English monarch Lady Jane Grey. One paternal line goes back to the Battle of Hastings during the Norman Conquest in 1066. Another paternal line stops with an ancestor from Corbit County, Ireland, about which I've never been able to find any evidence that the county ever existed. I recently found some new information about a paternal ancestor Mary Draper Ingles on whose life the book and TV movie Follow the River were based. The new information links her back to a French ancestor from whom was descended Davy Crockett of Alamo fame. It seems that most of our ancestors, at least in America, were either fighting in wars, engaged in politics, or running from Indians (Native Americans, not Desis, Seyd).

Anyway, thanks to Barbara who emailed me about the Scottish ancestor. I now feel excited about something new and am eager to begin chronicling our family history again.

:: Kyle 6:52 AM 0 comments
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