Family Tree

 

Family Tree

Michael Field – Flash Memoir - 8/14/23

 

Who was it that penned the line “I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree?” Oh, yes! Joyce Kilmer. Well, I have no love for poetry, so I am sure that trees are more lovely, certainly more useful, than any poem.

But that is just the way I am – practical and literal. Just as my father was and just as my son is. Which brings up another kind of tree, the family tree. Who was it who originally thought that a tree was a useful metaphor for a genealogical chart. It may work for the kind of person who has a host of information about their grands and great grands. I am not that kind of person. If I were to chart the ancestors whose names I know, my family tree would appear to be seriously blighted by the missing limbs. And, often, what information we had, like my paternal grandfather’s name, was later proven to be wrong.

On my mother’s side the metaphor is all wrong. Some years ago, a researcher took my mother’s first ancestor to arrive in the New World in the 1640s and charted his children and his children’s children down three centuries to my maternal grandfather, who died before I was born. This chart is not a tree, it’s more like a bunch of flowers, gathered and hung upside down to dry, dead but preserved to provide insight to succeeding generations.

Then, were I to do my family tree, I would want to add my kids. What are they? Roots? Bad apples falling from the tree? I must redraw the tree starting from their generation. Now, all my limbs have to bend to the left to make room for my wife’s tree on the right. At least, the blight in my family tree will be less noticeable. 

I say I am the black sheep son of the black sheep son of a black sheep son. That is why there is so little information available to populate my family tree. Records abound for notable people; ignoble people live and die unrecorded.

If a tree doesn’t work to tell my family’s story, then what? What better way to show the genealogical connection than by genes. I don’t have the DNA tests to prove it, but there are some things I do know. I know for certain that I am my father’s son and, so too, my son is his father’s son.