Treasured Scraps

Last Saturday, my local Family History Center (or is it now a Family Discovery Center?) had an open house. It's been completely revamped, remodeled, and retooled into something amazing, and to kick off the grand opening, we set up a whole bunch of displays around the church, with each display taking a different theme. Mine was Personal Connections and Sharing (or something like that). I got to display a number of my family history books, treasures, and discoveries, and talk to people as they came through about what I've done to involve my family (the non-genealogists) in what I do and what I find, and how I can share it with them.

As I stood there at my table, I started looking at the items displayed - postcards, photographs, DNA test results, a ribbon from a Civil War unit reunion, and others. I started thinking about the people these items represented and reminded me of. I realized that, compared to all the items my ancestors owned, possessed, or directly or indirectly created in their lifetimes, most of what I have amounts to a only few scraps. It's like comparing their life to a shirt that gets put through a food processor, and the shreds get scattered to the winds, and here I am spending my life chasing down each thread I can find and trying to stitch that shirt back together. In many cases, I don't know what the pattern is, where the threads are, or what the shirt is going to look like when I'm done. And given how many ancestors I have, plus their children and other connections, I feel like I'm trying to recreate a whole department store's worth of shirts. Daunting doesn't begin to describe it. So why do I do it?

I do it because I owe my existence to these people. Had they not been born, lived, and died, I wouldn't be here. I do it because the more I try to understand them, the more I find I understand myself and my current family - why my people and I are the way we are. I do it because it gives me a connection to something so much larger than myself. I spent much of my childhood years being bullied at school, even at church sometimes, and felt very alone. But finding these ancestors of mine, my family, helps me overcome that feeling, by realizing that there are people out there, past and present, that are my family, and I'm not alone, even if we don't speak much, or even know each other exists.

Family really is the most important thing we have. Each thread I find, each scrap I collect, reminds me of that. So I will never stop looking for those treasured scraps and threads, and hope that one day someone (or someones!) in my family will continue the search and the collecting.