Sorry about the long absence from the blogosphere, which is mostly explained by a long vacation to the Midwest. I returned on Sunday and took yesterday as a much-needed recovery period from the long drives I've done in the past week and a half. All total I drove through eight states and logged more than 2400 miles.
It was tiring but very enjoyable. I travelled with the parents and the kiddo. We travelled first to the midwest state where my brother currently hangs his hat. His home is only a few counties over from the one where the ancestors that carried my maiden name had lived in the 1810s-1850s. I wrote a book about these particular ancestors back in 2004 and have been researching them ever since so needless to say, my interest and excitement were high. My ancestors had all moved away by 1852 except one girl who decided to stay behind with her husband. I wanted to find her family's descendents and their family cemetery so I got the chance to drive through the county they lived in and travel all the little roads that they used.
I managed to locate their old homestead, as well as the cemetery -- but the last, only by sheer serendipity. I stopped at a house about an hour after driving around trying to locate the cemetery, meaning to ask the residents if they knew where it was. Not only did they know, but the house just happened to be the home of the great-great-grandson of the woman I was searching for! Talk about fate. I not only found the cemetery (grown over, way back in the woods, I never would have found it myself) but I also found long-lost kin. Life sure is cool some times.
Kiddo hadn't ever seen the area of the country that I was born, since the last time she was there was when she was only a few years old. I really enjoyed taking her into the woods I used to wander and introducing her to the man that bought them from my grandfather; the one who used to tell me to watch out because "there are bears in them there woods!" We ate wild blackberries and wandered barefoot and didn't have to watch for bugs or snakes or scorpions, which freaked her out because everything is poisonous or stickery in Texas. I introduced her to sweet Midwest corn (instead of this field corn crap here in Texas) and dark red tomatoes as big as softballs. She ate fresh cucumbers she helped my brother pick from the garden and baked bread with flour that my sister-in-law got from the Amish people near their house. We saw beatiful green grassy meadows, acres of corn and soybean fields bursting with bounty, the hills of the Appalachians, dark rich soil with the smell of the earth rising from it, the heavy weight of the humid air, the hoots of mourning doves, the trills of the wrens, and the constant buzzing of cicadas. Home.
I own land there....or will, once my parents deed it to me as they plan to do in order to make sure it remains in our family. It's been in my family for 130 years. I would really like to go back someday. It's mid-america and the people work with their hands in factories and in the fields. They're good hearted and down to earth. Not much market or need for professional jobs there. But when I go back, I feel at home. Who knows what I might do. I do know my daughter loved it and it pleased me. I am glad that -- although she was born and raised here -- that she can feel a bit of love for her mother's roots.
In other news, it appears that exh will get married again this month. A friend of mine heard it from his sister. He hasn't mentioned it to me and I doubt he will until he actually does it. Or I'll hear it secondhand from kiddo. We'll see.
So, I'm back here, and it's back to my old routine. I sure did have a good time.
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