And Then It Was Two

At first, it was one—yet a task seemingly as epic as that one revolution racing through the bleak emptiness of space to encircle the sun. Day by day, stretching to reach that goal. One day: one post.

Simple. Three hundred sixty five times simple.

It started in May. The month for remembering mothers. I started out with those good intentions. I wanted to remember my mother, growing up in a family moving from city to city seeking employment wherever, whenever, just so the kids could be fed—but not in a soup line!—during those destitute years of the Great Depression. Coming of age in an amalgamation of the sounds of the Big Band era and the sights of pre-World War II tensions. A woman who followed her dream and left her Midwest hometown for an acting career before those bright lights of New York City.

I wanted, too, to remember my maternal grandmother—she of the old southern heritage, who could tell of roots reaching beyond the advent of statehood in Florida, before the genesis of nationhood in the Carolinas and even Virginia. I knew compiling documentation of her family’s history would yield me entrance into the historic company of lineage societies, but I wanted to take this journey to provide documentation for my own edification, also.

Then, too, there were the mothers whose stories lacked verification—some shrouded in outright mystery. I wanted to pursue my paternal grandmother’s stories—where she came from and who she left behind. Her heritage—as far as I know to this point—is a short trail from the mid 1950s back to a brick wall standing stubbornly immovable only sixty, maybe seventy, years prior.

From there, the trail led—seemingly—everywhere. There were the stories of my husband’s indomitable grandmother—granddaughter, herself, of an Irish immigrant grandmother with a mystery of her own to pursue. From mother to daughter to sons, their wives, their cousins, their distant kin—one story at a time, the strands of family wove themselves together. Stretching the connection at times, and at other times, nearly disappearing into the warp and woof of their surroundings, the stories kept coming, day after day.

And then, as incredible as it might have seemed at the beginning, it wasn’t one anymore.

Now—today—it is two.