At the Corner of Sunrise and Sunset

 

Back roads can provide us with some unique scenery—and confounding concepts. The other day, an errand to a city two hour's drive north of my home put me on track to retrace my steps just as rush hour was beginning. Traveling with my daughter, who doesn't mind exploring options, we decided to avoid the traffic by returning home via some back roads. Curious to look around as we drove from one town to another on our impromptu route, while stopped at one traffic light, I spotted the street signs marking the intersection: the red light had us paused at the corner of Sunrise and Sunset.

Give that one a thought. Could that even be possible? Yet, here we were, accomplishing the impossible.

Later that evening, I reconsidered that little discovery: a spot in the universe where it was, indeed, possible to be at the nexus of absolute opposites. Here I was, opening my laptop that night, preparing to chase after Theresa Blaising Stevens' roots. And what did I find? Two brothers claiming their father was named Henry, while the rest of the brothers—if they acknowledged anyone at all—told their families their father's name was Lawrence.

Wait. Either he was, or he wasn't...unless we are at the corner of Sunrise and Sunset.

Such a tidy tale was presented in Theresa's mother's obituary. Perhaps in 1907, that was the way the world was: organized and orderly. The family lore said Mary Blaising's husband was Lawrence, so that was who he was. And that he died in Paris, in service to his native France, prompting his widowed wife's exodus in 1866—along with ten children—to America.

Perhaps that is more a romantic notion than a report of reality. One disrupting detail: there was a "Laurent" Blaising who died in Paris—but his death came sixteen years after the supposed precipitating event that propelled a desperate widow and her ten orphaned children to seek asylum in the United States.

But remember: we are at the corner of Sunrise and Sunset, where little oxymoronic details—dead? or alive? Schrödinger?—matter little. It is that romantic notion that plays well in those 1907 obituaries and in stories families repeat to themselves.

In the here and now of 1907, perhaps the stories the children repeated to themselves provided comfort. But for us in their future, at that corner of Sunrise and Sunset, we can look back through time—and several assembled digitized documents—and sort through the details. We can reconstruct historic timelines as well as personal and family timelines and see whether the plot lines can even intersect.

While my French may be a bit rusty, we'll take a look next week at what can be found about Mary Blaising's husband, whoever he might have been.