Back on Track

While diversions—some planned, some unforeseen—take us away from our intended research projects, eventually we need to get back to the stated plan. Yes, my recent trip back to my home-away-from-home—Columbus, Ohio—bequeathed me with raw material to fuel more family history research on my DAR-potential maternal McClellan line and related Davis and Broyles lines, but I need to recall that stated purpose toward which I had already been working.

Despite this newfound pile of newspaper clippings and old letters just begging me to follow the “ooh, shiny” trail, including details on my grandfather Davis—who, in one document, listed his occupation as “Railroad Man”—I think it would be wiser to stick with The Plan I’ve already laid out.

That Plan, if you remember, was based on the fact that my daughter intends to spend a semester of her college career abroad in Ireland. And, if you remember, my husband’s heritage—at least on his father’s side—was one hundred percent Irish descendant, so why waste an opportunity like that for further research? If I do get the chance to travel to Ireland during that time, I want to hit the ground running when I get there.

The target date for this opportunity is fall semester next year. While September, 2014, seems light years away at this point, it will—I guarantee it—get here before I manage to get ready.

Not that I haven’t been tempted to stray from the research path already. I confess I’ve succumbed to that urge time and again.

So, much as I know some of you will be curious to see how my maternal family’s link unfolds with “Railroad Man,” for now, I think it best for us to set aside this treasure trove for later study and return to the point at which we left Patrick Kelly of my husband’s Irish immigrant line.

Tomorrow, we’ll pick up the narrative from where we had left Patrick’s wife—the former Emma Carle Brown—after the death of her first husband, and take a look at the life Patrick and Emma had together in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as they raised their large family in the early 1900s.

Suitcase Packed—With Memories

Do you ever wonder what thoughts go into the decision regarding what to stow in a carry-on bag?

Some people—like my daughter, recently—choose to put everything in their carry-on bag (or "Rollie," as my daughter prefers to call it). Why check any bags at all, when you can crush, mangle and obliterate all your clothes in one single portable device?

Some people—like business travelers—prefer the speed and assurance of keeping their secrets (and their underwear) close at hand.

And then there are people like me. The ones not willing to risk loss of a very different type of irreplaceable.

A couple years ago, it was me, stashing a year's worth of blog posts in the form of letters, photos and memorabilia from Irish Chicago ancestors in my carry-on bag. There was no way I was ever going to risk losing those.

"Have you ever lost a suitcase?" my husband demanded.

Well, no. But I came close. On one trip to Columbus, I arrived without my Sealyham Terrier. He got shipped to Albuquerque.

I always wanted to travel to Albuquerque.

But not then. I had to wait for him until after midnight that night. He arrived at my mother's house via taxi. I had to tip the cab driver for a passenger I bet he hadn't expected to have that night. And why not? You didn't think my dog was going to pay up for that tip, did you?

When it came to the treasure trove of memorabilia I received during that wonderful trip to Chicago a couple years back, you can be sure every last wisp of that ephemera arrived at my home, courtesy of my carry-on bag. No way stuff as irreplaceable as that was going to be checked.

And yesterday, I played re-runs. While not as hefty a haul as was the stash from Chicago, my booty from Columbus also claimed a special berth in that same carry-on bag.

How could it be otherwise? I can hardly wait to get this pile of papers home and organized, scanned and catalogued.

That's the kind of project that keeps one looking forward instead of dragging backward into the mire of things that cannot be changed.

Sometimes, I'm grateful for the therapy of memories.

Goodbye, Columbus

In the post-funeral quiet, after all the rest of the family has rushed back to their daily grind, I've had the luxury of mulling over life in Columbus, Ohio, in the intermittent opportunities I've had to absorb its ambience.

Grabbing the ever-present cup of coffee to fend off the kind of chill now unfamiliar to this California transplant, I've taken the last two days to sit down, relax and go through old scrapbooks, stare at photographs capturing long-gone memories and become absolutely amazed at one discovery: I have an aunt who felt it her mission to pass along the snippets of old family ephemera, much the same as my husband's grandmother had served that capacity for her Tully family.

If you remember, it was Agnes Tully Stevens who had taken it upon herself to collect, preserve and pass along all the material sequestered by her mother, Catherine Malloy Tully—those wonderful, tangible tokens of the Tully-Stevens heritage that ultimately found their home with my own family and, by extension, I've been able to share through posts right here at A Family Tapestry.

While I knew about the rich fabric of my husband's Irish line, all these years, I had presumed I was the holder of an impoverished family line devoid of any such tokens of family history. Yesterday, looking through boxes of memorabilia tucked away over the decades by my aunt, I discovered I was wrong. While I can't say I've been recipient of any of those wonderful antiques some people boast of as part of their heritage, I now see I have been blessed with a stash of photographs, newspaper clippings and even ephemera giving me a sense of person for the past two generations in my own Davis line. These are the kinds of tokens that bring a person to life in the eyes of those who barely knew them.

They are also the type of material that reminds me to pick up the DAR application process where I had left off last year, and add some of the documentation I've stumbled upon in this past week. We are, after all, talking about the passing of a descendant of a Patriot here.

Of course, I am quite delighted. I have a lot to get busy scanning, and I can't wait to share these small gifts with family. This is the kind of present that helps fill the void after such a loss. With so much more just found that I need to attend to on my aunt's behalf, I'm beginning to realize how unlikely it will be that all this business will be completed by the time of our flight out of here this afternoon. But at this point, how can I just walk away from all this?

Maybe, just maybe, I'll be back

May Never Pass This Way Again

The temperature plummeted a full twenty degrees overnight in Columbus—along with the promise of snow—but last night, the only thing I had on my mind was a dish of ice cream.

It's hard, leaving a place that I never called home, but which could very well have served as a second home, anyhow.

Columbus, Ohio, has been that kind of place from my earliest growing-up years. It has become a city I've come to know—and navigate—through frequent visits. At first, those visits were sporadic, when it was just a trip home for my mother, to visit her parents and sister who had never left home in quite the same attention-grabbing way she had. As times improved for young marrieds raising kids, we kids saw more of our mother's Columbus—enough for my sister and me to claim our favorite spots.

I remember the trips from our grandparents' place on Charing Road up Riverside Drive to the Columbus Zoo—which, to our dismay, was not located in Columbus, but in a remote spot beyond the city limits, making the trip unendurably longer for fidgety grade-school students during summer break.

I fondly recall trips even further out into the country to places which I euphemistically dub "the dairy air" where one such farm featured its own ice cream parlor. On those lingering summer evenings, after my grandfather returned home from work, he'd drive us out there after dinner. We'd all hurry inside the store holding our breath, order our favorite flavor of ice cream scooped atop a cone, then return outdoors to eat our treat in its native habitat.

Whatever were we thinking?

As far as the cars that got us to our summertime destinations—whether inside city limits or not—I remember my grandfather asking us kids, before heading out to work for the day, what kind of car we would like him to bring home that evening. My sister and I would always clamor for a convertible. When he came home that evening, sure enough, there would be a convertible sitting in the driveway. My grandmother would heave a sigh, retreat to her bedroom for a kerchief and we'd all head out the door for an evening drive. That was the kind of treat the grandchildren of a car salesman could expect during summer vacation visits.

Growing up changed the nature of the visits but not the location. While we grandchildren went off to college and entered our own careers, grandparents and aunt continued life in the same community they had come to call home decades before. After the death of my father, even the renegade member of that Davis family circle—my mother, who had left town as soon as she could graduate from high school—eventually acquiesced and returned home.

That began the yearly pilgrimages to Columbus. And it stayed that way for many, many years—until the inevitable happened and we lost our mother, and health difficulties confronted our aunt. Then, a frenzy of activity escalated those visits.

Until it was all over.

That is what left me, last night, thinking about the import of my flight out of here tomorrow afternoon. It will most likely represent my last time to ever visit this city. Gone are those childhood visits with grandparents. Gone, too, are holidays with my mom. Gone, even, are my adult-perspective business dealings with those whose services I needed to engage on behalf of my aunt.

There are some things I will leave behind with this departure from Columbus that are inextricably intertwined in my own identity. I'm not sure I can accurately say that, upon leaving here, it will be as if I am tearing my identity apart. But there are parts of the Columbus area—and especially the nearby cities of Powell and Dublin, where my mother and aunt, respectively, last lived—that most certainly are deeply engrained within my consciousness. They may not have been the elements that shaped me per se, but they definitely were areas I enjoyed having as part of my life.

Perhaps it was for that reason—as if to capture the essence of what I was about to leave for the last time—I found myself wanting to retreat to some semblance of a childhood memory, recreate a family tradition at a place we frequented and have a scoop of ice cream at Graeter's just this one last time.

Even if it was followed by snow.

Won't Ever Fall Again

"Don't ever fall and break your neck," my aunt would tell me. No surprise here; she had achieved the dubious accomplishment of doing so, herself—twice—in the last year.

Of course, every time she mentioned it, I would promise her I'd try my best. After all, it wasn't as if she had planned either of her own falls. All she knew was that the experience taxed her normally upbeat temperament to the hilt. If she could spare anyone else that struggle, she was happy to help.

Falls: things like that happen unexpectedly. And they had been happening to her a lot. One fall, though, was worse than all the rest and told us things would be very different from that point forward.

It was the night before Christmas Eve. My aunt—a professional person who never married, never had children of her own—had made plans to spend Christmas with a former colleague. They had had an enjoyable day together in town and had returned to her house to pick up luggage and her beloved dog on their way out of town. In the flurry of last minute activity, she ran to the door, caught her foot on something in the entryway, fell forward, breaking her knee cap, then slamming her head into the wall as she went down.

It all happened so fast. When all the joyous holiday activity came to that abrupt stop, everyone in the room was aware that something serious had just occurred.

Then began the long process of removing her carefully to the emergency room, and the long vigil, through the holidays, through surgery, through recovery, through rehab therapy.

And then, finally, home.

My aunt loved her home. She loved being there with her pet. She loved her morning jogs, her multiple daily walks through the neighborhood, meeting and greeting a wide variety of neighbors over the several blocks she walked. It meant a lot to her to be able to go back home after an emergency as devastating as that. It meant quite a medical accomplishment for a woman of her age—she was eighty six at the time—to be able to overcome all those challenges.

During that difficult time, my sister and I realized a metamorphosis taking place in our family dynamics. While our aunt had no children of her own, here we were, essentially two people without a mother. Our mom had passed away several years previously, and through the ensuing years, we had focused all our inter-generational efforts on building a new kind of relationship with our aunt. When that accident had befallen her, it was as if it had happened to our own mother.

For a brief time, it seemed like all would resume normalcy and—despite an unwelcomed walker to assist her—life at home would again be the norm.

That dream met an abrupt end within a few short weeks. With one sudden fall, we all faced more than reruns: all the repair work from the first surgery was dislodged and had to be removed. More weeks in a convalescent setting. More hard work at therapy. More discouraging news. It meant a time in which trying one's best was not good enough. Things were not going to get any better.

Extended family from out of state spent more time in Ohio in that one year than we ever imagined could be possible. In my last visit to see my aunt, my husband and I had the luxury of spending all day for nearly two weeks at her side, visiting, talking, encouraging her. She wanted to learn how to use an iPad so she could use FaceTime to talk with family. Her eyes lit up every time she connected with someone for a call and could see—as well as hear—who she was talking to.

One evening, as my husband and I were preparing to say good night to her after the day's visit, we sat in one of the convalescent hospital's comfortable sitting areas. In the twilight, my aunt grew reflective.

"I don't ever want to fall again," she mused, and then paused to amend that thought.

"I don't ever want to fall again—until I fall into the arms of Jesus."

And early last Saturday morning, one week ago, she did.

Foxtail Life

Sometimes, life is like grappling with a foxtail. Though you don't want to be forced into that direction, the only way you may go is forward.

The last few weeks have been like that—somehow being impelled forward to an end point I didn't want to face.

Have you ever had to deal with a foxtail? I had never heard of the nuisance before my husband and I first got together. We have a sort of blended family: his, hers and ours, when it comes to pets. Into our marriage, I brought my Sealyham Terrier, whom you have already met. My husband brought Widget.

Widget was the kind of dog, I was sure, nobody could learn to love. Despite being a purebred Lhasa Apso, her straggly mop was always reminiscent of Nobody's Dog. She was alright, I suppose, as dogs go. Except when she got it into her head to be obstinate.

One disconcerting habit Widget developed was rooting around with her nose under the fence at the far end of our backyard. This yard, you need to understand, is the undeveloped back half of an acre lot at the indistinct edge between Suburbia and the rural nether regions just outside our city limits.

It comes fully stocked with weeds.

Low-slung Widget seemed naturally constructed to shove her nuzzle just underneath the fence in such a way as to scoop up those nasty foxtails. We were forever taking the poor thing to the vet to have foxtails surgically removed from up her nostrils, no matter how we tried to avoid it. After all, it is a pretty tall order to completely sanitize the great outdoors.

The key thing about foxtails is that they transform every pathway into a one way street. They can go in. But they won't come out. Nobody has yet genetically engineered a reverse gear for the pesky things, and I doubt that will happen any time soon.

There are other things in life that sometimes cause me to wish there were a reverse gear at hand—you know, in one of those kits labeled, "In case of emergency, break glass here." I could sometimes use that reverse gear. That rewind. That "Get Out of Jail Free" card.

But sometimes, there is no way to make things better.

Sometimes you just have to go through.

And endure.

They say those are the types of experiences that build character, but now is not one of those times I am in the market for character. What I'd really like is a world without fear, a world without serious disease. Kind of like Amy Grant's holiday favorite where she sings, "This is My Grown-up Christmas List." I wish for all sorts of good that are just not built to happen, once the foxtail has passed this way.

Sometimes, there is no going back.

When I wrote that thought above, I was stuck on a much-delayed flight to Columbus, Ohio, back to my second home to be with family. Understandably, I was in a rather dark mood—how else can it be when we are stuck going forward to a place we never wished to be? Yesterday was spent with bereaved family members, sharing the visceral sad moments that one day in the very distant future, some family history fanatic will dutifully harvest as dusty, dried fragments of the pain we all are going through right now. Somehow, on this end of the spectrum, I'm hardly an enthusiast for "Telling the Story," or preserving it for future generations.

As they say about the birth process, it's a messy ordeal. But at least at the moment a mother has given birth, there is joy. Fast forward to the other end of the spectrum, no matter how far removed from that joyful starting point, it is still a messy ordeal. From this vantage point, though, our only respite is to combine the sadness of loss with the hope of promises about the future.

In those one-way processes of life, birth may produce joy, but the best that death can hope for is faith.


Illustration above, "Alopecurus pratensis," from Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz 1885, Gera, Germany; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

The One Person We Forgot to Remember

File this one away as a postscript to a postscript. Sometimes, that is exactly what happens to the smallest, the youngest, the least significant—especially in the wake of great turmoil: they get forgotten.

We need to go back, sweep aside all the angst and drama and remind ourselves of a series of dates and events leading up to the point of John Brown’s death. Remember, it was April 22, 1897, when Emma Carle and John H. Brown were married in Logansport, Indiana. About three months later came John’s suicide on July 19, for which the four town newspapers erupted with three days run of reporting.

In the quiet following this tragedy, Emma Carle Brown gave birth to a son, whom she named Fred William Brown. Baptised February 20, 1898, Emma’s son most likely was born on January 29.

For those of you prone to whip out a calculator at the slightest provocation, you have probably already deduced that this new arrival in January, 1898, was indeed a son of the now-deceased John H. Brown. Not only that, but you most likely realize that his young mother was not only going through the trauma of the death of her husband that preceding July, but was also in the throes of morning sickness.

Whatever Emma lived through during that difficult time in July, her yet-unborn son was also living through with her. While no one was yet aware of his presence, in some way, he was very aware of the anguish occurring all around him.

We hold an unquestioned belief that what occurs to the people we are close to—those among our family and friends whose lives are intertwined with ours—has repercussions in our own lives, too. Understandably, what befell Emma Carle Brown that July day when her husband chose to end his life had repercussions in her life from that day forward.

What I can’t help but wonder is what impact that same event had on the one person of whom no one on that awful day was yet even aware.