History

I love genealogy, but not names and dates.

A person's statistics mean nothing without knowing anything about their lives, the food they ate, the clothes they wore, their responses to what was happening around them.  I could be looking at skeletons that are exactly the same except for their sizes. But I can clothe these ancestors of mine with history.

Great grandmother Sarah and her husband Jack raised their children during the American Civil War. I can use what has been written about the skirmishes around their home to make their names vibrant and colorful. Sarah and Jack had 11 children; six of them lived. Two died during the war, perhaps from malnutrition.

History clings to Sarah and Jack, and from that I can clothe them with emotions.

Lessons

While I was on the front porch this morning the sprinkler was teasing the cherry tree with a cascade of water droppings. A very small brown and white bird hopped from one branch to another to savor the watery beads that clung to the bark. He or she would swipe his beak in the moisture, then hop to another branch.

A few minutes later the bird flew to the front porch railing with an adolescent in tow. I know the latter was young because he opened his beak as if expecting food, so old enough to fly but not old enough to want to work on getting his daily sustenance. The pair spent a few seconds together before swooping off to a patch of dead leaves and mulch in the rock garden. Then they flew to the cherry tree to taste the water. After that, I lost sight of them.