I'm spending the evening with ghosts.
In this neighborhood, that usually means ghosts that belong
to other families. I live directly
behind one cemetery, next to another cemetery, and in one of the most active
haunting sites in town. The last house I
lived in (two houses away) had several strange things happen, including
televisions that turned on by themselves and the disappearance of random
silverware. The silverware snitching
seemed to be a neighborhood thing, as several of us lost serving pieces for no
reason. One minute the stuff would be in
the drying bin, and then we'd never see it again.
I overlook the driveway of the most haunted house on our
little patch of old farmland. I believe
it is also the oldest of the old houses here on the block. People don't stay there very long, and it
goes up for rent about every three months.
One of my kids came home from a sleepover around 3 a.m. (the Witching
Hour, in some circles) because she was uncomfortably unnerved being there in the dark, and a
state police officer told me that one night he saw a woman in a long dress walk
across the street and disappear right into the side of the house where no door
existed.
These are not those ghosts.
These ghosts belong to my family.
A cousin I never knew existed contacted my brother
recently. It seems this cousin has been
on a genealogical search and discovered our family through his
grandparents. Our grandmothers were
half-sisters. I didn't even know my
grandmother had a half sister, but, then again, my family had a bad habit of
getting pissed off at each other and cutting ties, never speaking to or of the
others for all eternity. You'd think we
were Italian. Or Irish. Well, yes to the Irish, but mostly English
and Scottish and Welsh, at least on that
side.
This cousin hoped to find a bit of information, possibly a
picture or two, from the old days when the family lived in Vermont. Might we have any such information, he was
curious to know.
Oh, you poor,
unsuspecting, about-to-be-broadsided, nice gentleman.
I am a bit of a hoarder, and in my capacity as family
hoarder, I have somehow managed to obtain 99.9% of the family photo albums from
the past several generations.
Unfortunately, no one saw fit to actually write names on most of the
stuff, especially the much older, pre-1900 stuff, so much of it involves
speculation. Quite frankly, there could
be pictures of anyone's family in my house.
But the truth is, I have three large boxes full of photos and
documents. I also have the index cards
of genealogical research that my grandmother did by hand, painstakingly taking
her family tree back to the Salem witch trials and beyond, and taking her
husband's family tree back to the court of Queen Elizabeth I. (Just think, my relative may have been the
real brains behind Shakespeare. The
irony is not lost on me, thou gnarly-fingered airy-worm.)
To be quite honest, as I sometimes am, I am thrilled by all
of this. I have finally found a reason
to delve into the mountain of photos and documents. I now know that the few marked pictures I
assumed were family friends are actually relatives. The stuff another distant cousin sent to me
years ago is starting to make sense. I
wondered at the time why on earth my West Virginian cousin would send
everything to me when he had kids of his own who could take the stuff. Obviously, they were as confused as I. Keep century-old pictures of people we don't
know? Why?
Why, indeed. I know
now why I am Keeper of the Family Crap.
I know now why I have carted these boxes from move to move to move. I may even suspect why the local ghosts are
leaving me the alone: I have a battalion
of my own spectres living right here in the house with me. I am spiritually connected, so to speak.
I start scanning pictures to send. The first picture I send my new-found cousin
is of someone with his same last name.
Are they related? Turns out it is
his deceased brother. Well, I'm off to a
perfect start, I suppose. However, I do
believe he has hit the Motherlode by contacting us. I have the pictures, I have a scanner, and I
have a little time this week in between everything else I am supposed to be
doing. Maybe this was meant to be. Maybe this is my relatives' way of making
sure I don't waste time cleaning and putting things away where they belong when
I could be happily making a mess of my present by cleaning up the past.
I am spending the evening, and probably many hours over the
next few months, with my live and dead relatives. While there is no haunting, it is
daunting. It's also amazing.
Welcome to the family,
Cousin; I, for one, am thrilled.
