Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Joy Nicholas's avatar

I love this so much!!! One I keep thinking about: I was born in Bangladesh and lived there till I was almost 11. One night, when we lived in a more rural part of the country, the electricity went out (as it often did). My sister and I had a set of wooden blocks that we loved to play with, but we hadn’t picked them up before we went to bed. My dad was away from home that night, and my mom went into our room with a lantern to pick up the blocks, but something about the way the little flame cast long, looming shadows on the wall made her stop. It just felt like too much, and the blocks weren’t going anywhere. The next morning, when the sunlight was streaming through the windows, she went back to pick up the blocks. The very first one she lifted had a baby cobra coiled under it. I keep thinking about that, and “mother instinct” or “gut feelings” that protect us if we pay attention to them.

Expand full comment
Jeanne Wettlaufer's avatar

I’m not a great researcher but I’ve started to try to dig up the history of my maternal grandfather. A friend who’s been learning genealogy helped get me started with copies of the census from every 10 years since his birth to track his occupations & locations. My mom would tell me stories about him disappearing regularly when she was a child. (She was born in 1916 in a home for unwed mothers in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma- my nana was from Milwaukee, WI & it was common to send these women out of sight; upon her return with my mom they married & had my moms sister 2 years later). She eventually figured out he was a con man who was on the run regularly.....in the 1920’s & 30’s. He’d come home with lots of cash & say he got a new job & little Dorothy would ask where, what, when....he was not happy with her! Every time he would return she would get frustrated that her mom would happily take him back. As she got older she found he had aliases. No one knows where he ended up, last seen by the family in 1935. I’m piecing together stories she told me years ago & the information I can glean from public records. This is a winter project since landscaping keeps me too busy April-November. I look forward to sleuthing more ......hopefully on a snow day. Last year we had no snow days, which is unacceptable! That’s when I love to hunker down on projects indoors. With no elders left it’s just me poking around.

Expand full comment
22 more comments...

No posts