http://www.craveonline.com/film/articles/779895-horror-movie-marathon-day-dracula#/slide/1
My mom took up doing our family genealogy several years ago. It’s been wonderful finding out about our family history as she uncovers the various details and such. What has not been wonderful is her not so subtle nudges that she wants my sister or I to catch the fever and start spending our “free” time digging through archives looking for more clues.
Yeah, well, she turns 80 this year. I’m finding it hard to tell her no as we’ve entered into that time of human life where she’s discussing things like how she wants her funeral to go and the fact that she doesn’t buy green bananas because there’s no guarantee she’ll be around long enough for them to ripen. No, nothing morbid in that at all…sheesh. Anyway, since there really is no way to tell how much longer I have to enjoy having her in my life, I find myself doing things she asks with a lot less resistance than I did twenty years ago. Hell, than I did five years ago. Consequently, what’s happened is she saw a notice for a series of workshops on genealogy taking place just ten minutes from my house. Of course, she sends me an email with the simple request that I attend on her behalf. She even ponied up the money to pay the registration fee and pay for my gas to and from. SIGH.
So, guess where I found myself last Saturday morning (and will find myself for the next six Saturdays)? You guessed it. Sitting in a church, along with over 50 other family researchers. SIGH, twice.
I’m all prepared to be bored to tears when about a minute or so into the first presentation, I find myself scribbling notes about how I can turn mom’s research into my first fictionally formatted, non-fiction book about myself and my matriarchal family history. BIG SIGH. I’m not at all interested in doing more research, and let’s face it, as an African-American, there’s really only so far back I can go seeing as how my ancestors in this country weren’t documented by any kind of names until around the early 1850’s at best. Before that, as property, we’re listed in groupings. Ho hum.
All that aside, mom’s got a dearth of information already that would make one hell of a book to pass down through my subsequent generations. I’ve wanted to be immortal since I discovered the myth of the vampire (5 yrs old). What better way than to become part of a book; to turn my life and my history into the written word, which as we all know, will live on forever?
Heaven knows, I don’t need yet another writing project sitting on my hard drive, but a file folder will be created none-the-less. And come next Saturday, I’ll be sitting in that church.
Dana Ellington, MAPW 