Who Do You Think You Are?

I used to drive my dad seriously crazy. Like, foam at the mouth crazy. And it was very mutual, I assure you. We went through a very rough patch from when I was 14 until my early 30s. Is it still a patch after 16+ years? Not sure when a patch becomes a spell ...

We were just so different. He was so stubborn and opinionated, quick to anger, and had this uncanny ability to say extremely offensive and mean things. So completely unlike me! It took me years and years to figure out that it was like looking in a mirror. We're alike in lots of other ways, too. We have the same cheeks, fair skin, curly hair, and love of family stories.

Dad could classify all people into the following categories:

1. People from St. Louis
2. People who were Mormon
3. People who were members of the Sigma Chi fraternity
4. People we were related to
5. People who wish they belonged to one of the previous four categories

It's like "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" on a grander scale.

When I was a kid, we were members of the Presbyterian church, and our family had been for many years. Dad had an irreversible falling-out with the church after he returned from the Viet Nam war and disagreed with their politics concerning the war itself and the military in particular. We moved next door to an LDS (Mormon) family with kids our ages, and I started going to church activities with them. It was fun, I liked the songs, and I even got to be an angel in the Christmas play. But we still went to Presbyterian Sunday School every week with our little white gloves on and carried our donation envelopes with our dimes. All except for Dad, who stayed in bed. Whoever drew the short straw had to wake him up and take him his orange juice before we walked out the door. Wo unto him/her who is chosen. Wo!!!

The summer before I turned eight, Dad got serious about finding a new church for us all to attend. He had a Sergeant Major in Viet Nam who was LDS, and he had a great-great uncle who came out to Utah back in the 1860s, converted to Mormonism and stayed. He had contacted the missionaries at some point, but they never returned his call. We were living in suburban Kansas City, MO at the time, and he was driving around when he saw the Liberty Jail. As I understand it, he parked the car, went inside, and asked how he would go about joining their church. They responded by saying, "Don't move. Just stay right there," and ran off to arrange for missionaries to visit our family. We took the discussions during the summer of 1971, but my parents waited to be baptized until I turned eight in late August so we could all "jump in" together. It wasn't really an option at the time, it was something that we were doing next Saturday and you will be present and wearing a smile.

I was excited about it, but I was the lone sibling who was 100% on board. Everyone in the ward was really nice, there were lots of kids my age, I could dress up like a pioneer every July--what exactly is the problem here? Though my faith and I have had our differences over the years, I still go to church, and I still think dressing up like a pioneer is kind of cute, though I leave that to my daughter these days.

While waiting for my birthday to come, Mom and Dad took us all on a genealogy "trek" across much of the US. We went from Missouri all the way to New Jersey, visiting Mormon history sites in our path and sifting through records in countless local historical societies, searching for missing ancestors in our family tree. It was hot, muggy, filthy work, and most of the time we three kids had to amuse ourselves while our parents went into raptures over scraps of paper. We even met some distant cousins of Dad's, though to be honest, if they had the right surname Dad would figure out some kind of connection to make them cousins, since they didn't appear to be Sigma Chis.

But I had been bit by the Genealogy Bug, an incurable condition that can strike at anytime. I loved looking through my parents' pedigree charts and family group records, imagining what life was like for these people that shared my DNA. Over the years I've done a fair amount of my own research, though nothing compared to my mom, who now runs the Family History Center in her area of Missouri. Dad's side is colorful, respectable, and inspiring. Apparently we are related to nearly all European royalty and have never had a horse thief or bigamist in the family, though we did ride with Quantrill's Raiders and fight off our share of bushwhackers. Our ancestors have been disemboweled by wild Indians, tied to a tree by their entrails, and gone on to give birth to 13 children. They swam the mighty Missouri river (with a watermelon under each arm for buoyancy), fought for both sides in the Civil War and American Revolution, and settled the wilderness with Daniel Boone. We have great stories that my parents have written down for us, and they really do give me a bit of backbone when I'm in need of it. We're fortunate that our parents took the time (over many, many years) to assemble these records and stories for us. We still have our dead ends (Murphys from somewhere in Ireland--wow, that really narrows it down), but there is so much that we do know about our family.

Of my four children, Tinkerbell seems to be the one who inherited the Bug from me. She and I discovered a TV show last year called "Who Do You Think You Are?" that traces the lineages of different celebrities. Season 2 starts tonight on NBC, and I'm so excited to watch it. It's fun to see their stories unfold, but it also gives me some good resources to check that might break through some of my genealogical "brick walls." In addition, it reaffirms my personal belief/mantra: Everyone, no matter how insignificant they feel, has a fascinating story to tell. No two lives are the same, even within one family.

So I'll pop some popcorn, fix a glass of lemonade, grab a notepad, and sit down with my kiddo to see the disease spread to others. Cheers!