Distractions, v2

There I was, happily engaging in my usual morning distractions when I saw an email from my cousin Pam (to whom I refer to as Pee-AHM-uh-la, in deference - or not - to her distinct New York accent). Pam, a sworn member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and, perhaps surprisingly, one of the only true Democrats in Sharon Springs, N.Y., near Troy, is the family genealogist. 

Side note about family genealogy here. I am only into it as often as Pam calls to tell me about another breakthrough, or snail mails me mountains of supporting documentation about our family trees that she's unearthed through various means, up to and including cemetery visits, augmented by the likes of Ancestry.com. I, on the other hand, seem to have no real notion of having any more than my nuclear family, diminished as it is, aunts (mother's sisters), cousins (of one of the Finn sisters), and my great aunt and uncle who we visited in Colorado almost ever summer while Ed and I were young.

That Pam writes Christmas cards by the hundreds, once accused me of being Omar the Tent Maker because my changes of address wore an erasure hole through her address book, and communicates with me only by phone (other than aforementioned cards and letters, with the occasional text in times of great stress). So getting an email from her was a shock.

Pam wrote that she'd discovered great aunts, sisters to our maternal grandfather, who not even she knew about, despite the fact that we were alive when they still lived. She is a year older than I am. She forwarded with her email a note from her to her third cousin (!) spelling out some of the familial ties and asking if the cousin knew of some family feud possibly dating back to the 30s or 40s. 

I couldn't make heads or tails of what she wrote until I dredged from memory of kinship classes that were part of my cultural anthropology major at Colorado State University. Finding drawing the family tree not satisfying enough, I turned it into a graph that clearly (to me) depicts the timelines of these particular ancestors.

(ASIDE:  It is 11:12 a.m., I am still in my bathrobe, having become immersed in my distraction. Why? Why did the neighbor have to come over today, of all days, and now, of all times, to borrow allen wrenches to fix the tandem bike she's taking her young niece on a ride with today. She called them hex wrenches and, after a brief stop with the wrong tool set, I gave her what I have, gathered neatly in a plastic sandwich bag. Now that I'm a bit embarrassed about being the dowdy retired lady next door, I'm off to shower and get on with the day, if not pursuing job opportunities.)