Origins

By the time I finish writing this post, I hope I’ll have adequately edited it into some kind of readable narrative. One thing this site provider does with entries is let me know how many revisions I’ve made before (and frequently, after) I hit “publish.” You might be surprised by the number of edits even short posts accumulate. I’ll be eliminating names/sources; something said to me years ago might no longer apply to a speaker’s current thoughts and beliefs, and they might not recognize their words from old conversations.

Random assortment of thoughts:

• • Someone told me once that the stories I write (or fiction writers in general tell) are accessed psychically from the stories and lives of real people covering the range of human existence. There are a lot of names out there to describe this as a creative source or force (e.g., collective consciousness, collective unconsciousness, reincarnation, déjà vu, psychic intuition, dream states).

• • My paternal grandfather died in the mid-1960s when I was a little girl. I have vivid memories of him, including taking walks with him or watching from the porch as he walked the circular driveway in front of their house. One of my nephews was born in 1973. After he started walking and was no longer a toddler, I used to watch him explore my parents’ yard. His manner of walking, from how he carried his body to what he did with his head, arms, and hands, mimicked my grandfather so exactly that my parents and and I all recognized and commented on it.

• • Storytelling is a strong trait in both sides of my family. At any gathering, stories would be told. Within my family of five, I was perhaps the only one who wasn’t comfortable speaking stories aloud. I used to think I was an introvert, but I no longer think so. I think I was shy, and as the youngest, I also deferred to my brother and sister, who have a gift for storytelling in the oral tradition. Now that I’m older, I’m probably too comfortable speaking aloud. I have become that old lady who rambles. All five of us, including my parents, also felt driven to write stories, whether fictional or autobiographical. Part of this may be because we were all passionate readers.

• • I resist family stories that are heavily embellished. I think I’ve shared on here before the cousin who spoke at great length about my father’s war experiences, making him the hero of more missions than any one soldier could likely experience. There are many reasons I think of my father as a hero. None of them require cinematic feats on a battlefield. The truth is enough.

• • In the book I read recently, The Great Witch of Brittany, Usurle, as an old woman, reconnects with her family. She hears the stories they tell about her and some of her experiences. These stories borrow from myth, and she corrects them and removes some of the “magical” elements they’ve added. Later, in stories recounted by her descendants, the magic is back. It reminds me of how we cling to things we think make someone “special,” when in fact, exactly who a person is and what s/he’s done are magical and special enough.

• • Written history tends to tell the stories of the rich, the powerful, the monsters, the heroes. They are also biased by the tellers. We cling to the versions we like or that make us comfortable. We do that with the living and the dead.

• • I think often about people who don’t know much about their ancestry. Their origins. Their biological families. I think it’s why people take DNA tests or pursue genealogy (as my mother did) with passion. In the South, especially, when I grew up at least, a very common question when you met someone was, “Who are your people?”

• • In the time before my mother died, I began having one-sided mental conversations with her mother, who died long before I was born. My mother had told me a very specific version of what she thought she’d see after she died. I don’t question these things. I’ve been present at the bedside of five people as they died. Each was a profound honor to attend; each heartbreaking mostly for those left behind. I believe until you’ve died, you don’t know answers about death, regardless of what your doctrine or belief system or mystic or song or poem or book or philosopher or psychic or intuition has told you. Most of those conversations I had with my deceased grandmother were appeals that she come get her daughter, that she be there, when Mother, her youngest of fourteen children, made that transition.

I think the discoveries we’ve made about DNA and genetics in the past few decades are astonishing. They focus on the physiological traits we inherit (e.g., diseases and resistance to them in particular) and some mental illnesses. I say we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s packed inside our DNA. Do you ever wonder if your DNA also carries characteristics that affected your ancestors’ emotions, beliefs, joys, sorrows, and actions?

No answers here, but my characters wonder about these things, too. Some of them are proud of their ancestors. Some are ashamed. Some have little to no knowledge about their origins.

These are things it took me a lot longer to write here than they take to race through my brain. Maybe some of them were in my head months ago when I found this oracle deck on a store’s shelf.

The deck offers a way of exploring what wisdom might feel available to you from those who came before you. Though I enjoy thinking and talking about ghosts and would like to write a good ghost story one day, I’ve never been a big Ouija board or seance kind of person. (Full disclosure: the concept of exploring past lives holds a strong appeal for me.) I haven’t worked with this oracle deck since I got it, yet it continues to intrigue me.

In the group shot at the top of this photo, that’s my mother on the back row, far right, with all her brothers and sisters (two of her thirteen siblings were either stillborn or died in infancy). I enjoyed knowing my aunts and uncles, and if they ever showed up as my “beloved dead” in a reading with this deck, I’d be glad to hear from them. Same with any of my relatives, whether or not I ever got to meet them.

From The Beloved Dead deck, the four cards across the bottom are Backstory, Creativity, Explorer, and Home. Drawing them in a card spread would be perfect for a writer like me.

I’m making an attempt at this because in the years when I last saw my aunts and uncles, they were much older than this. Back row, left to right: Grover, Winnie, Verble, Bernell, Flora, Arliss, Dorothy. Front row, left to right: Buster, Lamar, Boots, John, and Gerald. Any siblings or cousins are welcome to correct me.