omnia_mutantur (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
omnia_mutantur) wrote2025-07-04 08:38 am
omnia_mutantur) wrote2025-07-04 08:38 am
(no subject)
(it kind of counts if I wrote it yesterday then didn't press post, right?) I guess as long as I post twice today, by whatever weird score I'm keeping with myself, it counts.
I'm in Mystic, CT now which, among other things, not one but two ancestral MyMaidenName burial grounds (one of which you have to trespass to get to, I have only seen it once attending a MyMaidenName family reunion and couldn't find it again), between the two spanning back (I think) at least 250 years. The bloodline goes back further, my father in his retirement decided to double down on genealogical research and traced himself back to the Mayflower by five or so different paths.
My father was very committed to enrolling all his children in the Mayflower Society (an organization for people who can do said tracing back). My little brothers acquiesced, one sister-in-laws said he had to wait for her kids to be able to consent, the other just let it happen. I declined, on the basis it was creepy and I did not wish to, and refused to provide him/them with a copy of my marriage license or with something legal stating Light was really truly divorced when he married me. I have gotten letters from the society in the intervening years, indicating I still had an open application. Along the same lines, my great aunt was a member of not just the Daughters of the American Revolution, but also the Colonial Dames of America, the fancy version for people who held some sort of advanced rank during that time. (the myth is up until this generation, a MyMaidenName has always been in a war)
I don't talk to my parents anymore. There's a lot going on there and I've written and deleted three paragraphs about it at this point, so clearly it's a topic to return to to. But even having severed that tie, even knowing all the horrible things my ancestors must have done to acquire and keep land and money in the New England region for that long in the general if not specific ways, I still like this idea of place-based continuity somehow. I don't think I'm especially proud or smug, I didn't _do_ anything, and I'm still trying to figure out if what I like about it can stand up to daylight.
But there's something about not belonging to my parents, but still belonging to this place, like I can skip over the people who birthed me and still have roots. Something animism-adjacent I suspect.
(here we truncate this entry because it is long and circular and bedtime)
I'm in Mystic, CT now which, among other things, not one but two ancestral MyMaidenName burial grounds (one of which you have to trespass to get to, I have only seen it once attending a MyMaidenName family reunion and couldn't find it again), between the two spanning back (I think) at least 250 years. The bloodline goes back further, my father in his retirement decided to double down on genealogical research and traced himself back to the Mayflower by five or so different paths.
My father was very committed to enrolling all his children in the Mayflower Society (an organization for people who can do said tracing back). My little brothers acquiesced, one sister-in-laws said he had to wait for her kids to be able to consent, the other just let it happen. I declined, on the basis it was creepy and I did not wish to, and refused to provide him/them with a copy of my marriage license or with something legal stating Light was really truly divorced when he married me. I have gotten letters from the society in the intervening years, indicating I still had an open application. Along the same lines, my great aunt was a member of not just the Daughters of the American Revolution, but also the Colonial Dames of America, the fancy version for people who held some sort of advanced rank during that time. (the myth is up until this generation, a MyMaidenName has always been in a war)
I don't talk to my parents anymore. There's a lot going on there and I've written and deleted three paragraphs about it at this point, so clearly it's a topic to return to to. But even having severed that tie, even knowing all the horrible things my ancestors must have done to acquire and keep land and money in the New England region for that long in the general if not specific ways, I still like this idea of place-based continuity somehow. I don't think I'm especially proud or smug, I didn't _do_ anything, and I'm still trying to figure out if what I like about it can stand up to daylight.
But there's something about not belonging to my parents, but still belonging to this place, like I can skip over the people who birthed me and still have roots. Something animism-adjacent I suspect.
(here we truncate this entry because it is long and circular and bedtime)