The most enduring thing

My dear of all these many years sometimes tells visitors I have an imaginary family. It is when they are looking at one of my old photographs, propped up in some corner of the store or shining from a wall. In truth, many of the pictures are bonafide relatives--my father as a beaming two year old in his rompers with a kitten on the pocket, standing in front of a bank of irises; my grandmother on her porch; my parents as young--very young--newly weds; my mother's mother and father at the beach, staring into the sunlight with such confidence and enjoyment long, long before I was on the planet.

But I do adopt photographs. There is something infinitely sad to me about the old photos forgotten in dusty boxes in junk stores and antique stores. How did they get there? Is the family gone? Does no one remember the name of the woman with the black lace and jet pin at her throat? What about the beaming little girl with her hula hoop? These photos I take into my care, and they join my relatives.

Well, we are all related, somewhere down the line, right?

My youngest brother, the farmer in Mississippi, this year sent off a sample of his DNA to some project sponsored by National Geographic. I didn't know he was doing this until he emailed me the results. It's sort of an extension--a big extension--of his fascination with family history. Since we share both mother and father, I assume the lines traced in his cells live on in my own. And in the case of the matrilineal DNA, in my daughter.

It was no surprise to see our mother's line most common in Finland, which is indeed where our family originates on that side. What was astonishing, however, to my mind, was to think back through...what...hundreds of thousands of years to a woman somewhere in Africa, who bore a daughter, who bore a daughter..and each of these survived to bear at least one girl, who survived to...

And so on. It is like the little Russian dolls, each with a little one inside, and another, and another.

What are the odds? My father's line got traced back to the middle east. To Iran, Iraq, that area of the world. From there, eventually, the families moved on and on and on...we know this, because that line ended up in Virginia back in the 1600's.

But my mind can barely grasp all this.

I can, however, grasp photographs and oddments and bits and pieces, and catch the bits before they are lost. For at least a little while.

In the corner of a dusty dark shop I found a badly framed, yellowing marriage certificate. It is written in German, and decorated with lithographed angels and flowers and scrolls. It bids us, in German, to remember that "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end". It says, in German, "as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord". The frame is carved and painted silver. The certificate, tearing at the edges, has been pasted to a bit of flowered wallpaper.

Had they no children, no grandchildren, no tender niece who remembered them? I don't know.
But I hope that Jacob Hardi and Ida Ureck, who were joined in holy matrimony on the 5th day of February in 1910, in Dallas, Texas, had a long and happy life together. I suppose at some time they must have moved to California--how else did this certificate come to my area. I wonder about them, as I stare at the pattern of blue flowers and angels, the lithographed church, and the flamboyant signature of the priest or pastor, A. Romanowski. Bernhardt Wepf and his unnamed "Frau" were the witnesses.

Yes, it is very unlikely I am actually related to this couple. But I gather them in..remote cousins. I start inventing a happy life for them, believing in happy-ever-after stories.

In my mind it connects with two other lovers, much farther distant, found near Verona a few days ago--buried together, a lasting and tender embrace. We won't know that story either, but it touches my heart, particularly in these troubled times.

Nothing endures longer than love.