I do accept and recognize that this impulse is probably the mark of an immature writer, no less an immature person. Fine. I've always thought that my family is fascinating. Most of my grade school story assignments revolved around family incident; many of the people in my family have always appeared to me to be larger-than-life, fully drawn dramatic characters, as marked by star-cross'd tragedy as anybody out of Shakespeare. Like any family we have had our share of small-scale domestic tragedies, on both sides: alcoholism, mental illness, drownings, miscarriages. My paternal grandfather whose buddy's twin-engine Cessna 310 fell from the sky in 1971, leaving behind a poor widow and four kids under the age of 18. My first published poem would be a meditation on this grandfather, the one I'd never get to meet, and the other grandfather who was the only adult to seek me out and hold my hand in my self-exiled childhood misery.
It wasn't a good poem; lyrical, maudlin, sentimental, but the same can be said for my obsession with my family...
Or my maternal grandmother's twin brother, Walter, who died of the pneumonia they both caught at nine months old. And the fact that her Auntie Kay would recount, more than once I'm sure, that my grandmother had survived this illness because Auntie Kay had held her throughout the sickness; whereas an uncle had cuddled poor Walter throughout his decline.
Can you imagine? How much would that story fuck you up as a child?
Then there are the little tidbits that slip out now and then, such as the following tales leaked by my 3-martinis-to-the-wind-mom during a visit to Vancouver last year: My great-grandfather's brother John who went mad after his wife left him, dug a hole in his parent's backyard, and lived there for a year with only the Bible as companionship. This would be on the Cherwoniak side. Then, on the Wasylciw/Wasylow side (damn Anglicization), my grandmother's grandfather's attempted suicide, which was written up in the Ukrainian-language newspaper in Saskatoon at the time. And how my grandmother, only a child, sharply rebuked her Gido at their next meeting for having brought such embarrassment upon her.
I'm itching to discover the rest of the stories......and let's be honest, this is dramatic gold!
So obviously I'd be drawn to CBC's Who Do You Think You Are? program, and it's website, which boasts links to genealogical resources and where you can create your own family tree.
And, sentimental or not, I do feel that the role of family historian is a mantle that I need to assume from my grandmother. For a lady who loved to talk, and more specifically who loved to tell the same family stories over and over again, it's a bitter irony that she's dying from a disease that has taken her speech from her. Baba has always known everyone's story. Who married whom and who gossiped about whom and all the funny poignant upsetting little tales that make up the fabric of the family history. So as the oldest and favourite grandchild, I do feel a responsibility to carry these stories now.
I've added about a quarter of the names to the maternal side of my family and am eager to do more research. But the My Family Tree site, tied to the CBC.ca network, is only ok. The Flash interface is clunky and a little glitchy. It switched some dates around on me, so that a relative who's birthday I'd entered as the 4th month and 24th day become the 3rd month and 24th day. It froze when I tried to upload pictures. And though it allows you to enter "partners" of either sex (which is useful for my tree) it doesn't allow you to accurately enter folks who've been adopted (part of my tree as well.) But now that I've put in so much data, I'm hesitant to switch to a paid site such ancestry.ca. But I suppose that proves that you get what you pay for.
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