Legacy

Lately, when I look at my 14 month old daughter, Amelia, I wonder what kinds of contributions, besides her red hair, that I will make to the person that she will ultimately become. And then I think about the kind of things that have been handed down to me. This always reintroduces me to a web of gloomy, unresolved feelings about my own heritage. Though I am not a superstitious person, I have often viewed my own destiny through a rather fatalistic lense. I have personally struggled with the patterns of dysfunction and weakness and addiction that I have observed in my lineage, and sometimes wonder if it's a losing battle. I have tried desperately to believe that God will be the change-agent in this equation, but it never quite settled my heart. However, I am no longer the ending place in this lineage. For Amelia's sake (and my own), I have to find crests of strength in a sea of weakness. I have to embrace the strength I find and pass it on.

About a month ago I received a letter. The contents were in response to a request I had made for any sort of anecdotal or geneological information about my paternal grandmother. Because I have no contact with my father, I feel that I have lost any connection that I had to that part of myself. Receiving the letter was like finding a missing piece of a puzzle that had been lost under the couch for years and years. Much of the information I had known in part, but Susie, my dad's half-sister, filled in the blanks and reminded me that I belong to a different legacy.

I knew my grandmother, Ura Mae, was born in a small Texas town to poor, uneducated parents. I knew that she was one of thirteen children and that she used to play paper dolls under the dining room table because it was one of the only places that she could find to be alone. I also knew that she eventually married a total of three times, the first when she was sixteen, and had three children by three different men. I have seen the haunting pictures of Margie, her first child, who died of bone cancer at the age of twelve. And I have heard stories about her second husband, Mac, who was killed by the Japanese on Wake Island during World War II. I know that she was heartbroken when her only son abandoned his wife and children and that it would've crushed her to know that after she died, her two surviving children fought for years over her estate and eventually stopped speaking altogether. Her life was one of tragedy, heartbreak and despair.

But that's only half the story. My grandmother completed her high school education through correspondence in 1955 and in 1972, received a degree in English from San Diego State University. She designed and taught a course on conservatorship at the local junior college until just before she died in 1994. For several years, she was the Sunday school superintendent of her church and also served as president of volunteer organizations around the San Diego area. She was interested in social justice and rarely turned down a worthwhile cause. She kept her 4'10 frame in tip-top shape by exercising everyday in her garage, though she did enjoy a bowl of Heavenly Hash ice cream every night before bed. She loved her grandchildren so much that when her son proved financially and emotionally irresponsible, she provided all three of them with a college education. She possessed intelligence, tenacity and unimaginable strength.

That's the whole story, or at least for now, the one that I know to tell. And it's the story that I claim for my daughter. Someday, when I tell Amelia about her spunky great-grandmother, I will share the tragedy, only as it serves to illuminate the beauty of who she became. That legacy belongs to me, and now it belongs to Amelia. What she chooses to do with it is up to her.