My mom sent me an eight pound box of family oriented photos.
She has been the family historian for her whole life.
I feel that she is passing the torch.
My dad did that to me not long ago. I'm wondering how to distribute the photos amongst my sisters.
I have had time to digest this latest from my mom. I thought at first that she had forgotten that she had already sent me a huge family album of pics going back to the 1850s when my family first came to Texas. Texas Statehood was only four or five years old when my family first came to that barren, but dangerous land, still running wild with Indians and Mexican bandit parties, invading any settlement of travelers.
Somehow my folks made a life there and kept it going.
What she sent me was a bit of her life's work, more of a family encyclopedia of the family history than a book of treasured pics.
Each picture has a paragraph or two explaining what was going on with the pic, how those pictured related to us all and why most were taken from tin type exposures.
I now know why she is so damn broke half the time. I have thirty seven cousins still alive and she has made one of these BIG books for each of them and her remaining
five (nope, sorry, she is one of the five still living) four siblings.
This book goes back to 1807 when our immigrant German family first made it to Mississippi Territory from somewhere in the Carolinas where the ship landed from Germany. They stayed there for two generations before heading to Texas following the call of free land. Just call it yours, protect it, build a home and farm something - and you can call it yours. Texas was wide open and free to take at that time. Protecting your home from the wild was the hard part.
This was before the Civil War when large portions of the political parts of Texas governance became crosswise with the Union.
Most all of Texans were glad to restore the Union and become Americans again. We will still fly our State Flag, though.
Even in Indiana I fly the Lone Star at certain times. I've been here over thirty years, but y'all cain't take the Texas out of this boy.
I always fly the flag for a few days around March 2nd, the day we won our Independence from Mexico and became a Republic, and December 29th, the day we were recognized in full faith as a bonafide state and a full member of the United States Of America.
I like to celebrate the end of a war, not the beginning, as in July 4th, which I celebrate, but differently.
I have noticed that most of the world celebrate the END of a war, instead of the beginning of a war as Americans seem to do. December 7th for instance.
Anyway, this huge encyclopedia of our family history will be forever treasured by me and mine. This represents a large part of her life work in the twenty five years since my father passed. I knew she was doing this, but I had no idea she was writing a book about our family.
I hope others of my kin appreciate what she has done for all of us as much as I do. I think they will in time.
I hate to sound like a kind of wimp, but this is kind of emotional for me. My mom is a fucking rock star in my book.
