I've been working on my ancestry. I'm trying to trace both sides of my family back to both rural Germany, and Munchen (Munich), with the goal of establishing an ancestral claim to citizenship.
When I was 5, my father's step-dad died, and my mom read some fiction trash about how heroic the Mormons were. I've always lived my life believing it was just a well-time missionary visit that started the madness I spent the next 11 trying to extricate myself from.
As I am studying my father's side of things, I'm finding a few disturbing things on his father's side, original colonists of Oregon as a Whites Only state. So I stopped following that dismal trail and decided to go after my father's mom's origin story. She was a pip. She is directly responsible for everything rebellious, strong, and ethical that I am.
But as I went back, following hints, cross-referencing, a name kept popping up: James Brown. Only three generations out, I ran across his Mormon Majesty with his statue across from the Tabernacle: Capt. James Brown. Underage wives, dozens of children, murder of natives. All of the blood and gore on the hands of the early church is all over him as well.
So, rather than get devastatingly depressed (I'm talkin' 'bout listening to Adele on repeat), I decided I am going to be the one to stop the malicious code. And maybe a part of me knew something was up all along through whispered conversations, because I chose not to have children, to let the line end with me. Right now, in this strange turbulence, it is the one piece of this unspeakable legacy I feel I have complete control over.
Thanks for reading, Cheers