On Tour With The Kid | Thankful For Progress
I have a significant birthday coming up. Fifty.
A number that is only muttered in hushed tones when people ask. I have no issue with the number, but I do feel like every milestone number makes you contemplate how far you have come, if you have done enough with your life, if you are where you want to be, if you really hate your thighs enough to have a doctor do that horrible stabbing motion with the metal probe that you have looked away from every time you have seen liposuction done on TV (my answer is no, by the way - that looks nauseating and painful).
In our family, when you know you may be well into your second act, the question is less about where you are personally and more about what you will leave behind. Have you done enough to make your corner of the world nicer for your kid and the people around you? The answer always feels like a no.
The worst time for me to have this existential crisis is when I have time on my hands. And just as I was contemplating all of life's big questions, I ended up with the flu. Hardly able to get out of bed for days but desperate to keep busy, I decided I needed a project. One of my relatives had mentioned that they were having trouble getting past a certain point in the family tree, so I thought I'd dive into that.
Thankfully, I had a better starting point than most. My grandfather had done a lot of work on his side of the family. I knew names, dates and stories from six generations back. I even have photos of a lot of them. My grandfather's desk was full of letters he had received from libraries in Scotland chasing up records. Having died in the early 1980s, I had to wonder if Poppy would be annoyed or impressed that I could now get the same information while I was lying in bed and at the touch of a button.
My grandma's side was a bit different. I had very detailed information up to my great-grandparents. My grandmother had
five siblings, and the whole family were great storytellers, so I knew plenty about the family farm and how they had grown up. It got murky from there. I know my great-grandmother's mum had died when she was very young, and my great-grandfather had said his father had left when he was 12 and that there may have been a second family two towns over. But being a sore point, it wasn't the sort of thing that was
discussed.
Ancestory.com was a wealth of information, but having those details certainly helped narrow the search down. There was an amazing insight into people’s lives. Newspaper stories and obituaries that make people feel like more than just a time frame. Then I came across Helen, my third great-grandmother. That sounds so distant, but my grandmother is still with us, and this was her grandma. Born in 1838, she was married at 18 and had 15 children between the ages of 19 and 48. Six of those children preceded her. Some at birth, some in infancy and the oldest at 14. She died at 48 after a horrific farm accident that saw her last 12 days in what I can only imagine was a lot of pain. She left behind nine kids and a husband, including a six-month-old baby, who also passed a month after her death.
As I lay there, putting that life together bit by bit, I thought of all the things that would have made a difference that we take for granted: contraception, antibiotics, infant health care, trauma surgeons, and Westpac Rescue Helicopter. Any one of these could have changed this woman’s existence. It made me sad but also so grateful that there has been progress.
It also cemented for me what I wanted to do for my 50th. I’m going to ask the people who love me to write me a letter—for my kid and her children if she chooses to have them. I don’t want to be a time frame on a family tree. I want those who come after me to know I lived a life, know my stories, and know a bit about the people that I loved. That seems like the perfect way to celebrate.
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