An Unexpected Legacy

Carving out a place and a name for yourself, to leave a legacy, is never easy. This is particularly true for us childless, who will leave no descendants behind when we go. We either find ourselves trying to be content with the knowledge that we’ll be forgotten somewhat easier than most; or we have to be much more intentional and deliberate about leaving our legacy. I perhaps feel this a little more keenly than most, for two reasons. The most significant, of course, is that a step-parent is faced with family living issues on a regular basis; it goes with the territory. A second is that I have no nieces or nephews; thus, there’s no opportunity for me to play the role of favorite childless aunt or special cousin. Such is life.

The third reason has to do with the fact that, while I don’t have any close relatives, I do have an extended family, and that family has some strong traditions. One of those is that it’s often the women who pass down the family stories and legacy. This particular tradition hasn’t missed me; I grew up hearing the stories, and eventually I segued into being one of the storytellers. I understand the power and importance of stories within a family. They’re a form of entertainment, but they also serve as a touchstone of our identities and a way of emphasizing who we are, where we’re from and what we do. They define the “we” in a family, sometimes in ways that are stronger than physical resemblance or shared genetics. They give us connections and context about our pasts and our futures.

And, as I’ve been learning recently, they can also help storytellers by giving them tools for self-discovery and by helping them to define where they belong within their family dynamics. As it happens, there hasn’t been that much in the way of storytelling in either my husband’s or my step-children’s families. There are many different reasons, not all of which are available for public discussion, but it’s just not something that has happened that much. Make no mistake; the stories are there. They’re just not passed down the way they have been in my family.

This, then, seems to be one thing that I can add to the mix, with no duplications.

Some time after we got married, Will also got interested in tracking the source of the visual problems in his family. Because many of the sources for doing such work exist only in written format, he asked me if I knew anything about that sort of research. As it happens, thanks to having been schooled in my own family’s history, I did, although at my skills had become outdated and rusty. But it didn’t take me long to find online genealogy resources such as FamilySearch and Ancestry. While I’m well aware that crowd-sourced data can be wildly inaccurate, cross-referencing the sites was a useful way to develop a short list of ideas for further inquiry.

Right now, I’m working on developing trees for both sides of the family in order to identify which lines seem to be the best for a beginning. In the meantime, though, I’ve already uncovered enough information to ask extended relatives about apparent gaps in the family’s history and stories. As I answer these questions, I’m writing everything down for later compilation into a coherent narrative, which I plan to share both with my stepchildren and with my extended family.

This, then, is one of my legacies: doing the research and telling the stories. As legacies go, it’s a good one to have.