This is how it happens. This is how ancestral knowledge gets lost. How do you know who you are if you don’t know who—or where—you come from?
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This is just the beginning of this reckoning. As amazed as I am at finding my own direct ancestor’s name in the First Census of the United States, I cannot share that fact without acknowledging how his name got there, and the distinct privilege of whiteness that exists by it being recorded anywhere at all.
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I had flown some 8,000 miles across vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean, stopping first in Honolulu, then Auckland, before finally arriving in Tauranga where my mother and step-father were waiting for me. Then the next morning, we drove another 8 or 9 miles to Grandad’s house. I didn’t really call him Grandad though. I called him David, my step-father’s father who I had met exactly once before, eight years ago.
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My Italian was minimal at best, and Angela spoke no English, but in this moment, viewing the photos side-by-side this way, she said something with a sentiment I understood perfectly: Of course we’re family. What more proof do you need than photos like these?
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How she managed to move on
from such unspeakable loss
I will never understand.
A new town
absent the stares
and the whispers of ghosts
and the seven tiny stones
of her babies’ graves
she began again.
It was in this existential compost heap that an idea was planted: maybe I could make sense of it all if I just understood who I came from.
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