A Team

Travelin’Oma, Week 7, Day 4.

A team.

I love family history. I. Love. Family. History. The stories, the newspaper clippings, the journals, the personalities, the fitting together of all of the pieces. I love all of it. I feel so much closer to my ancestors as I learn their stories and find out more about their lives.

One of the things about it that I delight in the most, however, is how much closer it brings me to those family members around me that are still alive. Specifically my mom. We work together on projects all the time, but our greatest teamwork comes together in our family history endeavors. We plan and organize and divide and conquer. Several years ago, when she was living in Washington and I was here in Utah, she would gather information from her family and sort through documents that she had and I would do the leg work here at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. I was able to find so many of our ancestors and clues to what their lives were like and then pass the information on to her where she could make more connections and send me on more errands to search for more. It was a fabulous system. Sadly, since she moved here a little over three years ago we have not always been great at keeping up on this love of ours (graduate school, having three small children…hmm, I wonder what the holdup has been!). But we still talk and plan and glean what we can to help us when we get back into it full swing of our research.

In finding out more about my ancestors, I have learned to appreciate and love those who have come before me and who have paved the way for the life that I lead, but that appreciation and love has grown more so for my own mother than anyone else. I am glad that she is one of my greatest friends.