There was a gathering of my relatives. Two hundred cousins, aunts, second cousins, in laws and confused fourth generation kids showed up to mingle for an afternoon. The presence of name tags, connecting you to one of the twelve Rose siblings, made it possible to play hopscotch between any two people. 

 

The impulse to know our roots has lessened over time. My mother adored the brothers and sisters who squeezed around the table bantering and passing peas. Which is the same table my children sit at, at least when they are home which is infrequent these days. We inherited the quarter sawn oak table with carved legs and four leaves from John's parents who acquired it from his grandparents who bought it from my grandparents. Far fetched, but there it is.  

 

My siblings and I are among the eighty odd grandchildren who remember noisy Christmas parties, and could identify most of the gang we belonged to. Yet by the time the crowd expanded to the fourth and fifth generation, ancestral energy was diluted. Compounded by the decoy of different surnames many did not recognize the invisible links. 

 

Walking into a messy morass of humans, even ones you share DNA with, can tax even the extroverts among us. Especially if the humidity and temperature are on the upper limits of comfort. But mingle we did, and the conversations and laughter flowed with abundance, until the people holding mikes tried to shush us. One cousin read funny excerpts from our grandparents, not only the writer who fed his family from those vignettes but the woman behind the thirty thousand meals. There was a quiz chock full of facts, some of which I could guess and others which made me howl. 

 

"Who made food for their own memorial service and put it in the freezer?"

 

"Which Rose snuck every girl out of the dorm, two roommates at a time, all in one night?"

 

"Who wrote what may have been the world's first computer literacy textbook in 1963?"

 

"Who was part of a camera crew that filmed the Beatles?"

 

"Who turned down NASA?"

 

"Who taught a manner of binary counting that may have included a rude hand gesture?"

 

These are the extraordinary moments, or a very small sampling of them. But swirling around them were a flood of human failings and flourishings, which contributed to the children who followed behind. 

 

It interests me that websites promising details about whom you are related to are gaining traction. It can provide clues about our own health, or lack of it. 

 

My own heart strings yanked sharply when I noticed a small lighter on the table. Grandma engraved the names and birthdates of her grandchildren, at least the ones from 1940-1963. It stings to notice that a quarter of the names on my side of the lighter mark cousins who are already gone. I recall heading to the shelf when I was a small girl, to make sure I was still there. That I still belonged. It was alright that she printed my formal name, Loren. I knew who she was, and despite the crowd, she knew me. 

 

Which is a thirst that runs deeply in most of our stories.