Ancestors

I want to say that I come from leaves and rocks and trees, that they are my ancestors just as much as my grandfathers and grandmothers, mother and father. Those are my favorite objects in the world. And also my ancestors are birds, the ones who wake me every morning, and those who almost make my heart break when I see them twirl in the sky.

I collect leaves, yellow and red ones, a branch or a single leaf. They sit in their quiet glory on a table, in a bowl, on a shelf. Then they crumble and fade and now I realize that I am creating tiny altars to grace and transience.

My mother would have loved the leaves I saw this fall. She would have cried and sighed with joy and comfort the way I did. My mother cried when she stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon for the first time: a road trip with my boyfriend and my sister and my mother along as chaperones. That was when she and he—later to become my husband—fell in love with each other, each recognizing goodness. My mother cried about us getting too close to the edge at the Grand Canyon. I have inherited my mother’s propensity for crying.

I collect rocks. In bowls, in mini-cairns on my bookshelf, in a quiet installation on the window-sill. I question my love for rocks. What does it mean? I go for shape, forms that please or surprise me. I have a heart shaped pebble sitting in a stone bowl. I have a rock in the shape of a whale with a marking like an eye. I have a bird rock. I go for color or markings. A black rock with a white line. I go for solidity, I guess. Like my mother, strong and present, stuff of a mountain, trying to fill the place of a father who left. But rocks crumble too.

I cannot collect trees or birds, but I somehow gather them in my heart, hold on to them for a bit, then gather more, so that there will always be enough. I do this with love, because loss is hard. A mother dies. A husband dies. A father leaves. Ancestors fade and fade and we try to remember our grandmother at the sewing machine or our great-aunt at the piano. An aunt in her chair being funny. Hair like my father’s. My father’s skinny legs.

We took care of my father; my sister especially did the work. We placed him back in the family fold for ten years before he died at home. He came to look like my grandmother who adored this wayward son.

We inherit our ancestor’s looks, or their personalities. Maybe we inherit their goodness—not so sure, or their vices—more probable. Or we learn from them. They stand behind us or around us, reminding us that we are a continuing chain of life.

I am an ancestor too, at least to my son, to my nieces and nephews, to my grandchildren maybe some day, if my son gets to work. I told him not too long ago that I was old enough now to be a grandmother. He rolled his eyes at me sardonically. And then my son will be an ancestor. We are ancestors past and future. Part of the unbroken chain.

I like to think of chains of DNA, of genes, of cells, of molecules, and most of all, of atoms, stuff that my son—the physicist—works with. I like to think of atoms: those eternal shape-shifters, moving between energy and matter, light and form. Sometimes the form is a rock, a leaf, a grandmother, and then, my son, or me.