It Runs In The Family!

12 June 2016

Story #812

R. Linda:

SO . . . Tonya decided to sign up for Ancestry.com and explore her family tree. Being married to me, she naturally entered my information and began tracing me ancestry as well. This is all so the boyos will have a sense of their personal history and who they are. Yup.

In the process of tracing the O'Sully side, she ran into some trouble because she wasn't familiar with members of the O'Sully clan, so I offered to do me side for her. I found it an easy process and got into the immediate branches when Mam came in to peer over me shoulder at the tree on her side. She had some reminiscing welling up, and oh me goodness, but I thought I'd be sitting there listening to story after story for a very long time, until one name popped up. She asked me to pursue it because she had a vague memory of someone with that particular moniker. I started to go back, as you will, and the name was oddly familiar to me as well.

"Dint ye date someone by dat name?" She whispered, pulling up a chair next to me.

"Uh . . . I did. A Molly it was, I tink." I whispered so Tonya couldn't hear us in the next room.

We were both getting very Irish in our speech as we huddled together. I clicked on the source document after document, and oh me God, sure enough, there up came Ms. Molly's name and address, and here I will be finding I dated me cousin and even kissed her! Mam covered her mouth in shock with a whooping sound that got Tonya's attention in the other room.

"What's going on in there?" She yelled at us.

"Nothing, just making jokes about O'Sully family members," I shouted back lamely.

"Oh dear," whispers Mam.

I turned back to the glowing screen and decided I'd had enough.

"Did ye not know dis?" I asked Mam.

"Nooo, if I did do ye tink I'd let ye date 'er?"

I shook me head in chagrin and went for another name to get away from the gross thought I could have married me kissing cousin had not one of us moved away. Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph! Talk about close calls, that was one.

I clicked on the name of a favourite auntie of mine and a close confidant of Mam when we lived in Newry. I had religiously sent chatty Christmas cards, photos, etc., to her and never a card in return. Mam emailed her regularly, and for the past two years, she never got an email back. Seems Auntie Kate died two years ago and we were never told! What a way to find out about your relatives, I tell ya!

Here I thought Tonya's side of the family was more interesting, but I be finding out mine be just as exciting if not more so.

We found not one, but eight IRA members on me father's side, one known murderer also on his side, two distant uncles who married sisters and when one uncle died and the other one's wife died, the two left married each other! Talk about keeping it in the family. So we have a branch that intermarried, and I suppose that kissing-cousin thing runs in the family, and that, all on my father's side.

When I told her all this and then showed it to me wife, her comment was, "That explains why you're all crazy people."

Nice.

I was done with tracing me crazy, bizarre, and incestuous family roots. It may explain a lot to Tonya, but it makes me think I should commit Mam before she gets any more nuts than she is. However, she was thinking the same thing about me!

I have not been back at it since, though Tonya tells me there are a right many pesky little leaves wiggling for attention on my tree side. No, I be done with ancestors as be me Mam. We look at each other, searching for some kind of weirdness to emerge. So far, nothing, but we are behaving so the other can't point and blast the other with, "You kissed your cousin!" or "I knew your family was close to Da's family, but I never knew the relationship was that close!" Ancestry can be a dangerous source of personal knowledge. I can live with Mam's remarks, but when me own wife gets angry at something I did and then uses my ancestry like, "I knew you were a fanatic with so many IRA in your family!" I get a little upset with that. Oi!

Gabe
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