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missbuster:
copperbadge:
Seems to me like plenty of women in my direct line of ancestry might have chosen not to have children…and then were made to anyway.
I always was the black sheep of the family tree.
–
yes but like if you really research geneaology, like really really, like you get the whole family tree, you can see how many of the branches also end before you, and you can find solidarity in all the maiden aunts that came before, and bachelor uncles who never married. (i have one of each in the generation just previous, as well, who i love dearly, who would have made terrible parents but who were fantastic relatives as they were. i have my uncle’s toes, strange upturned weird shapes nobody else in the family got that surfaced randomly in my genes too, and maybe i have my uncle’s depression too, but he didn’t pass it on directly, and he did his best, and at his funeral a lot of people i’d never met told me how proud he’d been of me and my sisters, how much he’d bragged about his wonderful nieces.)
we’ve got a crazy hair wreath on the wall at my mom’s house that was made by one of the Victorian-era maiden aunts. it’s beautiful.
i have a fantastic crazy quilt that a long-ago maiden aunt made, dated 1888; it has among many other great things a crude embroidered portrait of a woman in a bonnet that i think must be a selfie, and a crude outline of a cat; she couldn’t draw very well, but the ribbon-embroidery flowers are startlingly realistic.
your ancestors include a lot of people who didn’t reproduce, if you widen your search a little; other expressions of those same genes that made you, other lovely ends of branches who blossomed as they were, just as you can. you don’t just have to count the direct ones among your ancestors. i figure all of them are mine.
missbuster:
copperbadge:
Seems to me like plenty of women in my direct line of ancestry might have chosen not to have children…and then were made to anyway.
I always was the black sheep of the family tree.
–
yes but like if you really research geneaology, like really really, like you get the whole family tree, you can see how many of the branches also end before you, and you can find solidarity in all the maiden aunts that came before, and bachelor uncles who never married. (i have one of each in the generation just previous, as well, who i love dearly, who would have made terrible parents but who were fantastic relatives as they were. i have my uncle’s toes, strange upturned weird shapes nobody else in the family got that surfaced randomly in my genes too, and maybe i have my uncle’s depression too, but he didn’t pass it on directly, and he did his best, and at his funeral a lot of people i’d never met told me how proud he’d been of me and my sisters, how much he’d bragged about his wonderful nieces.)
we’ve got a crazy hair wreath on the wall at my mom’s house that was made by one of the Victorian-era maiden aunts. it’s beautiful.
i have a fantastic crazy quilt that a long-ago maiden aunt made, dated 1888; it has among many other great things a crude embroidered portrait of a woman in a bonnet that i think must be a selfie, and a crude outline of a cat; she couldn’t draw very well, but the ribbon-embroidery flowers are startlingly realistic.
your ancestors include a lot of people who didn’t reproduce, if you widen your search a little; other expressions of those same genes that made you, other lovely ends of branches who blossomed as they were, just as you can. you don’t just have to count the direct ones among your ancestors. i figure all of them are mine.
