Member-only story
Now
It’s warmer tonight in Connecticut than you would expect.
The wind is whipping through the trees and the balmy moisture in the air is refreshing.
Who would have ever thought my Californian bones would be on the opposite coast building a life? Or, that I would have spent Thanksgiving making Mom’s recipes without her being alive to share them with me?
I find myself lying in bed some nights secretly browsing through Ancestry pondering over the family tree I’ve sculpted — trying to imagine my greater family back alive.
My maternal grandfather’s great, great, grandfather and grandmother (William and Rhoda) from Wales left everything they knew to create a life in the US.
My grandmother’s family was a wild mixture of English nobility, German violin makers and Southern ranchers turned Californian builders.
My dad’s mom and dad fresh off the boat from Norway.
There’s a strange silence in the world without my mom, dad, or grandparents around in the now.
I was so lucky to have had them around for at least a part of my life. We celebrated the holidays so beautifully together.
Sometimes it doesn’t seem right that I’m only in my 40s and none of them are in the now.
