leaves times infinity

Out of curiosity I signed up for a month membership to ancestry.com. Four hours later I was back in the late 1600’s and stumbled on Scotland. My eyes were burning from staring at the computer screen so long but that site is from the devil! I type in a family member’s name and then search for records. Next thing I know, I am looking at birth records, social security death information and census reports. After attaching all this stuff to my family member I can go back to my tree and little leaves appear in the corner of their name. This means the site has found even more information about this person. Sometimes the site has linked your family member to someone in another person’s tree. Now I can go there and find their parents and spouse to add to my tree. Family member, search, little green leaf, another family member, search, little green leaf, yet another family member, search, little green leaf …. The leaves became rather annoying but I couldn’t stop clicking on them. I went so far out on some of my branches I started thinking it is kind of pointless since I will never know anything about these people besides a meaningless name and birth & death information. But these meaningless people kept me up way too late, even after I turned off the computer. I kept thinking of the lives they probably lived, difficult lives. I wondered what things they believe that have long since been disproved. A couple of women have the same year of death as the birth year of their child. I can’t imagine living in a society where the number one risk to a woman’s life is to give birth. (Although, sadly, this is still the case in undeveloped counties.) And while I have all these people in my head, who could never understand that one day I would look at their US census report from 1850, I can’t help but wonder what will my name be on someday? And who will be looking at it? I wonder if thoughts of what my life might have been like will keep them up at night.



~Steph