TREASURE HUNT

Hello there!

As most of you know, I’ve been researching my family’s history for over 15 years now. This treasure hunt for ancestors has brought me many hours of joy and insight and yes, tedium and frustration too… because in this game of genealogy, you don’t always find the treasure you’ve been seeking.

This past month I did find a treasure! I finally uncovered the European origins of my Eckhardt line – a quest I’ve coined as “Finding Frederick”, who is my great-great grandfather and the first to settle in Canada. More on the specifics of that find in another post, but meanwhile, as I’ve fleshed out another branch on the family tree, I’ve been thinking about my place there, and the role of what seems like random good luck in my life.

Which leads me to this month’s poem. It, like my hunt for Frederick, has been a long time coming. I took the photo in the spring of 2017, knowing I would use it to reflect on family when the time was right. The idea for what I’ve now written actually came to me in about 2004, when I was researching my Granger line. Over the years, I’ve made several attempts to write this idea, in essay and short story form. It took the right photo, plus the right amount of time doing the research, before I had the perspective to put the idea into the right words. Sometimes that’s how it works. 🙂

As we settle into the shorter days of November, I hope you find a treasure, however you define that! Meanwhile, here’s Sunny Side.

Lee Ann