What am I doing here? I mean, what draws me here, and where does this desire to write come from? I was certainly not trained or educated to be a "writer", and maybe I'm not even that good at it. I think of myself more as a story teller. You can have a good, interesting story in your head that you want to tell someone, but sometimes getting the words out is a little more difficult than you anticipated.... what I discovered was that if I write the story down I am better able to organize the words into a smoother flowing, more logical order, without the story getting all jumbled up from starts and stops and repeats and missing thoughts that happen when I try to tell the story vocally.
I guess you would say that is the practical reason you find me blogging, but there is a much deeper reason that drives me to write.
I had a close relationship with my paternal grandparents, especially my grandmother. We were a farm family and my dad and his 2 brothers all lived within a mile or so of my grandparents, and farmed my grandfather's farm along with their own land. The physical proximity made it easy for me to spend lots of time with them...and my grandmother lived to be 99 years old. My children all got to know her too. During her lifetime she told me lots of stories. Stories about her childhood and youth, about her parents and grandparents and other local folks and there were so many times I thought to myself how neat it would be to be able to go back in time and get to know the subjects of those stories, to ask them questions. I heard many of the stories often enough that I became familiar with all the highs and lows of her life, including the deaths of three of her children and the loss of their home to fire in 1929.
One of the first of my ancestors I learned a bit more about was my great-great grandfather Jesse Robinson and if I could chose only one ancestor to get to go back and meet it would probably be him. I'd ask him to tell me what this family land looked like when he first came here, why did your parents come here, what were your hardships, Tell me about Lafayette in 1850, tell me about your parents and grandparents....so many questions I could ask him. He served during the Civil War, what were his thoughts on the war, his thoughts on the causes, was it justified, did he support Lincoln? How well did he know his maternal grandfather who was a Revolutionary War Veteran.
By now you might be able to guess where this is leading and how it relates to my original question, What am I doing here? I have 7 grandchildren, and so far I also have 4 great grandchildren. I am 72 years old and the truth is, I want my great and great-great grandchildren and those after them to be able to know something about me.....to remember that I existed. Not simply a tombstone in a cemetery, but more than that. What was my life like? What was my job like? What were my passions? It's probably just that simple. I'm leaving a little trail of bread crumbs in the way of blog posts and other writing. I don't know what questions my great great grandkids will wish they could ask, or if they will even care, so it's a little like baking a cake without a recipe, but at least there will be something if they are curious.
