long-lost relatives

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

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At the start of the century, my parents moved us to a new house in a new town. I lived in the suburbs, memorized textbook facts in school and visited my relatives during the summer. I colored inside the lines, got straight-As, was accepted to college and moved to Los Angeles.

In L.A. I learned to ask questions. I asked why the suburbs were built and who wrote the textbooks and how my relatives ended up in those states. I learned that our foundations are built with blocks that other people give us and I learned that I can always take the blocks down and rearrange them if I want to. In the eight years since I moved to L.A., I’ve become particularly invested in rearranging my blocks, studying history, and asking more questions than I can answer.

Once I started doing this, I realized that without it, I was existing out of context like a quote that’s been isolated from its novel. I made sense on my own. I was useful. But I didn’t fit into any particular place.

A few months ago, I started reading the novel that my quote is from and I learned that what I knew was the bedtime-story version - the highlight reel with the familiar landmarks. I knew where my grandparents grew up and I knew which holiday traditions we practiced. I knew the list of countries from whence we had come. But what I didn’t know far outpaced what I did.

Exactly one century prior to my new house in my new town, my great-great grandparents also moved to new houses in new towns. My great grandparents had siblings even my aunt had never heard of and my grandparents have cousins who are still alive. In addition to long-lost relatives, I discovered lawsuits, international travels, relationship troubles, broken marriages, mental illness, forbidden love, ingenuity, overcomers, reconciliation and deep devotion. I found my context.

It turns out that finding my context is a bit what I imagine riding roller coasters to be like (I hate riding roller coasters). It’s fast and it’s slow, it’s full of anticipation and sometimes it’s just a free-fall. I’ve screamed and cried and laughed and found moments to catch my breath in between. And it’s a ride I’ll keep riding.

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It is well documented that ancestry is invaluable; a brief glance around the world reveals holidays, prayers, genealogies and rituals dedicated to those who have come before us. My own culture is more subtle and even disconnected from its past, but a past certainly exists. If studying history of politics and place provides context for current events, then ancestry is like studying our own personal histories. Though I am only beginning to document my own ancestry, I’m really just picking up the pen passed from previous generations - a bit of a relay-written novel. Despite the exhilaration, perhaps the most challenging part is the realization that I get to write the next chapter. I get, or maybe I have a responsibility, to heal generational wounds and preserve generational treasures.

At the risk of sounding cliche, this process has gifted me the profound understanding that I am a part of something bigger. And it has only enhanced the third thing on my list of “that in which I am particularly invested:” asking more questions than I can answer. Each new search, photograph, conversation and date pushes me to ask something else: What happened to my great-great grandmother? What language did my grandmother speak at home? When did the rest of the family arrive in the U.S.? Each answer fills out another page in our book.

Doing this research allows me to play detective, child, historian and academic and I would be remiss to close without acknowledging questions I have about ancestry itself. Namely, what does ancestry mean when adoption, refugee status, (im)migration, stolen land, enslavement, genocide or natural disasters disrupt bloodlines, erase histories and destroy heirlooms? What does it mean to heal wounds inflicted by your ancestors? Are we responsible for those who have come before us as much as for those who will follow?

I understand these questions to frame the research I am doing. They allow me to examine the details and the bigger picture. They keep my story in perspective and they anticipate my next steps. Ironically, this quest only began upon my return to what is now a 20 year-old house in a familiar town - not in Los Angeles where I first learned to ask the questions. This is what it looks like to live the questions. It is an honor to read and and write the plot twists in this story. They keep me up at night like a kid reading with a flashlight under the covers, but this version will be unabridged.