Family..

Family ties

Family dynamics

Family history

And the fabled Family tree - 

or should I say trees.

Extended families sprung not just from this small gathering but from arms stretched from

parent to child

grand parent to parent

great grand parent to grand parent,

on down the ages to maybe a lowly croft in Scotland

or a cold drafty castle somewhere in Europe.

As I wander back over past generations

I understand - it is not just relationships 

of my known life that have been part of my learning, but

a certain genetic makeup gifted to each of us knowingly or unknowingly

through liaisons - wrapped up in legality or maybe in smoldering romance -

whether of the happy picket fence variety

or tumultuous and noisy and full of living variety - 

gives each of us building blocks

not just of hair colour 

shape of our noses

or height or body shape

but the sound of a voice

the turn of a phrase

postures and poses

the way some one walks or stands.

Traits - individual specifics strained 

through time's great sieve sorting through

generations past until a moment in time

flashes forward in a 

a stance, an expression, a habit.

Are these learned, or are they in the twists and turns of our genes?

I'm not sure it matters.

What does matter is how I take the traits passed to me

and how I shape them.

Not to be better or worse - just to make them my own

and to create a new living picture.

“We all grow up with the weight of history on us.  Our ancestors

dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling 

chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.” 

~ Shirley Abbott