Tangled Roots

To look at this patch of pretty flowers, that’s all it looks like and all it that is. Yes, it is pretty, but rather wild and untamed. Well not completely because it has been planted from the same seed, each year more seeds bring more flowers. 

Or is it the kind of flower that is called perennial and comes from roots, or rhizomes or bulbs. Nevertheless, the flowers, from a  distance all look the same. Their roots tangled with grasses, weeds and 

wildflowers until they look like 

they belong to each other.

And once there was a broad prairie with only

grass growing and many families were born, 

no one knowing the other. With tractors and 

plows, chalk and blackboard, medicines and 

white uniforms, aprons and dinner on the table 

at six, and doors open for business, each family

spread, putting roots deep into this new land. 

One generation, then two, then three, then 

four generations flowered and grew into more. 

With each child ~ she looks like an aunt or an uncle 

or some long dead ancestor, the way the hair curls, 

or the way they walk or talk or laugh, or the 

shape of a nose until ~ each generation looks like 

the last but has its own way ~ along with their tangled roots.

“The thing that interests me most about family history is the gap between 

the things we think we know about our families and the realities.”

~ Jeremy Hardy, comedian