Building My Family Tree 6/16/18

I call my Dudda “ThinZel Washington” cause you can’t tell him he’s not the cat’s meow. My mom looking on proud. 2006

Last night I dreamed I was at my paternal grandmother’s house. Warm pots on the stove. She was talking with her hand on her hips, looking someone directly in the eyes. Not as a threat, but she had an aging coke bottle shape. It was the natural way she stood. She stirred food on the stove with one hand on her hip. We called her Granoe. Well, other’s did. I called her Ann, which really annoyed some of my dad’s siblings. Looking back now, with this huge amount of respect for my elders, I see how that was perceived as audacious.  However, my dad called her Ann. It was how I was taught to address her. It feels strange even now to call her Granoe, though my first cousins did… Or Mama, they called her.

I am sifting through all sorts of memories this morning… Doing Google searches. I did learn something. I found her brothers obituary, where they named all her siblings including her and their parents. I wanted to call and ask my dad about her, when she was born. At the same time, he went through a major break down after his mother’s death. He just recovered from a few years ago. she died in 1996. It took almost two decades for him to grapple with a life without his mother.

Recently, I asked him where she was buried. He brushed it off and said he didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t push.

I recently took a picture of her in a frame with my grandfather, at my aunt’s house. I was living in Las Vegas when she passed. I sometimes go to where my maternal grandmother’s resting. She died when I was older. She’d taught me how to cook. Sometimes I’d call just to talk with her a few times a week in adulthood.  We had a relationship so I miss her all the time. I drive buy the house I spent my early years in, picking wild strawberries from the back yard… Seeing my first apparition. While my father’s mother passed when I was still in high school. I didn’t get to go home to the funeral. I’ve been thinking about her a lot and how I don’t really know my entire family. Mostly, I had no relationship with my mother’s father, no relationship with my grandmother’s father and only met him once in my life.  Only to find out I had a cousin living in the same apartment building downstairs, I played with often. I met my paternal grandfather when on my way to a funeral and my dad met his father also for the first and last time that day. I woke up today, moved to work on the family tree I’ve been building.

My grandmother Shirley, my mother Frances and me. There’s a story I won’t get into here. These weren’t our clothes. LOL! 2003ish I’m thinking.

 

I’d like to trace my family tree back four generations. On both sides.

Maternal:

Great Great grandfather:

Great great grandmother:

Great grandmother: Nancy Koger

Great grandfather: Unknown

Grandmother: Shirley Bell Nicholson

Grandfather: Captain Nicholson

My mother: Annie F. Nicholson

I’ve always felt my never fully accepts how beautiful she is. This is us. 1980’s baby!!!

Paternal:

Great Great grandparents: Who had Tom Hill

Great Great grandparents: Who had Mary Kirkwood Hill

Great grandfather: Tom Hill

Great grandmother: Mary Kirkwood Hill of Sledgewood, Mississippi.

Grandmother: Mary Ann Elbert, maiden name Mary Ann Hill.

Grandfather: Lewis Brown (maybe he spelled his first name like Louis) I can’t find anything on him.

My father: Kenneth Elbert

 

I’m putting names, hoping the dynamics of the internet will work in my favor and any family members searching will find this blog.

Shirley Bell Nicholson ( I don’t know her maiden name) born in Brooksville, Mississippi. Has eight other siblings still living with the last name Koger. However she was/is the oldest and had a different father. She was named before my great grandmother met and married a Koger.

I don’t know anything about Captain Nicholson. I’d like to trace his siblings and their children.

Catalyst For Change

My Dream Purple Manual Typewriter

I spend a lot of my days defying odds, breaking rules and ignoring objections. This sounds horrible. I am trying to be in a space where I don’t feel obligated to explain myself and just be… At the same time, this is a blog, so I can’t just be like, “I don’t follow rules” without speaking to why.

Everyone is afraid. Everyone lives in what they believe to be true. I ask tons of questions. I want to know who told you we couldn’t do it. I want to know who made each rule someone is trying to enforce.  Believe me, I feel like an asshole when I’m asking a million questions of someone just doing their job.  I stress people I love out. At the same time, I make them proud. I force them to see the entire world with different eyes and in a way, we’re all getting free.

So, I want to know how the rules I follow are valuable. I mean, at one point it was normal to own people, trade and sell them like cattle. This was legal. I’m mentioning this, because laws don’t always make sense. Like in some states it is still illegal to have sex in any position other than missionary.  At one point, women were considered burdens. Which is why the father paid to give her away. Through out history, women were also property to be used as leverage. It was normal to beat one’s wife or have poor women sold into harems. My point is, just because something is culturally and socially accepted doesn’t mean it is right, or that it’s conducive to us growing.

I’m obsessed with religion, it is one of the most fascinating creations of man… It’s complexities give hope we will one day get beyond superficial superficial boundaries. Religion actually challenges the status quo by inspiring people from all walks of life, on every economic level and from any cultural or historical background to see themselves as familiar. While, unfortunately, dividing the more common bonds native to man.  Which means, people who look alike and speak the same language may not see their similarities while being completely at home with foreigners. Belief makes people feel at home with strangers and treat family strange.

I don’t follow what I’ve been taught to believe. Instead I follow my knowing.  God still speaks. The ancestors are real.  I meet people in several different religions who share my faith and practice. The knowing bridges us over superficial boundaries. I was lost following some written set of rules, denying myself and spending my days preparing for death. As I’ve embraced life and found what I was initially taught isn’t true, I’ve started questioning everything. Turns out, there a lot of other untruths that go unquestioned.

Now, people look at me like I’m crazy. People have fought me tooth and nail over a false belief.  Observation and rational conclusions are met with hostility, even when there is proof… Side note: Googling shit is like the best thing that could have happened to my generation. I have to be careful with saying this though, cause we can’t believe everything we read. There are already tons of books that have no credibility being held as an authority, way beyond their usefulness and our evolution.

I like writing because it calls me to critically think. When you can Google anything, when your sentences are finished for you and you stop speaking to people… We lose so much. I’m trying to find the balance between technology, common sense, spirit and scientific proof.

Life for me has changed drastically. Everyone around me is changing too. All of these changes are a result of an unconventional way of existing. I’m constantly self-evaluating and questioning.

I am so grateful to be moving within life instead of outside of it and against it.

6/8/2018 Blogging Again

It’s 7pm. I decided to write a journal because I’ve been writing in journals on paper, that I will probably never read. It’s this technique I’ve learned from a book called, The Artist’s Way. It is freedom. It’s not writing for sharing but for making the unconscious tangible. Then deal. I never knew how many things were limiting my choices. Three pages a day helps you move through other levels of being. I’m grateful for this lesson and practice.

I have failures. Many. I am a year late on a book I was suppose to release last year.

I worry as I write free form… If I’m not too open. I am trying to remember the boundaries we should have when writing about self. Don’t mention anyone you know by name, protect their privacy. I’ve always been an open book. I’m so open people feel freer with me and at times I’m told things no one else is. I’m fully present. I’m attentive. I use to think what I see is obvious. People say I have a gift for fully comprehending them, sometimes better than they grasp themselves.  I’m objective and compassionate.  I don’t really believe in bad traits. People reward me with their trust and by being more of themselves. Still, I’m wondering how do I return to blogging in a way that is helpful but also respectful of my own being.

I do have a lot to say. I’ve learned a lot since I was here last. I’m still learning. I have abandoned some fears and unfortunately realized others. These new ones are clearer and easier to work through, I tell myself.  What I tell myself is the absolute truth, even when it isn’t.

So… I’m here. Hearing. Rendering whatever I’m being told.

Love