The Dash Between the Dates

Why I stopped looking for names on a family tree . . . and started looking for the lives in between them.

As far back as I can remember, I've had a love and passion for history, and the art and stories it creates and inspires. It makes sense, as my grandfather taught high school American History and American Government. Long before I could read on my own, I loved sitting in his lap, listening to stories about George Washington, the Declaration of Independence, and my favorite retelling, The Battle of Bunker Hill. I was forever dragging around textbooks, full of words I didn’t understand. But he’d pause in his readings so we could pore over every detail of the illustrations and paintings featured among its pages.

Throughout school, my favorite subjects were English and History. I loved creating stories, characters, plots and problems. I loved watching my characters deal with the situations and, ultimately, take on a life of their own within the pages of my tatter-edged notebooks. And I loved learning about ancient civilizations buried beneath flourishing cities, forgotten battles fought over forgotten wrongs, and fascinating stories about explorers and adventurers, leaders and entrepreneurs, and especially the rebels who bucked against "the norm" of society.

When I discovered genealogy, I learned that my two favorite subjects could become one. I found names and dates on my family tree, but I wanted more. These people had lived. I was more interested in the dash or gap between the two dates listed on their tombstones. What had this person experienced? What trials had they dealt with? Did they move, cross oceans of water or land, leave behind family, lose someone they cherished? A parent, a child? Did they step foot on the unbroken prairie, look around at the blowing grasses as the sun burnt their faces? What did they think of new technology? The telegraph, the telephone? Trains, automobiles, the whirring metal birds that filled the skies?

I had so many questions, yet few resources. By the time my interest in my family history emerged, I had lost my grandparents and access to generations of information. I wanted to fill in the large blank spaces, but where to turn? I ran into many walls, but slowly, brick by brick, I've managed to peek through to the other side.

The stories that have been hidden for so long, buried deep beneath the tree are not always beautiful. But they are real. The people involved were not perfect, they made mistakes. But that is what makes the stories perfect. Humans are imperfectly perfect by the mistakes they make.

They say, write what you know. This is what I know. The people who came before me, my ancestors, they are a part of me. I can look into a mirror and see the nose, the eyes, the bone structure of grandparents and great-grandparents. But it's so much more than appearances. Little fragments of the person they were live on inside me. I am a product of generations, of two people, two branches that grew, twined and twisted together, to form new leaves. Little pieces of their spirits reside at my core.

I write now to honor those spirits. To provide a voice for the voiceless. And to show that no matter the age in which we live, no matter the unprecedented times we face, our human experiences—joy and grief, love, and loss, wonder and want—forever connect us to those who came before.