I’ve known a few old folks who at a certain age suddenly get fascinated with genealogy. The thing they all have in common is estranged relationships with their living children.
Someone needs to tell them that if they showed as much interest in their kids as they do in dead strangers that maybe they wouldn’t have time or fascination with genealogy.
I’m young and fascinated by my ancestors who came to America. It makes me think of how the world used to be a century and change ago, how their listed country of origin was not their homeland, because imperialism. How they came from a peasant life to America, and worked hard and advanced to the middle class, because you could do that a century ago. The brutal wars and famines they escaped, because they left.
It makes me think of the most beautiful poem, my favorite, by Emma Lazurus for the Staue of Liberty.
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
My great grandparents+ are not really strangers to me, even though I only ever met one of them. I have the stories and recollections of older family members. I have their translated journals and letters, originally penned in tongues our family has forgotten except a few choice foods and curses.