you never know

yesterday i received something from my cousin - a person who lives clear on the other side of this big country.  and someone i haven't seen since i lived on that coast in the early 80's.  they were simple pages that our uncle had written toward the end of his life.  he called them journal pages - but they are not like what i do every day.  these were the beginnings of his gathering of info in order to write something more like a book - to leave for all of us who came/come after, i guess.  (this uncle is the brother of both our mothers).  reading those pages had a big emotional effect on me.  it was more than finding out names i didn't know.  or that my grandfather was NOT born in ireland - but in kentucky.   good grief, talk about an image shatterer!  hillbilly vs iris rogue.   now i AM from cincinnati, ohio - about as close to hillbilly country as you can get!!  and i do rather like my feet bare. ^_^
part of the emotional part was the reading of those pages and finding out so much about all those people i would call family, put some big holes in my current 'persona' - well, in fact, it first had me realize exactly what that persona was - a 'where i come from' (and i don't mean ohio) thing - my whole way of being in the world!  that "loner" thing.  yes, i have siblings - all significantly younger than i - so i never quite got over being and 'only child'.  my father died when i was 10, and my mother when i was 27 - so since then, i have also played the orphan role.  what little family there was all lived 'far away', and there wasn't much contact.  so just forgot i had family - in a subtle way.  not like i denied their existence out loud.  none of this did i realize i was doing.
all of this took a much deeper cut in my journaling this morning.  i will get to that in the next post, cause if i put it here - this will get much longer than anyone would want to read, i think.  not that herds of people are reading these anyway. ^_^  and now i see something in that lower bar that leads me to believe this won't even post.  drat.  we give it a try anyway.
love and beauty,
j