Ancestry is an intriguing area of study. Family is important, and many want to know where they came from. Look at the amount of people paying for DNA tests and for monthly Ancestry.com memberships so that they can access records and build a family tree of their forgotten, long dead ancestors. I’ve always been particularly interested in history, and I was one of the many spending money so that I could have a better understanding of the people I came from.

Some things you can’t discover by simply adding family members and census records to your family tree. Those are the things you find out when it’s possible to get your grandparents talking about their own families, those memories being the only thing remaining of them now.

One day I spoke with my sweet grandmother, the woman whom all classic grandmother stereotypes must be built off of, who despairs at fattening my skinny frame so I don’t look so hungry. I said something about wanting to pursue my writing career with a master’s program, and she brought up something startling.

“My aunt was a poet!”

“What?” How had I not known of this?

“Yes. She had two published books and everything. Boy, she was a character. It was like she lived in another world. She was so whimsical.”

How had I not known this?

Yet a quick Google search showed me my great-great-aunt’s poems in a collection of American poetry at Brown University Library. In light of my own literary aspirations, and those of my mother and sisters, I had this relative who felt the same way about words and stories that I did.

One more lovely thing about the Internet! But the reality of this story, the heart of it wasn’t in the foreign name connected to mine in a genealogical family tree on the Internet, it was hearing my grandmother say her voice, and get to know this whimsical, breathy woman through her stories.

Thanks for clearing the way Elillian Madeley, with your collections Full Moon and Thoughts gathered along the path of life. I will try to live up to the family legacy this fall in my MFA program!