ancestral visits

Inviting one's ancestors to visit during the full moon worked fairly well, I admit, but here on in I am going to be more specific about the quality time I am asking for. My dad showed up in last night's dream, but all that happened was that he was driving somewhere and I couldn't persuade him to go forward instead of backing up everywhere he drove. When I woke, I suppose I was glad for the visit, but in the dream it was just annoying. "Pop, it's so much easier if you drive the car forward," my dream self said with a frustrated sigh. I don't seem to recall that our destination was Paradise.

I've been able, then, to dream about my folks fairly regularly. I feel lucky that that is so. I think they understand that there is a standing invitation and that they need not stand on ceremony or moon to stop by to worry, annoy, or delight me.

Truth be told, the grand prize of the full moon rendezvous with ancestors would have been a visit with someone from waaaay back, someone bent over a fire in ancient China, some great-great-great-and-so-on grandmother, maybe late in her years at 30. She has teeny but functional breasts; has never had to give them much thought. Someone is humming an old tune, and she smiles to herself. It is the same tune that my dad will whistle while making dumplings in a few hundred years.

This ancestor has a long braid, as does everyone. She's had a couple of kids survive the hazards of infected stubbed toe and wildfire disease, and one of those kids is watching her cook up some greens, wild mushrooms, and fragments of a scrawny bird that came too close to a clever trap. The other kid is off smashing and smelling rocks while doing the errand of finding some more anything for the soup. I'm not sure which is going to be my great-great-great-minus-one ancestor -- the explorer or the observer. But the woman at the fire, the one with both traits in equal measure, I know. She is curious about things, and watches the fire while deep in thought, foretelling a great-great-great-and-so-on granddaughter who would spend long hours as a teenager playing with candle wax while listening to James Taylor. The ancestral teeth are a bit buckish, and these would get passed down to support the genetic survival of orthodontists of the distant future.

Harder for me to connect to is the other side of the family. Maybe it's that there are too many movies about them. I see a white ancestor with scraggly hair and a kvetching Billy Crystal (as in "Princess Bride") partner. She's a good person, but beleaguered, works too hard, struggles to enjoy the moment. Totally unfairly, this good, white ancestor represents my shadow side, the stressed inner and outer critic.

Truth is that mom was way more deep-in-peaceful-thought-fire-stirrer than Pop. Pop was himself sometimes the kvetching Billy Crystal partner to her soft-hearted self, though with his thick Chinese bounce of speech instead of the shrug of Yiddish. But still I am more forgiving of his ancestral line. It's hard to forget that my maternal grandparents cut off communication with my mom for many years when she chose to marry the descendant of that Chinese ancestor by the fire. I worked on this in my young mind a lot, sitting barefoot on the ground, breaking open hickory nuts with a rock. I wondered why our white grandparents didn't want to meet or know us. It hurt, and I coped in part by circling the wagons around my Chinese ancestors. How's that for a bi-cultural metaphor?

After my parents died and I went through the mountain of letters from mom to pop, from pop to mom, from my grandparents to my mom, I understood things differently. These were parents who adored their daughter, who feared for her -- the way we would worry if a child were to marry something sub-human, someone who would permanently infect and debilitate your little contribution to the human (well, white) family. They envisioned grandchildren who would be ridiculed, rejected and isolated, spit upon by our peers. They worried for us, and I guess this was how, for many years, they loved us without choosing to know us, to love my mother while not accepting her choice in life partner and mate. It took a long time to understand. But my grandfather's letters to my mom say things like: "Hello, baby. Your daddy misses his baby. Please don't do this, baby," and my grandmother's letters say "I cried all night and woke screaming in a terrified sweat, so afraid for you." It's harder to judge them without feeling for them, too.

When my dad scolded me for being with Edmer, the dark-skinned man I once upon a time brought home from Guatemala (surprise!), the irony was hard to miss. Pop's desperate, heavily accented plea: "Don't marry foreigner!" made one tilt one's head and squint.

Gee. Maybe that's some of the unfinished business that my dream was helping me with. It is so much easier if you drive forward, you know.

Here follow a few notes of a very old tune, hummed or whistled.