Saturday, January 26, 2008

Back to my Genealogy Future

My ten days of intense grandparenting is over ... I took a two hour nap today to celebrate! I love my grandchildren dearly and treasure my time with them. Each has a different personality and skill set, and will continue to have into adulthood. I consider these periods with them as "creating family history and memories." I try to find ways to teach them a bit of my own life and knowledge (e.g., the boys are into airplanes, and the 4-year-old knows how they fly - he can explain the forces weight, lift, thrust, and drag, and the pitch, roll and yaw motions. We're still working on how it happens).

Isn't it funny (peculiar, not ha-ha) and mysterious how children develop from infancy to adulthood? A few are just like their parents, but many have different moods and personalities than their parents have. Siblings are often quite different from each other. We see this in our own families, don't we? I and my two brothers are very different physically, emotionally and intellectually. My father and his brother were significantly different, as were his four sisters different from each other.

Each grandchild is like a scientist with an incubator - they test, they learn, they teach, they frustrate. Each one knows how to light up their parents - make them happy, sad, mad, proud, etc. They push until they reach a boundary, and then they test that boundary. My boundaries are not quite my wife's boundaries or my daughter's boundaries. I try to stay near the boundaries my daughters have set up. I'm a bit more strict now than I was with my own daughters.

I often wonder just what life was like in different places at different times. How did they live without running water, machines, electricity, roads? What did each person in the family do all day long? How did a large family manage to live together in a small house or tenement? Most important of all - how did mom and dad find time alone together - out in the barn?

So after five days with my grandsons in Santa Cruz (and I did nothing in genealogy there but read my email and Bloglines and post several pre-planned blogs), I came home to five days with my granddaughter. This week, I was able to work 3-4 hours a day on genealogy, but nothing like my regular schedule of 8 to 10 hours of genealogy.

I'm still trying to catch up on all of the genealogy news and the posts by other genea-bloggers over the past two weeks. I've concentrated this week on dealing with the genea-blogger challenges that I like to participate in - whether they are Carnival of Genealogy entries or not.

The FHC called yesterday to say that my three microfilms of Oneida County NY deed and probate indexes have arrived, so I have those to go to work on, and report here about my findings. I still have about 10 probate records to transcribe for my Rhode Island ancestors, and more to order on microfilm. I need to finish Della's Journal, and decide if I want to do a series on one of my grandfather's account books.

1 comment:

Colleen said...

Randy, this reminds me of a story that always makes me laugh. I am terrified to fly. Never was until I actually flew for the first time.

Anyway, one time I managed to fly to Las Vegas (an hour flight) to see my brother and his family. I arrived at 10 p.m. My then 3-year-old niece and my brother were at the terminal to greet me when I deplaned. I must have looked white as a ghost, as my niece said "What's wrong, Aunt Colleen?". I told her "I'll never understand what keeps these things in the air".

Kelley, in all her 3-year-old wisdom, looked up at me and said, quite straight-faced, mind you:

"It's the lift, Aunt Colleen, it's the lift".

I'm still terrified to fly, but did fly to LV last May to see this very same yet 18 years older niece walk down the aisle.

Only this time, it was she who was white as a ghost ;).