Ticking and Tocking

Time is moving suddenly forward in stops and starts and mornings that feel like repeats of the morning before and nights that are never long enough...I have been having trouble sleeping lately which might have something do with the book I've been engrossed in reading - The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn. A book that is about the Holocaust (including nightmarish descriptions about what happens when humanity is sucked out of a population and brutality is all that is left..) and family and the mystery of why we are who we are and what role the past and our ancestors plays in uraveling that mystery...

This made me think - I know, it's dangerous - about my past, not just the recent past but, who my family are... Because to me in the present my family is myself, my mother, my older brother and my sister-in-law (plus, Mikey and Jess who are such good friends that they are family). That's a small gang, really nothing more than a handful. Of course I have more genetic family than that - Uncles and cousins who I haven't seen for over ten years, long lost family members who leave behind those ever changing family myths that are passed down in a game of telephone until one day my Mom turned to me and said "I think that your Great Aunt on your father's side was part Native American."

This lack of connection to the past - to what is essentially my shared history, my inheritance, my reasoning for why I am what I am has recently made me feel a little lost at sea. Maybe it's the end of summer, maybe it's the whole getting older thing but, the need for self knowledge - for time and space to figure out me, for that selfishness that benefits everyone- has become a priority lately.

Oh! Also, Dave and I watched Starsky & Hutch last night (god bless you Owen Wilson you butterscotch stallion) and it was not nearly as un-funny and terrible as I had remembered...I'm just sayin'...