In This Together

First, an apology – yeah, I don’t know what is going on with the comments section. Apparently it keeps kicking people out after they type one letter. And it is so challenging to express yourself fully in just one letter, isn’t it? I went in and fooled around with the settings, so maybe that will help. I was able to post a test comment with no problems. If that didn’t fix it for everyone, we are at the end of my technical abilities. If it persists, I will talk to WordPress and try to get some help.

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I have been thinking about interconnectedness a lot lately. How we all belong to each other and to everything. We think we throw things “away” but there is no away. Our impatient outburst becomes someone else’s bad day. Our happy smile lightens the burden of a stranger who needs one small piece of hope.

It’s enough to flatten you if you think about it too hard. Five hundred years ago, someone went down the wrong street and met the person they would fall in love with, and because of that wrong turn, you are here now, reading this. Whoa, dude.

My sister was the last of the family to abandon California (*sniff*) and I went to visit her in her new South Carolina home. She happened to have moved to the same county where my father’s mother’s family had first arrived in the United States in the 1700s. She asked “Do you want to go visit the cemetery where our ancestors are buried?” and I said yes, of course.

Side note: it is in Laurens, SC, which is not, as I assumed, named after Revolutionary hero and abolitionist John Laurens (who I only knew from “Hamilton”), but Henry Laurens, a wealthy slave trader and rice plantation owner because of course.

Our first ancestor in the US was Edward Garrett. Many of the men in my family still bear the name “Garrett” as a middle name.

This is the headstone of Edward’s daughter, Elizabeth. Look at Edward Garrett’s wife’s name. Ann Owsley. An odd last name. The same odd last name as my best friend from high school in Ventura, California, 2,414 miles away (more or less) from the spot I was standing when I took this photo.

I contacted Benton Owsley and knew he would have his geneaology handy because he is LDS (Mormon) and that stuff is important to them because Mormons like to go around baptising everyone, living or dead, so we can all party in heaven together. Some people hate that idea, but I think it springs from kindness. I mean, if that trick works, by all means, snatch me up into Mormon heaven. The lack of coffee is going to make me mad, though.

ANYHOO, Benton checked the records, and sure enough, my high school BFF and I are cousins from 7 generations ago, all the way across the continent. When Edward and Ann met, they never knew that, almost 200 years later, two teenagers would spend hours racing around in a MG Midget, going to the beach, and eating pop rocks while telling bad jokes.

I don’t know what the moral of this story is. Be a good ancestor? Be decent to each other? You never know what will happen? All of the above?

Do you have any stories of interconnectedness that you can post in the comments section, if the comments section will let you post?

Good luck to you all!