These cute figurines are very like the ones my Grandma carried with her. This during her hair raising adventures through the late 19th, and 20th centuries. My maternal granny was born in 1895.
Her little figurines still exist somewhere in the female line of the family. This because guys would ebay anything nice before ya buried. Men have no sense of history.
Family or otherwise.
The paper dresses hug out to dry was my Mom's thing. During the last Great Depression that's all girls could have,...paper dolls. In fact they were my first toys. Some of her childhood paper dolls were passed to on to me. I was so clearly a fairy it only made sense.
My wings were a dead give away.
Speaking of history, and trying to make sense. My dear sister Sylvia,...the one who rescued me, and helped me get my new house. Anyway she had that DNA thing done. 'Had a DNA sample taken from herself, and me.
This to finally discover who the hell we were.
My family is like Obama's. Indeed when I was little I didn't know there was anything like race. This since all my cousins went from ivory to ebony, and most shades in between. I innocently thought that when a mommy had a baby it could be anything, any color.
We were 'people', that's all, and that was that.
Of course I found out very different when I went to school. The "N-Bomb" dropped on me every five minutes. I had to ask Ma what it meant.
Imagine my surprise.
"A SECOND OPINION?"
The family DNA search results finally came back this month.
"Well bleep me on the court house steps at high noon!" ...as Senator Strom Thurmond used to say. He was a particularly unpleasant racialist Southern politician of the 20th century,..with a secret black daughter.
Never mind I understand. My great, great, grandfather was not only white, but an officer in the Confederate army. Is this an interesting country or what.
Anyhow it turns out that although Brown, and with hard to place features we aren't exactly black. Well okay Black by the "One Drop" laws of the slave era United States of America.
They passed them evil things to broaden the category of people that could be included in the slave economy. You could be a slave, and owned by your first cousin. Again, is this one very strange, and interesting country.
As for 'my' family. What are we?
Well according to this most of my ancestors on Dad's side are Native American. Plains folks it seems. Apache, and Sioux with other groups, Scots-Irish as well. No surprise there we knew this from family history.
On my Ma's side, here's the surprise.
We assumed the report would say some variation of Caribbean Black, and Chinese. My maternal Grandma, and her family was mostly China folks.
My racist chinese cousins used to call us "yell'ah niggers" when we grew to be teenagers. ...we weren't yellow, but you get the picture.
The racial innocence of our childhoods was over. Decades later we 'still' don't speak.
Pity.
However the surprise. Ma's ancestors are Northern Ethiopians, and Middle Easterners. Basically the Fertile Crescent. Sub-Sahara Africa, and China doesn't seem to be seriously in the mix.
Imagine that.
This will cause a few cousins that fancy themselves Zulu Warriors some bad moments. I imagine they might want a second opinion.
Me I'm fine with it.
I like this post-racial stuff. Yeah it's baloney when ya comes down to it. What with racial assaults, and killings still common, and everybody wanting to shoot Obama, but still.
Anyway I'll post the finer points of all this DNA hooha when I gets time later in the week.
Btw I 'do' recommend this stuff.
It ain't 'that' expensive, and it's bound to generate all sorts of family mayhem. Black bigots will find out they have white ancestors. Aryan nazi, racist nutjobs will discover all sorts of interesting relatives in their wood pile.
Americans, such as we are, would finally get a dose of reality if we 'all' did a search.
Above is a recent self-portrait. You can clearly see my family's interesting ethnic mix.
There's rumor of alien abductions in the family tree.
That might explain the eye stalks that appears in this or that generation. Otherwise we're just folks.
Me hang'n with my cousins. Yeah you might say we have a unique family backround.
