family history

Elephant baby has from its mother's womb been more-or-less timely ripped, proved to be female, and been named the same thing as my cousin's November-born daughter. We shall be trend-breakers and give our child a different name. In any case, baby and mom seem ok so far as I'm aware, though my news is all indirect.

My parents came up for a couple hours on Sunday to drop off a growing pile of things they had for us, which included the journalling my mother did (as letters to my father, who was off on a submarine at the time) from two days before I was born to slightly after two months of my existence. It's fascinating from a number of perspectives, both as a guide on some of what I might be looking forward to myself in the near future, and as a family history-- there are various listings of things given, many of which I still remember, like the hideous squeaky banana whose squeaker fell out around six years later, and one of which (an infant sweater/bonnet & bootie set from my father's aunt) is presently sitting on top of the baby's dresser, which itself was once mine. The language is full of various bits of slang that migrated out of the family vocabulary long enough ago that I don't remember them and which I kept being minorly surprised by, and there were several bits of family history that I had known about, but not realized that was when they happened. (One aunt's miscarriage, another's being sent home from the monastery at which she was a novice...)

My grandmother (mother of six) reportedly always felt that it was best to put off the having of the baby as long as possible, since it was always worse afterwards; she was speaking of post-partum depression, which my mother mentions in her journalling that she didn't particularly notice at all. My grandmother's mother got institutionalized by her husband for what was probably post-partum depression, after which her mother & sister made her divorce him-- not that this was the only reason-- my mother, so far as I can tell, pretty much missed inheriting any depressive tendencies altogether. I suspect the ability to eat whatever I darn well please is liable to offset a lot of potential misery on my part, and most of my coping mechanisms for dealing with mental strain are built around sense of responsibility, so I can't see myself falling into the handout-described state of not being able to muster the energy to change diapers.

Someone elsejournal was talking recently about being the last of a genetic line, and I had a disoriented moment of realizing that despite a thorough familiarity with dynastic concepts on large and small levels, I don't really think in that direction; my concept of my heritage goes backwards rather than forwards, I guess. Possibly the fact that I've had second cousins since I was in middle school may have made it something I never thought to think about. Miss Radiator and I are it for the maternal line, as it happens; out of ten biological cousins and my brother, I'm the only female on my mother's side (and my girl-cousin on the other side is very unlikely to reproduce.) But I see ancestry and all that from a very much "you are here" sort of perspective, rather than a torch to carry on. Probably healthier in the long run; I definitely don't want to place any pressure on the next generation to reproduce if she's not interested in doing so.

family history

Elephant baby has from its mother's womb been more-or-less timely ripped, proved to be female, and been named the same thing as my cousin's November-born daughter. We shall be trend-breakers and give our child a different name. In any case, baby and mom seem ok so far as I'm aware, though my news is all indirect.

My parents came up for a couple hours on Sunday to drop off a growing pile of things they had for us, which included the journalling my mother did (as letters to my father, who was off on a submarine at the time) from two days before I was born to slightly after two months of my existence. It's fascinating from a number of perspectives, both as a guide on some of what I might be looking forward to myself in the near future, and as a family history-- there are various listings of things given, many of which I still remember, like the hideous squeaky banana whose squeaker fell out around six years later, and one of which (an infant sweater/bonnet & bootie set from my father's aunt) is presently sitting on top of the baby's dresser, which itself was once mine. The language is full of various bits of slang that migrated out of the family vocabulary long enough ago that I don't remember them and which I kept being minorly surprised by, and there were several bits of family history that I had known about, but not realized that was when they happened. (One aunt's miscarriage, another's being sent home from the monastery at which she was a novice...)

My grandmother (mother of six) reportedly always felt that it was best to put off the having of the baby as long as possible, since it was always worse afterwards; she was speaking of post-partum depression, which my mother mentions in her journalling that she didn't particularly notice at all. My grandmother's mother got institutionalized by her husband for what was probably post-partum depression, after which her mother & sister made her divorce him-- not that this was the only reason-- my mother, so far as I can tell, pretty much missed inheriting any depressive tendencies altogether. I suspect the ability to eat whatever I darn well please is liable to offset a lot of potential misery on my part, and most of my coping mechanisms for dealing with mental strain are built around sense of responsibility, so I can't see myself falling into the handout-described state of not being able to muster the energy to change diapers.

Someone elsejournal was talking recently about being the last of a genetic line, and I had a disoriented moment of realizing that despite a thorough familiarity with dynastic concepts on large and small levels, I don't really think in that direction; my concept of my heritage goes backwards rather than forwards, I guess. Possibly the fact that I've had second cousins since I was in middle school may have made it something I never thought to think about. Miss Radiator and I are it for the maternal line, as it happens; out of ten biological cousins and my brother, I'm the only female on my mother's side (and my girl-cousin on the other side is very unlikely to reproduce.) But I see ancestry and all that from a very much "you are here" sort of perspective, rather than a torch to carry on. Probably healthier in the long run; I definitely don't want to place any pressure on the next generation to reproduce if she's not interested in doing so.

Xposty from dreamwidth.