sashinka | observation orientated, with a twist of lime | a blog

Two things. Sort-kinda-maybe about geneology.

Since I was about fourteen, I've been fascinated by where I came from. I might look'n'feel English, but I knew I was from somewhere else. I remember asking my Grandma about (already deceased) Grandpa's family, and her telling me all the siblings I knew, and then saying "of course there were the two sisters they left behind". I'm just never going to know who those sisters were... they surely married and changed their names, and, it was before the war, and, well, y'know.

What really got me going was sharing an office with a woman in my first job where she spent every weekend going around churches in the UK and doing the detective work that took her back to the tenth century. The tenth century (I don't use exclamation marks very often). I could just about get three generations. I'll admit it: I was jealous.

Another time, at a wedding (friends always seat me with their non-Jewish friends, because I'm - allegedly - good with "non Jews" as we ridiculously call the vast majority of the planet), I was sitting with a couple who'd been at college in Leeds with my friend. They were both from the same Yorkshire village, and their families had been their since the ninth century. That's 1,000 years. Count'em.

Like most things, it's the journey as much as the destination.

I think that was three things. So sue me.