Ancestry requires math

Here's the problem with genealogy: exponential growth.  Both directions.  You don't understand?  Would you like me to explain?  I'll do the easy part first.

So say you want to trace my family, although I don't know why YOU would want to trace MY family.  You should trace your own family.  But whatever; here is the problem.

So my mom and dad got married 55 years ago and then proceeded to have six children.  So you start the family tree with mom and dad, you add the kids and there are eight people.

Well, five of the kids got married (four of them more than once) and proceeded to have eighteen children.  So now you have twenty-six people.  Now the eighteen grandchildren are beginning to have children. So far, eight of them have had twelve children.  Well, honestly, seven of them have had eleven children, but give it another couple of months and there will be a new baby, so let's just call it twelve.

So in fifty-five years, the "family" has grown from mom and dad - to mom and dad and children and grand-children and great-grand-children, and those two people made a family of thirty-eight people.

That's manageable, right?  Sure it is. (until you try to get them all in a room together!) But I told you I was going to start with the easy part. 

Check this out.

You have two parents, right?  and each of them have two parents, so you have four grandparents.  And each of them has two parents, so you have eight great-grandparents.  I'm sure you see where I'm going with this.  If you go back very far, it starts to be a lot of people.  A lot of people.  A lot.  And if you try to keep up with aunts and uncles and cousins, it gets totally out of control.

So say you want to go back five generations, your great-great-great-great grandparents. You have thirty-two of those.  You really want to trace the family history?  You're lucky enough that there are records available to the early 17th century when they all came to America?  (That's when most of my family got here - the rest of them were already here.)  So call that ten generations, that is what it is for the branch of the family I just glanced at.  So the Sabin dude that moved here in 1620, he's my tenth great-grandfather.   If you were able to trace every single ancestor back ten generations, there would be 2,048 of them!  I might be related to every person that came to America in the 17th century...how many people actually came over here that long ago?

Want to be fancy and say you're descended from Charlemagne?  Help yourself.  You probably are; you and about a bajillion other people.  Also, you're descended from Charlemagne and the other 467 million ancestors of that generation.  Okay, I didn't really do the math because ... well...I don't want to.  But if you tried to go back that many generations, you would either be descended from the entire population of Europe, or there were some cousins doing things that cousins shouldn't do.

Okay, I just looked it up and if you go back 30 generations it is going to be over a billion people, but there weren't a billion people on earth, and there wasn't a lot of inter-continental travel going on, either. But there was a lot of uncle/niece, cousin/cousin marrying and baby making.

So anyway, that's one of the issues that is somewhat troubling.  And the main reason that I don't want to try and write it all down on pedigree charts.  Phooey on that.  Websites all the way!!  :)

Also, people on ancestry.com will just write down stupid things.  Like going all the way back to before the time when surnames were commonly used, and there's a guy (in Wales)  named James ap Owain, which means James, son of Owain.  Right?  But then whoever is writing this down doesn't know the name of the mother, so they write down "Mrs. James ap Owain".  Well, I don't really think that's accurate.  Just write down 'unknown'.  Honestly, at that time wives weren't referred to as "Mrs. Husband's last name" because husband didn't have a last name.  So don't make stuff up.

Norse history?  If your name was Eric Thorsson, it meant you were Thor's son.  And your wife was named Hildegard Sigurdsdattar because her father was Sigurd. And your kid will be whatever you name him Ericsson.

So the good news is you know who everybody's father was.  You don't know who anybody's mother was, but I can assure you there are no actual records anywhere that say the mother of Hildegard was Mrs Sigurdsdattar.  People annoy me sometimes. 

And....I'm kind of done talking about that.  Bye.

My son

I was just talking to my oldest son on the phone, and I'm a little bit teary-eyed.  He's falling in love, although I'm not sure he realizes it. I think I'm seeing the beginning of a pathway that is going to lead to me not being the most important woman in his life.  That's a good thing; I want him to have love and a family and all that...but I don't know this woman yet, so I'm a little apprehensive.  Jake is no fool, and he's not a child. He knows what he wants in life and he isn't afraid to tell people to go away and he isn't afraid to walk away, so probably it's okay.  But it makes me sad and proud to see what a wonderful young man he has grown up to be, and to see him taking his first steps on this new journey and knowing what a trip it is going to be.


And trust my child to test me.  He's falling for a woman who is five years older than him, a woman who is divorced, a woman who has two children.  Every motherly instinct in my body wants to tell him to run and find someone who hasn't already had a bad experience with love...but I can't do that.

I once WAS a woman who was divorced with two young children, and it didn't make me a bad bet.  I fought against a lot of prejudice from men and mothers who thought I must be looking for a daddy for my kids, that I must be looking for someone to support me financially, that I must be desperate to latch onto any man that would stand still, but that was never the case.

From what I understand, this young woman is "such a good mom, just like you are.  She takes such good care of her kids and she doesn't NEED anybody to help her."  I can only hope that is true.

Bottom line is this:  I don't care what road she's been down or what block she's been around.  I care if she loves my son and treats him right and if she wants to join him in the life that he has chosen.  I hope he doesn't fall in love and give up his ideals or give in at the first sign of trouble.   It's hard enough to be married, it's even harder to raise children.  It's incredibly hard to start out marriage with children and deal with the other parents and all that goes along with that.

But who knows.  He isn't one to get in a hurry.  I may look back at this two years from now and laugh.  But I heard words and emotions from him tonight that I've never heard in 26 years, and I think he's taken a few steps in that direction.  We shall see. 

At least he isn't going to move to England, like my daughter!!!!!  Which is a whole different story.  We'll get to that someday.