Читать книгу The Twelve Gifts from the Garden - Charlene Costanzo - Страница 20

Family Tree

Family: like branches on a tree, we all grow in different directions, yet our roots remain as one.

—Unknown

Long ago, when my grandmother taught me about praying for my relatives from the Old Country, I made a wish. I wished that I would someday get to know those relatives, some of them, at least. Maybe just one cousin my age. I was five years old. It was well before I ever saw a traveler palm tree or heard of its legend of making wishes come true. But now, right now, as I pray as my grandmother did, I realize that this wish has come true. It’s something she would never have imagined. Nor would I have, really.

I haven’t actually met them yet, not in real life, but I have communicated with several of them. I now know of and about some of my relatives who are distant in the world and at various distances on my family tree. Through a DNA testing and genealogy service, I’ve connected with a few distant cousins—1,327 so far! I learned that my ancestry includes many more ethnic groups than the Slovak, Lithuanian, and Polish I knew of growing up. I learned that I descend from people from many places in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. I also learned that I have cousins living all over the world. Besides the United States, Slovakia, Lithuania, and Poland like I might have guessed, they live in Austria, Belarus, Canada, Croatia, Czechia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and more… I never realized how widespread the branches of my family tree are.

As Grandma Gorda said, I may never meet them, but we are related. Now I care about and pray for them all.

Actually if you think about it, all families are connected. A family tree technically shows only direct ancestors—who someone is descended from, like parents and grandparents. But a genogram includes everyone who is related, including siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, and so on. It shows how family trees connect. And they all eventually connect.

Yes, all of them.

All humans are related. So every single person I meet is my relative somehow. Every single person outside my immediate family is still a relative. Everyone else on this planet is a cousin of mine. And yours. Ours. I’ve heard it said that we are “all connected” or “all one.” Well, in this way, we are. One family.