A year spent in the past
When this year began, I was several months deep into a self-directed study of the history of slavery and of the Americas. This was my mental anchor while I prepared for and then recovered from back surgery. I began, contemplating writing a historical novel about an early American. At some point, I began adding what I could learn of Sicilian history, because I recognized my project was a personal one, that I wanted to understand what it is for me to be an American, and was tracing it through a kind of mythical proto-American, a lineage that weaves many kinds of American stories into one person. The story of slavery is so inextricable from that of being an American, that even I, a white man descended from post-1850 immigrants to the American North, cannot disentangle them. Without slavery, there is no America, and without America, there is no Great Immigration. The America I grew up in would not be the same without the millions of immigrants who’ve adapted to America, and changed it in the process.
I asked my sister to send me what she had on our family’s genealogy, and began to add to it. I traced my paternal lineage back eight generations (and counting). Along the way I corrected myself after a false start, met some cousins. I learned to read Italian and Latin, which has been comparatively easy when compared with my efforts to learn Sicilian history. A story that I was beginning to build in my head of the origin of American identity began to change and become another story, one about a Sicilian who lived long enough ago that it is improbable he would have made his way here, to the site of my first story, but holding open the possibility that if not he, his descendant would come. It remains to be seen whether I will write this story or anything resembling it.
I have written countless biographies for my lineage study on WikiTree, and an account of a paternity case involving my fourth-great aunts and uncles. My most popular blog post in 2014, which Rolling Stone is already calling the biggest in transgender history, appeared in my WordPress blog in 2013. This year has been one of study and preparation, and because I’ve generated so little, I have difficulty quantifying or qualifying my achievements. I used to get more pageviews, and I am still proud of much of what I wrote that found a wider audience. But even my fears of becoming irrelevant and unpopular don’t stop me from what feels like an obsessive hunt, to the beginnings of my family’s recorded history. I feel that, until I have traced my descent as far back as is possible, that I can’t move on. In a year of concentrated research, I’ve gotten perhaps 100-150 years back in the record. Am I willing to put in the next few years? There’s no way I can justify or afford to go on the way I have. And yet I still do it.
Not all of my work goes into the past. Current events still remind me of the world I live in, and move me to do what I can to make things a little better. I show my public support of the civil rights movements of my day, and engage people on the subjects of police brutality, institutionalized racism, a living wage, how to raise our kids to be good people. I look for work I might do. I look around at other people’s kids, now that mine is grown and lives far away, and I see the future of my town. I want them to know I’m not afraid of them, that I care about them, that we are neighbors. I telegraph this message with the way I look at people I’ve been trained to ignore. This is the kind of change I can create. I can change myself, and have an effect on the world because I choose to do things differently, better than I was originally taught.
It amuses me when I’m able to see how afraid of change I can still be. I have moved to different regions of the country, had a conversion of religious faith, changed my name and gender expression, married twice. You’d think I’d be the master of change by now.
I asked my sister to send me what she had on our family’s genealogy, and began to add to it. I traced my paternal lineage back eight generations (and counting). Along the way I corrected myself after a false start, met some cousins. I learned to read Italian and Latin, which has been comparatively easy when compared with my efforts to learn Sicilian history. A story that I was beginning to build in my head of the origin of American identity began to change and become another story, one about a Sicilian who lived long enough ago that it is improbable he would have made his way here, to the site of my first story, but holding open the possibility that if not he, his descendant would come. It remains to be seen whether I will write this story or anything resembling it.
I have written countless biographies for my lineage study on WikiTree, and an account of a paternity case involving my fourth-great aunts and uncles. My most popular blog post in 2014, which Rolling Stone is already calling the biggest in transgender history, appeared in my WordPress blog in 2013. This year has been one of study and preparation, and because I’ve generated so little, I have difficulty quantifying or qualifying my achievements. I used to get more pageviews, and I am still proud of much of what I wrote that found a wider audience. But even my fears of becoming irrelevant and unpopular don’t stop me from what feels like an obsessive hunt, to the beginnings of my family’s recorded history. I feel that, until I have traced my descent as far back as is possible, that I can’t move on. In a year of concentrated research, I’ve gotten perhaps 100-150 years back in the record. Am I willing to put in the next few years? There’s no way I can justify or afford to go on the way I have. And yet I still do it.
Not all of my work goes into the past. Current events still remind me of the world I live in, and move me to do what I can to make things a little better. I show my public support of the civil rights movements of my day, and engage people on the subjects of police brutality, institutionalized racism, a living wage, how to raise our kids to be good people. I look for work I might do. I look around at other people’s kids, now that mine is grown and lives far away, and I see the future of my town. I want them to know I’m not afraid of them, that I care about them, that we are neighbors. I telegraph this message with the way I look at people I’ve been trained to ignore. This is the kind of change I can create. I can change myself, and have an effect on the world because I choose to do things differently, better than I was originally taught.
It amuses me when I’m able to see how afraid of change I can still be. I have moved to different regions of the country, had a conversion of religious faith, changed my name and gender expression, married twice. You’d think I’d be the master of change by now.