The idea of ancestry.

Written for a creative writing class.

So long ago, I cannot remember

So long ago I wasn’t yet born

My father’s grandfather traveled by boat to an island of immigrants.

He made his way from a war-ridden Germany to the shores of Ellis Island

With only the small amount of money in his pocket.

My grandfather was a psychiatrist and my grandmother, a painter

When he died at the age of fifty, my grandmother got into drinking and after many hard years of alcoholism and obsessive compulsive disorder, she finally found God.

She has to where white cotton gloves now because of what the hand washing did to her.

One of my father’s cousins was a paranoid schizophrenic and the other a depressive because of the things her brother did.

My father grew up in Connecticut with his family as it slowly fell apart.

He became depressed and decided to see a psychiatrist.

He worked his way through college and met my mother at an engineering company.

My mother had grown up poor in Medford with four other siblings.

Her father had died of a heart-attack just like my father’s father at just about the same age.

I never got to meet either of my grandfathers, or my schizophrenic cousin.

I would have liked to meet them, gotten to know them, but I guess it’s a little too late for that.