Back to your roots...

Though I knew this day was coming, I still wasn't prepared for it.  My daughter came home from school with an assignment that I just wasn't ready to tackle.  No, it wasn't an algebraic equation, or a novel I had never heard of.  It was an assignment about your family tree, simple as that.  My husband's side of the family has a full and vibrant family tree.  Everyone knows where they came from and everyone has a branch on the proverbial tree, it's as simple as that.  My tree however looks a lot like that Charlie Brown Christmas tree.  Oh wait, it's not even a tree, it's a twig on the ground.  No roots, no leaves, just....a mess.  And with this assignment that my second grade daughter brought home, comes a lot of hidden information and secrets. 

My family "tree" is a taboo subject in my family, a history of lies, shame and secrets.  And by family I mean my mother and grandmother.  My mother and her mother, that is all I know for family.  There, it's out there, I've said it.  My "father" left town as soon as my mother (at age 19) informed him she was pregnant.  I didn't even know his name until I was in high school.  My mother and the man I would learn to call "Dad" began dating when I was 2 years old.  He's the only father I've ever known.  In fact, I was a pre-teen when I learned that he wasn't my real dad.  My grandfather, my mom's dad died shortly before I was born, my grandmother remarried when I was a young girl though old enough to not call this man grandpa, or whatever I would have called him.  My grandmother's family life is not much better.  She had 9 sisters and brothers but none of them had the same father.  It's hard to imagine, nine different men in my great-grandmother's life, especially decades before the term "baby daddy" even came into existence.

So last night we started to tackle this project of listing the countries that our family came from.  I was dumbfounded.  There is so much nobody knows in my family, that I have no idea who came from what city, never mind what country my family originated from.  I'm trying not to project my shame/embarrassment on my daughter.  We are slowly opening up a dialog on my family history and while it's not pretty or something I'm proud of, she deserves to know.  Thank you second grade social studies homework for giving me a reason to start to open up with her.