when I first started doing genealogy long ago in our first apt. at the kitchen table with a typewriter Grandma Grace loaned me and a bunch of handwritten notebooks....

and I'd find things like "we think our oldest brother had 14 kids, but we have had no contact with him.....", "so and so said someones wife died in the 1930s, but we don't really know"...I'd be like WHAT? you DON'T know? but, alas.....my own immediate modern-day genealogy has a lot of holes.

I know lots of things, from facebook posts, google searches, newspapers....but don't really know the 'relatives'. yeah, some are distant. some I only see on the rare family occasion. Some objected to me putting things I found on my genealogy blog, and to respect their privacy, have removed such posts. Some things just can't go online. so have a notebook with them in it. (that is currently lost.) this is where I put all the rumors....the bad stuff. the private stuff.

Right now, this very morning, I log onto facebook and my sister Lisa has a post wishing our niece a happy high school graduation. google search for school website...yeah, Rachelle does graduate at 3p.m. today. Will her mom go? her girls aren't talking to her. she hasn't seen her kids for a long, long time. she lives within driving distance. but the emotional distance is sooooooo great. It is a hard decision. I don't understand what has happened to her family, I only know it had to be bad for her to leave her kids. This is her story. She gave birth to this girl, homeschooled her for many many years, watched her first steps, heard her first words. Watched her grow up. Graduation is a big thing.

I remember when Brenda called me out of the blue to tell me she had a 6 week old daughter. Rachelle was born on June 2nd, our mom and dads anniversary. Those were quiet years for Brenda, didn't hear much from her. she was living in Iowa, and I myself didn't have the internet or a cell phone back then, so I communicated by land line phone (and couldn't afford long-distance calls) and snail mail letters. She was an AIB graduate, a secretary, I think. She worked and lived with her boyfriend. and you just never saw her. Now she is back 'home', she was there for mom and dad at the end of his life. she has found a job in the area and is quietly living day by day. I believe she is a hero of sorts. Only she knows what is going on, she keeps it to herself. She is a brave, brave woman.