Ueda Kōchūex: Boy on a Bull (late 19th century)

Nothing Like Finished Producing

Something clicked as I worked my way into the part of this series that involved recalling my history rather than recounting my ancestors'. It felt as if I'd recovered some sense I'd misplaced along the way. I'd chalked that absence up to aging, considering that I might have been losing some cognition and had settled into attempting graceful acceptance, when there it was back again. I suited up and engaged in some chores I'd been too effortlessly procrastinating, understanding that I hadn't lost anything after all. Perhaps I'd just stalled. Maybe I'd needed a break from my routine if only to reassert some overt expectation again. Maybe I can still make my own decisions and choose to do what I probably would have expected myself to do anyway. There's ultimately never any running away from responsibility in this Fambly. I have considerable history to represent here in the present. I still have some history to create, too. I'm nothing like finished producing yet.

—

Weekly Writing Summary

This Fambly Story includes a confession. I might have found a busted link in these stories' long ancestry chain. One link might be different from what I'd earlier assumed. It might be that who I'd earlier concluded was a forebear's mother was TheStepMother instead. I'm keeping the House of Cards anyway.

Eleanor Beauchamp, TheStepMother's Mother - Depiction of Eleanor from the Rous Roll, c. 1483
"She was not beheaded by berserker Yorkist extremists."
—
This Fambly Story prominently features Absence, for my Fambly's history seems to be heavily punctuated with absences. Whether or not they rendered anyone's heart any fonder, they were permanent presences. My Fambly's history was written in the Absences each generation experienced.

Adam Willaerts: Ships off a Rocky Coast (1621)
"One can genuinely never return home again."
—
This Fambly Story finds me considering Modernity, that curious property that surely influenced my forebears' philosophies as it haunts mine today. Even my most ancient ancestors very likely experienced Modernity.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: The Modern Worker (1894)
"Modernity always promised much more than it ever once delivered."
—
This Fambly Story moves into contemporary time, or contemporary for me. It finds me living at SixFortyFour N. 7th Street, a place I left when I was five.

644 N Seventh Street, Walla Walla, Washington 99362 46.07182° N, 118.34825° W Google Maps® Street View (2012)

"An older woman who remembered pioneer days lived across the street."
—
This Fambly Story finds the most fortunate five-year-old ever born discovering what would become his Fambly's Old Home Place, TenFifteen, sensing considerable impending adventure.

1015 Pleasant Street, Walla Walla, Washington 99362
46.06265478666864, -118.31136536454669
My Old Home Place
" … some curious cross between Tom Sawyer and Swiss Family Robinson."
—
This Fambly Story follows me through my early Becaming years, the formative ones that imprinted patterns that would accompany me through every day of my life.

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes: Boy on a Ram (1786/87)
"I had been Becaming all that time before."
—
This writing week elicited pure joy in this boy, for I started the week confessing possible sins and ended it writing about myself in my most innocent incarnations. Next week promises worse as I continue chronicling my best choices and worst mistakes. I only have another week and a day to go before I finish this series. I once feared I'd run out of material before I could complete the full ninety stories. It looks like the final cut will come in at right around ninety-three stories. This week saw me reporting on a possible busted link in the Fambly continuum with a possible Mother-In-Law instead of a birth mother back around generation fifteen. I noted the volume of Absence my Fambly's recorded and speculated that every generation, including the most ancient ones, surely experienced Modernity. I then began my approach to ending this series, introducing two of the houses that served as homes in my youth, SixFortyFour and TenFifteen. I ended this writing week reflecting on my Becaming, the aspiring and striving that ultimately made me into someone different than I'd been. Thank you for following along!

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Fambly, #PureSchmaltz