Roots II

There were six on each side: full-blooded and proud Sicilian first-borns in Boston, MA and full-blooded Irish Catholic first-borns in Concord, NH. Twelve total from which both sides of my family were sprung. And for a narrow strip of recent years, only one has remained on each side: my father’s Uncle Johnny and my mother’s godmother, Aunty Betty.

And today, as if the threads were fated to be cut in a double-action snip, those two who never knew each other but between whom so much was connected, both died.

Imagine this little island of a family, where my parents now the elders (and still, not even 60), floating across the globe of humankind. Imagine the aunts and uncles as they will tell stories, the only ones who can remember. Watch them as they paddle, their ancestors like phosphorescence across the waving sea…now you see it, now you don’t.