What's in your gene pool?

I'm on vacation in not so sunny California this week with my mom and her cousin. This has become an annual pilgrimage across the country not only to visit an absolutely gorgeous state, but to re connect with family. It is important, for my mom, and for me. The gene pool is drying up.

Last night around the dinner table that included my mom, her cousin, the starving artist who lives in the cottage out back, and the other starving artist who lives upstairs in what use do be my room, (a little resentment there) we talked of family, and the only surviving relative that connects us (excluding the starving artists..)Auntie Barbara.

Out came the family photo..taken in probably 1945..the entire Witham clan, headed up by matriarch Nellie, with 5 children, their spouses and their children. Auntie Barbara was the youngest of the siblings' wives. And she was a beauty queen. With a gorgeous face, long dark hair and proper pose, she really was a beauty queen, having own at least one contest in her youthful prime.

"How is Auntie Barbara?"
"She's doing okay.." Does anybody know how old she is? It is the last best guarded secret in the family.
"I think she must be 84 or 85...."
"Really? How old were you in that picture? You look like you were two," my mom says to Dotty.
"I don't know, probably. How old was Barbara when she got married? 19? 20? She can't have been more than 20..." On and on the guessing went, until finally Dotty, said, "I'll just look it up on the computer!
"You can do that? My mom says..
"And before Dotty could answer she shouted back ," She's 84!"
"Well her birthday is today, so she's 85 now!"

Technically, Barbara is not in the gene pool we share. She married my grandmother's youngest brother when he was in the Navy during WWII. At eighty-something she is the lone survivor.

The California starving artists were amazed as the family talk circled around the dinner table: Toni Perms, eye brow waxing, engineers, teasing, Baptist Methodists marrying catholics, drugs, jail time-there was enough drama to last a lifetime. The family resemblance between cousins is remarkable. There is just enough flakiness to know the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, either. Spending oh so much family time with my mom, we share some eerie qualities with Dotty: losing things, often, independence (stubbornness), but also, laughter, loyalty and big hips. We trip, we fall (my mom has this down to a science..what is wrong with you this month?) and we have the uncanny ability to pick ourselves up and go on.

It is a gift to be able to take this time to peer into the rapidly evaporating gene pool...to notice the water rings, the light reflecting of its surface, and to see, with increasing clarity down into its depths...the water can get murky at times, and there are pebbles and other obstacles on the bottom, but it is peaceful and charming, and it is mine.