For Mary Margaret, my mother, my first spindle

 

MY STRAND OF PEARLS

 

For Mary Margaret, my mother, my first spindle.

 

I once wrote a poem about Mary. It was long and I didn’t memorize it except for the first lines. “I wish she’d kept a journal but she kept her thoughts in her heart and pondered them  . . . The spindle line of Jesus was Jesus Mary Anne and after that I do not know, one of those vital statistics that were not mentioned. Tradition says Mary, also known as Miriam,’s mother was Anne; it’s apocryphal. My daughter’s birthday draws nigh, in two days. I remember nursing her in the night, by the dim lights of the Christmas tree, and thinking about Mary and her baby boy.

 

Recently, I researched my spindle line and was startled when it took me to France. I knew I had a French strand, but I didn’t realized Suzanne was in my spindle line. That line has been my passion of late, the line of different names. The maternal line of ladies who begat me. I read, not so very long ago, that every girl fetus has her eggs in place by the fifth month in the process of becoming. That means that every woman who has ever given birth has also carried her grandchildren in her body. The science and synergy amaze me. Not only did I birth Erin and Julie, I also carried Winston and Ellie in my secret place.

 

Steve Skafte, a man I recently started to follow on Facebook, has written a journal entry every day for sixteen years. His days are numbered, literally. He wanders the back roads, the overgrown paths, and the abandoned cellars and cemeteries of Nova Scotia. He is my inspiration for this journey. I’ve never been able to keep a journal faithfully. I start but the motivation wears off. Maybe it’s because I’m so busy researching and writing other things. But what does my genealogist self wish for? The journals of my foremothers who begat me. Those ladies of different names and sometimes of no last names. Spindles, they were. Oh, there’s more ladies than the actual spindles, there’s ladies in the middle of the charts as well and I'd like to read their diaries also. I’d also be happy to read journals of my forefathers. I will not be wandering the old roads and paths of New Brunswick every day, but I might on some days. I have been a genealogist since 2005. My back roads, overgrown paths, and abandoned structures are my (figurative) ancestors. My DNA strands are the twisted paths I take and the synergy of me.

 

I wish they’d kept journals, but most of them were too busy for that. Perhaps they took the time to ponder life, but didn’t know that centuries later, someone would care. They received no chilling predictions that they’d tragically have to give up their child. That was only for Mary. Imagine writing that in your journal. Bad enough to have to write it when it happened. It’s good they didn’t know.

 

Knit together in my mother’s secret place, fearfully and wonderfully.

Did not know I was a girl child until the day she birthed me, nor did I, nor my child.

My story’s in another book, every detail recorded and many details forgiven beforehand.

How did I come to be, and from whence came I, and what story pearls do I want to tell?

 

 

Margaret means pearl.

Anne the mother of Mary is apocryphal. Genealogists have to use apocryphal sources now and then.

My creation words are based on Psalm 139: 13 – 16.

Ellie is one month old today.

 

November 22, 2023, Lakeville, NB

Year 1, Day 1 of my daily diary.

Margaret Jane Vasseur

Daughter, mother, grandmother, and storyteller.