Yesterday, while visiting friends in another city, I happened to pass the hospital where my daughter was born.  That hospital has been greatly expanded and is now scarcely recognizable.  But my eyes saw, through the concrete changes, the outline of the loading ramp, where I had helped baby and mom-to-be into the back seat, years ago.  During the long ride home I had driven white-knuckled through rush-hour traffic, glancing into the rear view mirror to see the sleeping miracle.  I had not had an opportunity to attend the delivery, because in our community it was not the custom for births to be attended by the adoptive parents.

Time passes, and my daughter is healthy and ornery, full of friendships and ambitions.  For me, I have the memories of more first events.  Like her first walk.  And her first solo into the ice skating rink.  So tiny and fragile she seemed, surrounded by a whirling sea of big people, but I could pick her out in an instant, by the fluorescent green mittens.  Perhaps it's just as well that she has no interest in history, because genealogically she is a person without a past.

Strangers say to us, "you look like one another," which is completely untrue.  They want to believe it, so I don't correct them.  My daughter and I don't even have similar temperaments.  I am laid back, almost Taoist in my reserve; she bounces off walls.  Almost literally, like the times she still tries to chimney up a doorway, one foot braced on either side.  I am sure that behavior is genetic.  Much as my knee-jerk liberal philosophy wants to believe behavior is all environmental conditioning, my differences from my daughter are a prime example of the inheritance of temperament.

She and I are a hybrid family, a blending of contrasting personalities.  Perhaps the Universe in her great wisdom realized what was needed was for me to share the most important part of my life with someone completely different.  And I hope it will have been a rich and positive experience for my daughter as well.  Because there are some things that can never be done over.

When she grows up, if she gets interested in the pursuit of blood relatives, it will be quite interesting.  I may be proven wrong, but I think she will find answers from her genetic kin, as to who she is.  Isn't that what we are all seeking, to find out who we really are?

Chances are that if you go back a few generations, one of your ancestors was also adopted, most likely by blood relatives.  People didn't talk about adoption in those days.  The stigma was so great that in many cases the adopted never even knew.  Blood lineage could affect a person's inheritance and other valuable chances in the world.

There was also that horrid word, "stepson" and "stepdaughter" to distinguish an acquired offspring from one who who went without qualification, such as "my son" or "my daughter."  How can one person's existence be more valuable because they have more history than someone else?

Well that's extreme, because if you get into it, genealogy is fun, but it is still a game, full of uncertainties, mysteries, and the rare chance of discovery.

Sometimes we discover something unpleasant.  Like I wonder what economic hardships caused two of my great-grand-fathers to put bullets into their own heads?  If times were so hard, why did they figure that taking out the chief breadwinner was going to help the family?  The women were pretty strong in those days, and maybe those guys realized it.

Or what about another great-grandfather who died all by himself, thousands of miles from his wife and children?  "Sir, I have the honor to report that the name of the above-described pensioner who was last paid $30, to Sept. 4, 1915 has this day been dropped from the roll because of " . . . and there is blank filled in with that word . . . "death."

Why, when Matthew Logan Busey had applied on 15 January 1898 for a pension to the Department of the Interior, as a Civil War veteran, did he first tell the examiner that he was a widower?  Only to change his mind and to have had that line crossed out?  Did he temporarily not know or not want to believe that his wife was doing quite well, that she had packed up the kids and crossed the continent to start a new life?  This may have been a family secret, but I'm only revealing what is published for the world in the National Archives.

I feel deeply the pain of these people long gone.  I wonder what was going on in their minds.  Did they have the luxury of time to think about where they were going?  Were they locked into a society that had fewer choices than today?  I doubt that they had mental health counseling.  A part of me wants to relive those lives, to see if there's some way we can fix it for them posthumously.

So, what's the point?

1.  The first thing is obvious, that genealogy is mostly about dead people.

2.  That proves the next thing, that life is relatively short.

3.  Next thing is, since everybody dies, it doesn't matter who you are or where you came from.

4.  Which brings us back to #2, which is that it's all what you make of life.