Genealogically Weathering a Storm

Last night in a display of lightening fireworks, thunder, high winds, rain and hail, a big tree in my drive came tumbling down. Had I not moved my car a few minutes earlier, it would have been crushed. Buildings around town sustained damage and trees are uprooted and broken.

The local newspaper features a photograph of trees uprooted in the cemetery. I am sure Mom will be checking on that early this morning. Mom and I kept a constant phone chatter going last night to make sure we were okay. She reported her wicker furniture blew into the bushes, but everything else appeared to be okay.

At one point Mom said she was shutting her computer down. I was certain she would probably grab her external hard drive full of genealogy information and head to the closet. She reports that she didn't even grab a genealogy book and head to her favorite chair. Mom is slipping! In fact she cleaned up her kitchen, started the dishwasher and left her pan of left over enchiladas on the kitchen counter. That's total preoccupation with the storm.

Looking back at storms we had so frequently here in Nebraska, I don't remember Mom ever putting genealogy before her family. She grabbed us first to run to the basement or crawl space (yucky place to weather a storm). I am sure all the while her mind was on what would happen to all of her years of research, the documents and the photographs.

One of Mom's most vivid memories is about being in a flood in Greeley, Colorado. She was about four years old, but sill remembers the family possessions floating away. Those included trunks of old photographs, At the time she just knew they belonged to the family. As the flood water was going over her head, an older cousin handed her the end of a broom and told her to hang on while he pulled her toward him. The family photographs were gone, but Mom was saved.

Mom always says the lives of our ancestors are important, but the family today are more important. Given the choice, she'd always come to our rescue. That's why I love my genealogy Mom!