Roots

Knowing family history has always been important to me. Family stories always seemed to tell more about the person than just that he was a farmer, or she worked at a glass blowing factory. At one point in the last year or two Martha even took out a subscription for Ancestory.com and I was able to trace some of my family back to Scotland. But today on the way home from Columbus we stopped briefly at Concord Cemetery where many of my father’s side of the family are buried. We always stop at Grandma and Grandpa’s graves and get a little teary-eyed (Grandpa, Verlin Vincent, being Vincent’s namesake). But we also were able to see Uncle Paul and Aunt Catherine’s grave, and remember that Uncle Paul always used to tease me as a child. He would call Grandma’s house and I would answer. He would tell me I needed to go brush my teeth because my breath smelled like onions. Now, as a small child I was a little concerned about this. Did my breath really smell like onions? Could you really tell over the phone? Of course other stories about Uncle Paul and Aunt Catherine came bubbling to the surface before we moved on to Aunt Alphie’s grave, (who had a general store where you could get really good suckers when I was little) Grandpa’s oldest sister. And of course on to Lloyd and Martha’s (who had Foxy the Pomeranian that went everywhere Lloyd went), Willard and Clemie’s (whose car stealing pranks are still being recalled years after Willard’s death), and then the patriarchal tombstone of Arnold Vincent and Blanche Shirley Gregory (and the story about running away and joining the circus). All these stories seem to make the memories of these lost family members stick. They are my family and help make me who I am, but it shows more about them then just an occupation or a hobby, it shows their very human side, their personality, and my own true history.
-- Stephanie