12/31/2006

A long hike through a forest of family trees

By Loraine Anderson
Local columnist

For the last four months, I've been walking in a forest of family trees. It's a walk that will continue the rest of my life.

Much of what I've discovered so far is in a 150-page notebook of pictures, records, letters and genealogy charts provided by generous cousins. The three-ring binder also includes brief accounts of historical events occurring in native lands and in Michigan at lands and in Michigan at the time of emigration. I gave copies to my brother and each of his two sons at Christmas in the hopes of preserving family history up to this point for upcoming generations of Andersons, Andisons, Dickersons and Rummerts and Jozwowskis.

Since Christmas, I've been trying to collect my thoughts about the side roads on this genealogical journey — those unexpected finds and awarenesses along the way that enrich, change points of view and help me see the amazing weavings in the fabric of life.

I touched my roots. I found a sense of family and place. I searched the eyes of ancestors as I processed old family photos. I gained deeper perspectives about historical cycles of birth, death and regeneration and common threads in human experience. Life is always full of joy and sorrow, beauty and ugliness, great moments and terrible ones, love and fear, no matter what the era or generation.

As I write, I think of Harold White, now an 82-year-old retired farmer in my hometown.

When I was in my teens, I loved to walk in the fields and woods that surrounded the little town where I grew up. Sometimes, I'd hike to a cemetery about two miles south of town, not far from the old Dickerson farm and just across the road from Harold's. Occasionally, Harold would wave from his barn or tractor or yard if he saw me. Once he came out into the road to talk to me, but mostly he just let me be. He knew my father's grave was there.

I've met up with Harold a few times over these last four months. It turns out he's a double cousin on the Dickerson and Andison side and has the 160-year-old Dickerson photo album. We share many of the same relatives, all buried in that cemetery. His son, Lewis, who was just a few years older than me, is buried there now.

Harold and I walked the cemetery together this fall, collecting names and dates as he explained which Dickerson or Andison they descended from. We talked briefly about my walks 40 years ago and how he worried about me. I thanked him for his concern and gave him a hug.

Then, we continued our walk.

All time really is now.

Happy New Year.

Loraine Anderson can be reached at landerson@record-eagle.com or (231) 933-1468