As Monday Comes Again

As another Monday arrives, again I sit back and wonder where the weekend went.  Three days passed by as quick as a flash and once again I find myself getting ready to return to work.  Friday seems so far away at this point, and, because next week I will be on vacation, I'm not looking forward to a quick-moving week.  Isn't that the way it is?  When one is eagerly waiting on their vacation, the days just seem to crawl on by.  So, why do the holidays come and to so quickly?  A bit of a paradox there I have to say.

The 1940 Census is finally here. I've waited years for this. It hasn't been fully transcribed, per se, and you can't look up your family members by name, but Ancestry now has all of the  1940 U.S. Federal Census images online, and, with a little bit of patience   lots of patience you can find your family and if you know where to look.  It's actually pretty tedious work going page by page looking for a familiar name, and then, when it is found, you jump and clap for joy before moving onto the next person.  On Friday, I managed to find my maternal grandparents, mom, and her sister and brother, and my maternal great grandma. I also found my paternal grandparents, their children, and my great grandma, Constance Mary...not to mention all the aunts and uncles I came across during my search.

Before the day was out, the tears were beginning to flow, not from hours of searching through some pretty sloppy handwriting at times, but  over the sense of loss I began to feel.  Maybe loss is not the correct word.  You cannot lose something that you never had. And that is the key.  There is a large portion of my family that I was never given the opportunity to know. Mom had been adamant that I was not to be brought around 'any' of my dad's family, and aside from one visit to my grandmother and one visit from one of my dad's sisters when I was ill, I had no further contact with aunts, uncles and cousins. 

It wasn't until I got into genealogy that I realized they were there, but 'seeing' them on the 1940 census, alive so close to when I was born, brought it all into reality.  There they were Constance Mary, my dad and his twin, their brother Willard and his wife, and their daughter, and all of them gone now.  There were cousins who died young, leaving children I wouldn't even begin to know how to find. It's times like this that I feel so very much alone. Yes, I have my hubby and my sons, but that's all I have.  I have many wonderful memories of my maternal grandparents but, there are nothing except from the few little tales  I've gleamed of them since working on my tree. 

Otherwise, I had a rather uneventful weekend.  After some housework, I took a long, long nap on Saturday afternoon to catch up on some much needed rest.  Sunday morning I baked a cake for Easter, a chocolate sheetcake with little blue  'peeps' for decoration. My eldest dropped by in the afternoon for a short visit; my youngest has a life of his own, but that is what we raise them to do.  In days past, the Easter bunny would have visited while the boys slept on the evening before Easter, and when the rose on Easter morning, the Easter bunny has hidden eggs, a symbol of renewal, rebirth and new life,  around the house and left behind candy filled baskets.

We grow older, and our children move on to start their own lives. One day they will have their own children, their own eggs to color, baskets to hide. We have passed the torch, and the journey of life continues. But, some things will never change. The Easter baskets may be no more, but, by golly, I still do love chomping into one of those big old chocolate Easter bunnies. And, just as I did as a child, the pretty little candy eyes are the first to go, followed by the ears.  So, in a way I guess I can say, tradition does continue.