The humidity is hovering on the upper end of the dew point we like best. There will be a couple months of swelter coming, the steamy languor of Virginia’s Piedmont summer. But that is a constant in these parts. The other part that is not usual is the scope and drama associated with the generational and social change rattling around. I have pals who are quite agitated by the history unfolding around us this year. “Emergency rule” due to health concerns is one topic that raises the temperature, and the notice that the Government will be dispatching people to our doors to “remind” us that the vaccines are available.

All of us at Refuge Farm are fully compliant, though not so much out of fear of the pandemic but fear the government may restrict travel to those who can prove they are documented. My preference would have been to maintain my distance from other citizens, and the non-citizens who appear to be welcome, and see how it plays out. But there is a West Coast wedding in the Fall that I wish to attend, and the minor risk of an experimental drug injected into my veins seems worth it to ensure travel will be permitted.

A lot of people agree with the necessity, and with the prospect of the Government coming to our doors. Of course, some other pals are aghast that a door-to-door effort by what is called “The Health Department” coming immediately after the effective house arrest of the nation reflects something else. I have only been through one near-epidemic event (SARS) with the headquarters component of the Health and Human Services Department, but have seen how a variant of how this is supposed to work. This one shares some aspects that are reasonable and others that are not. I have not spent much time agonizing about it, since I suspect I am exhibiting some prime Dotard Boomer behavior. It is logical, considering it echoes the holy hell we gave our parents.

We are incorrigible by breed and age. We reflect the attitudes of people who embrace the emergency and those who do not. I saw the note the other day that proper grammar was an indicator of ‘privilege.’ I don’t need to add the proper tinge to it. These days, we all know what it is supposed to mean. In a way, I took it as a sort of triumph, like accidentally learning Latin.

The disparaging terms for the elderly President reflect it. The problems we have heard about and laughed at all our lives are all quite true. But they never told us they were also going to hurt. Seemingly all of them.

An author no one reads anymore was right. William Cuthbert Faulkner, speaking from his fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, wrote that “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” My experience supports that. We carry our past around. It struck home with the accidental project that emerged quite unrelated to the Writers collective at Socotra House. It spilled out of the hard drive while looking for something else. That included a virtual visit to Clifden, Ireland, a lovely village in Galway County Ireland.

Mom got there on her own, not in person, of course, but as part of an effort to bolster her family’s history to match that of the meticulous Scots and Germans who compiled the account of Dad’s line back to the days of the Revolution. That lead to some other accidental adventures. One of them is about truth in history, and the realization of how family histories were done before the internet.

It was fascinating to see the change within a single lifetime. Some of it was based on similar family names and historic deeds in old books. There was no ‘23-and-Me’ DNA analysis, which would doubtless have changed some of the references around a little bit. Living on one of history’s pivot points as we are, I sent them a mouth swab. It was a simple thing, really, and in the company response there was the usual confirmation of expectations- Mostly Irish and Brits (64%) and some Germans (36%) and a curious notation about a modest percentage of Neanderthal blood in the veins.

The company claims that is more than 72% of most modern humans, and dates the extinction of that part of our family line to 40,000 years ago. That is even older than the 13th century.

That was surprising, since there was no mention in the Media Research product Mom paid for sixty years ago. And none in the more personal family notes Mom compiled on her own. I looked for context from the historical record but could find nothing in the Neanderthal written records. Nor was there any indication they were rumored to have been considered catches by local fully human women.

So, the new sort of ancestral search certainly opens up a potential new market for family history. I feel it tugging at me, like firelight reflected from the red glint in dark eyes. Dark hair. A certain sly smile.

It was a mix of old school and new. No answers, of course, but an interesting area for speculation. And some perspective on the stew we carry about inside us. And the fact that as modern Neanderthals, our family has some entitlements I hadn’t thought about.

Yet.

Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com