Looking for my grandfather

My grandfather Myron died of a ruptured appendix in 1931, at the age of 43. That was almost 20 years before I was born. My mother said he and my grandmother were crazy about each other. I know he wrote a little book of flowery poems about the joys of marriage and family; I have a battered copy in my nightstand.

But Myron was a mysterious figure when I was growing up. There were whispers of some kind of scandal, some other woman. One statement, attributed to Myron's mother (my great grandmother Alma) was, "He was more sinned against than sinning." Such a curious comment from a devout Baptist.

I'm a genealogist, and I've been looking around for years for information about Myron. But sometimes I miss things. Just this year I checked out the 1910 census again. He was living in California with a roommate, which I'd seen on previous visits to the census record, but this time I noticed that he was listed as "married".  He didn't marry my grandmother Ethel until 1912, so this was a different marriage. I called my oldest cousin, Bob, and asked if he knew our grandfather had been married before. He said no.

I tracked down the Colorado marriage record. February 1909, to a young woman named Edna. And the  Colorado divorce record in August 1910. The only appearances in court on the divorce date were Edna and her mother Annie. No Myron. He was in California by then.

I remembered, "He was more sinned against than sinning." I wondered if there had been a baby.

I checked out the 1910 census record for Edna's family. Her parents William and Annie had three daughters: Edna (with my grandfather's last name), age 18; Wilma, age 16; and Dorothy, age two. William was in his early 40s and Annie in her late 30s. I noted the number of years between Dorothy and her two older sisters and I wondered if Dorothy might be the child of my grandfather Myron and Edna. Might William and Annie be raising their granddaughter as their own child? That did happen back then.

I continued searching. In the online records for a cemetery in Greeley, Colorado, I found a family plot. William and Annie are buried there, and Edna and her second husband Wilbur, and Wilma, and Dorothy and her husband Harry. The person who had made the arrangements for the most recent burial - Dorothy, in 1994 - was Sydney, her daughter. I followed the trail. In another Colorado town, I found the mortuary who had handled the arrangements for Dorothy's husband Harry. Their records included an obituary. I asked for a copy.

I found Sydney. She is 80 years old and she lives in Honolulu. I called and left a voicemail. I didn't hear back. Last week I wrote her a letter. I told her about my research and my curiosity. What did Sydney hear about her Aunt Edna's first husband when she was growing up? If her mother Dorothy was my grandfather's daughter, we are cousins. I told her about DNA testing and offered to pay for one if she was interested. 

So far, I have not heard from Sydney. Maybe she is on an extended trip, or maybe she's sick, or maybe she's not interested, or maybe she feels threatened. I need to honor all those possibilities.

Harry's obituary includes the name of a granddaughter, Kimberly. She would be close to my age. I'm thinking about seeing if I can find her. But if I don't hear from Sydney, most likely I won't.

I'm still looking for my grandfather. I noted a newspaper article in 1922, from Bakersfield, California. He lived in Long Beach, California by then. He had stopped in at the home of a young woman in Bakersfield on his way back from school in Chico. His wife, my grandmother Ethel, was six months pregnant with my mother then. Who was the young woman in Bakersfield?

"He was more sinned against than sinning."

Sliding into home, churchwise

I have been unchurched for almost 30 years. When I got divorced in the mid-80s, the church I'd attended for 15 years - the one where I'd served as a liturgical musician and youth retreat leader - didn't know what to do with me. Or maybe I didn't know what to do with it. When I moved from a small town in Oregon to a large suburb in Washington, I didn't seek a new church in my denomination or in any other. And the longer I stayed away, the easier it became. I remembered all the things about the church's doctrine that I didn't believe. There was some relief to my nonparticipation as I moved on with my life.

In recent travels I've been reminded of my separateness from a religious community. Three years ago, in Italy, I visited Assisi and learned about Francis, the bad boy who renounced his family's wealth and chose instead to live simply and walk in the footsteps of Christ. That would be love and service, I thought. I visited the Vatican and saw a lot of gold and thought about how many people that gold could feed. I visited art museums and felt grateful for the role the Catholic Church played in supporting Renaissance artists. On that trip I was able to clarify my convictions about the role of spirit and of religion and to release old guilts and resentments.

Last month I visited a village in Kenya where the people sacrificed a goat we had bought from them, drank its blood, and shared the meat with us. I noted the similarity to sacred rituals in churches and wondered whether those rituals happened first in villages or in churches. I'm pretty sure it was in villages, to celebrate love and community.

When I got home from Africa I was invited by a friend to attend a church service in a denomination I'd never known much about. I explored the website and decided to give it a try. From the moment I walked in the door I was comfortable. The service was a celebration of life and community, of love and service. I believed every word spoken during the service. I went back two more times. I still felt comfortable. People welcomed me and shared their own experiences. I have decided to attend this church.

It's been a journey traveling around the bases. I don't regret a single step. But I am glad to feel like I'm sliding into home.

The heat wave and the veterans

My husband Art had been asked to speak to the Viet Nam Veterans of America at their monthly meeting in Roseburg, Oregon. We've written a book about his experience in Viet Nam in 1968, when he originally served, and in 2005, when we returned to the country on a journey of reconciliation and healing. The veterans wanted to hear his story.

There's a heat wave this week in the Pacific Northwest. We drove the 380 miles from Seattle to Roseburg. As we passed through Portland, the thermometer read 100 degrees. When we got into Roseburg, it was down to 97.

The VA auditorium is an older building and on this early evening it was cooled by several noisy fans. A semicircle of folding chairs was three quarters filled with 60-somethings, mostly men, mostly wearing hats or vests displaying their branch of service.

After a short business meeting, the fans in the room were turned off to cut the noise and Art was introduced. For this event he'd decided to wear a pair of tan shorts, a yellow shirt and sandals - plus his Viet Nam Veteran-United States Marine Corps hat.

Art is not an experienced public speaker, but he is an experienced veteran. He didn't talk much about his first time in Viet Nam. Instead, he talked about his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and how it affected him and his family. And he described his return to Viet Nam and how that trip has changed his life.

It was probably 85 degrees in that auditorium. For the 20 minutes Art talked, no one moved. No one went outside to get a breath of air or smoke a cigarette. No one got up for a cup of coffee or a bottle of cold water. Even the refreshment ladies in the back of the room were quiet. Everyone was listening.

We took a 15-minute break. Four men came up to Art to talk. All of them bought a book and asked him to sign it. He got up to speak again after the break. Not a single person had left. They stayed in that old auditorium, all those veterans, to listen to one of their own.

When the meeting ended, more men talked to Art. Two women talked to me. Two more books were sold and signed.

We were among the last to leave the building. It was 8:30 p.m. and still over 90 degrees outside. We went for ice cream to celebrate the veterans.

Retrospective: The Gifts of Kenya

It's hard to be back from this particular trip. Possibly because I wrote a number of the blog posts when we were already home, I had the luxury of "staying" in Kenya for an extra week. I'm feeling sad and a little empty that it's over. But I've also had time to think about the particular blessings of this recent journey. That often happens to me after a trip. People will ask me about it, and I'll find certain stories coming up over and over, being retold. That's how I come to realize what the high points were.

1.  I remember when we first decided on this personalized safari to Kenya. The price was a good deal higher than any of our previous trips. In fact, according to our annual budget, we're now out of travel money until next spring. I console myself with the fact that we'll be living more frugally and will replenish the money we borrowed from our savings to do this. I hope that will happen.

What I've learned from this financial splurge is that if we go the cheap route every time we travel, we may miss out. I'm not saying we should fly first class instead of coach, or we should buy entire new wardrobes, or we should be luxurious in what we do. I'd be uncomfortable with choices like that. But for this once-in-a-lifetime trip, we needed to spend what we spent to have the experience we had. Sometimes you get what you pay for. We were well cared for.  Every bed was comfortable; every meal was good. In addition to those comforts, we had magnificent game drives and met interesting people. If we were doing this trip for the first time again, there's not a thing I would change - except I would bring my walking shoes home with me instead of leaving them in our last tent! So my Bag Lady is taking another look at her tendency to dig in her heels at the idea of spending money, just for the sake of digging in her heels. That may be based on fear, and I'm ready to give up the fear.

On the other hand, we're still budget travelers most of the time. We belong to two travel clubs. We do home exchanges. We drive a Prius on our road trips.

2. I've shifted a bit in my perspective on getting older. We spent two months in Tucson last winter in a 55-plus resort. We loved the activities and the people. But we missed seeing families with young children as well as different ethnicities. I get newsletters and magazines geared to the 55-plus demographic and I read them; there's lots of advertising about retirement centers.  I feel like I was being encouraged to be older and do "older" things. I felt older.

In our 15 nights in Kenya, we stayed from one to four nights in seven different places. We got around mostly by Land Rover, with two short internal flights. We went on fourteen game drives. They were either from 6:30 to 9 a.m. or from 4 to 6:30 p.m. To go on those drives we had to climb into a Land Rover, pulling ourselves up by handles and sliding to the ground afterwards. We did that. As a matter of fact, there wasn't a single time that Peter offered to help us. That was because he could see he didn't need to. And on those game drives, we were mostly standing up, with our heads out the roof, balancing and adjusting and shifting our weight in response to the roads. Now, we weren't going on hikes, or river rafting, or climbing mountains, or mountain biking. But we were active.

Just because I will be 65 in three months doesn't mean I'm on my way out. So, since we got home, I've been thinking about now get involved in my community in ways that are more diverse. And, for now, I am no longer reading the 55-plus newsletters and magazines.

3. On our game drives, I was completely focused on what was around me - the sights and sounds, the animals in groups or alone, the degree of alertness displayed. I watched herds of zebras and troops of baboons and families of elephants and prides of lions. I listened. I was not worrying about my back, or money, or the state of the world. I wasn't thinking about what I'd have for dinner or whether we had brought along enough cash for tips. I was in the moment out there. My mind was completely absorbed in what was going on around me - and I was part of it. If you had told me I'd enjoy every minute of 35 hours of game drives, I wouldn't have believed you. I know better now. I will be looking for absorbing ways to occupy my mind now that I'm home. I decided to leave my hypochondria on the African savannah, so I'll need other things to think about!

4. We had multiple opportunities to donate money to worthy causes: an elephant orphanage, a giraffe sanctuary, a chimp rescue agency, an orphanage, an education fund. We'd decided to wait until we got home to decide whether - and where - to contribute. Having experienced two weeks of Kenya, when we got home we set up monthly donations to two organizations. One is the Samburu Youth Education Fund, which provides funding for education for outstanding students from tribal areas. The other is FINCA, a microbanking organization benefitting women.

There are many needs in the world. Art and I are fortunate to have more than we need. I like the phrase, "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime." We want to teach fishing. And I now think we have a responsibility to help. I just finished a book called The Soul of Money. The author's contention is that our culture is all about acquisition and money, and that each of us will benefit more by considering how we can use our money toward ends that align with our highest values. Or, I'll add, our time.  I want to do more of that.

We bought a few souvenirs. We have a walking stick, a medicine man, and a Maasai family, all made from wood. And a small knitted elephant. And a few necklaces. But the main gifts are intangible. They're the blessings, the Gifts of Kenya.

Home again: The Bag Lady thinks about Kenya

We've been home for over a week now. My jet lag is gone. My calendar is mostly full. But Kenya is still in my mind. When I look at the pictures, I'm still there. I have a friend who says whenever she talks to a person who has been to Africa, and the subject comes up, the person gets a certain look on their face. I have that look now.

Kenya is unlike any place I've ever been. And I learned so much.

1. It's not "darkest Africa" as I heard when I was growing up. Kenya is a country full of sunshine and energetic, enthusiastic, friendly people. It has its share of entrepreneurs in the city and in the countryside, its educated and its not, its optimists and its grouches, its middle class and its wealthy and its wretchedly poor, its city dwellers and its tribal pasturalists. And its hopes.

2. The places where we stayed - an upscale downtown hotel, a cottage on a farm, and multiple game lodges - had some of the finest customer service I've ever encountered. From friendly morning greetings when coffee and cookies were delivered to our tent, to excellent mealtime service, to a willingness to take care of any issue that came up for us, we couldn't have asked for better. The effort made to make sure there were power and extension cords for our CPAP machines was commendable. Even where the  electricity was from a generator, and the generator was turned off at night, the camp staff provided us with an inverter so we could use the CPAPs all night. I would give five stars to any of the places we stayed.

3. Kenya has fabulous thunderstorms. Four afternoons in a row, we were treated to a natural symphony. We live in an area where these things are infrequent, so we appreciated the experience. We also loved the sound of monkeys playing on the roof of our tent - once we figured out what the heck the noise was! And a baby elephant trumpeting from the middle of the road. And the chants of the Samburu and Maasai dancers. And the silence, on the game drives, when Peter cut the engine and we sat and watched and listened.

4.  We felt completely safe everywhere we went, and in good hands with our experienced outfitter, George, and guide, Peter. If you are thinking about traveling to Africa, I recommend you get in touch with George Gituku at Sandrage Safaris in Nairobi. He will create the itinerary of your dreams - for just you, or for you and a few friends. I asked many questions before we decided to go to Kenya, and many more before we left, and George answered them all.  He met us at the airport on the night we arrived, spent the next day with us in the Nairobi area, took me to his optometrist to fix my bent glasses, lent me his modem for two weeks, bought us a powerstrip to use, shared a final meal with us and dropped us off at the airport at the end. We couldn't have asked for more.

And be sure to tell George you want Peter to be your guide. We have had many guides in our years of traveling, and Peter is the best.

5.  I made a decision to leave my hypochondria on the African savannah, and so far it has remained there.

6.  I knew about how nature works, but watching all those animals on their playing field, I got a new and wondrous appreciation for how it all fits together. I feel honored to have spent time in the midst of the animals.

7. If you are standing up in a vehicle, on bumpy roads, for two and a half hours in the morning and two and a half hours in the late afternoon, you get good exercise for your back and legs. You forget you are eligible for Medicare in three months. And you come home with lower blood pressure.

8. I no longer believe in zoos, except possibly as rescue facilities. The animals belong in their natural habitat. I'd like to see other ways to inform people about animals - surely we can do that with the technology available to us today. Two elephants in a compound, no matter how well equipped and well fed, are no substitute for their family in the wild.

9.  My husband Art is a seasonal hunter. For two weeks I got to watch him hunt every day - with his camera. It was a treat.

10. The trip was worth every single cent we spent. Those are the Bag Lady's very words.

On safari: Going home

After two weeks in the African bush, going home was a jolt. Usually I'm planning ahead for home stuff for the last few days of a trip, but this time I'd been so engrossed in our experience I hadn't thought about it.

Leaving the Masai Mara on the last day, we experienced the two shortest flights of my life. The area has multiple airstrips and stops are made if there are pickups or dropoffs. So our first flight was five minutes long, at a low altitude, to one airstrip, and our second was four minutes long, to another. The flight to Nairobi after that was just 40 minutes. We emerged from the baggage area to a hectic, noisy city full of traffic and people.

We spent the afternoon at the Serena Nairobi Hotel to rest up. Art took a shower while I logged into the internet. It was good to be in touch with the wider world again. We had bought a walking stick at Enkerere - wood with carvings of the Big Five (elephant, rhino, leopard, buffalo and lion), and the hotel staff wrapped it for travel. And, for the first time in our 20-plus years together, we ordered room service. Not enough time to go down to the restaurant, but too hungry to wait for dinner.

We were short on time because we had an appointment with a young man we'd never met. Last month we hosted Penny and Gary from Minneapolis; they're members of our travel exchange group. When we told them about our upcoming trip to Kenya, Penny said, "I used to work with a nurse from Kenya. Her name is Harriet and she lives in North Carolina now. She moved to the States so she could work to support the education of her three sons. I'll call her and tell her about your trip." And she did, right then. Harriet told her we should meet up with her son in Nairobi, that he would be glad to do that.  I was reluctant, but didn't say anything, because if I'm supposed to say "yes" to opportunities that come up, how could I justify saying "no, thanks"?

Anyway, for our last afternoon we'd made arrangements to meet her son Ken at 2:30 at our hotel. He arrived at 4:05. African time, I'm thinking, or maybe traffic. We chatted for about 15 minutes, and then a man came up to us and said, "I've been eavesdropping, but in a good way," and joined our conversation. He's in some kind of nonprofit/marketing function in Kenya, though he is originally from Toronto. He gave me his card and asked me to email his mother and let her know I saw him and he's fine! We excused ourselves and went upstairs to get ready to check out. When we came back down, fifteen minutes later, Ken, "the son of a friend of a friend", and Brodie the eavesdropper were still in the lobby engaged in a conversation. I wonder whether they were doing business of some kind. When I got home I emailed Brodie's mother and relayed his message to her.

George picked us up for a final dinner at the Pampa Grill Churrascaria, a Brazilian restaurant, where we ate multiple kinds of meat by the slice - including crocodile - and then drove us to the Nairobi airport.

I was not looking forward to the 24-hour trip home, but it turned out to be not too bad. I fell asleep before takeoff, in spite of eight full hours of sleep the night before. For our five-hour layover in Amsterdam, we checked into a room at Yotel, a hotel inside the airport. We slept for a while and took a shower. That refreshing interlude made the nine-hour flight from Amsterdam to Seattle a little easier. It was weird, as usual, leaving Europe at 10 a.m. and arriving home in Seattle at 11 a.m. of the same day.

The next two days were pretty much lost to me as my body readjusted to our local time and we reemerged into our normal world. It's a very long journey between Kenya and Seattle - both in physical distance and in my state of mind.

On safari: The last game drive

Our last game drive was the day before we left Kenya. I felt full hearted at all we had seen and experienced. I told Peter I'd like to spend some time with elephants. I suspected Art wanted to spend some time with giraffes.

A serval cat. Peter said they're nocturnal so this one was an unusual sighting.

Notice the hippo prints in the sand. It had rained the night before.

A mama hippo and her baby.

Hippo trail from the river to the grazing area.

Giraffe hiding.

These two male giraffes were "necking" - fighting with their necks. The winner gets the girlfriend standing nearby.

Roost for cormorants and egrets.

A solitary buffalo - the most dangerous animal.

Youngsters scuffling.

A thunderstorm was approaching. As we drove across the savannah, we were the only vehicle in sight. All the animals had disappeared into sheltering places. Lightning flashed across a dark sky. Peter was giving us a final gift - solitary time on the savannah.