My Christmas Past - The Mustachioed Christmas

By 1989, we had added two son-in-laws to the family tree. They, the son-in-laws, turned out to be keepers - the mustaches not so much.

© 11 December 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

My Christmas Past - The Christmas Slap

From now until Christmas, I will be visiting some photos from my Christmas past on Wednesday and Thursday of each week. Below are two of my favorites taken in 1967, as my siblings and I sat for the annual Christmas Tree photo. My youngest siblings apparently were feeling pretty confident that Santa was done with the whole naughty and nice list.

 

© 10 December 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Graveyard Rabbits AND My Mutated Gene

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Never could. I know you’re saying to yourself that all women are born with the multi-tasking gene. You know - that secret weapon that allows us to change a baby’s diaper, drag the toddler away from playing “fishing” with your prized rainbow guppy, and cook a six course dinner simultaneously while putting on the new shade of peppermint pink lipstick, all the better to have kissable lips when the hubs comes home.

I didn’t get that gene. Instead, I got that gene that allows you to concentrate obsessively on one thing, and one thing only. This gene allowed cave man to focus exclusively on taking down a mammoth lion, instead of say, thinking about not forgetting to pick up a supply of kindling and sticks on his way back to the cave or whether or not the lion in question had the correct color coat his wife had requested for the new cave rug. Nope, he just focused on killing a big ole lion.

The modern day equivalent of this can be witnessed by a husband's almost serene ability to concentrate exclusively on Sunday’s football game. This is done while vacantly nodding as you talk about this year’s Christmas plans, ignoring his own offspring as they bicker loudly about custody of a toy, and looking up with wounded incredibility when you finally get through to him to let him know that YOU KNOW he isn’t paying any attention to you or the kids. HE CAN”T HELP IT. It’s wired into his DNA and apparently, this very trait has jumped over and replaced the multi-tasking gene that is supposed to be wired into my X chromosome. I think they call this a spontaneous mutation. Genetics, what are you going to do! 

This is my usual long-winded way of saying that I don’t know what the heck I was thinking when I agreed to take on a fourth blog at the invitation of Terry Thornton and The Association of Graveyard Rabbits. Blogging, working, babysitting, holiday preparing, genealogical research and an added extra blog – well if that isn’t a recipe for personal disaster. 

Thanks to the hard work of Terry and footNote Maven there is an “anchor” site for ALL the Graveyard Rabbits who as of last week numbered 55. The site is really a beautiful work of art. It has a directory listing all the affiliated blogs with their LOCATION. There’s a contact page and an aggregator page, which updates all the latest posts by each of the rabbits. If you have family that lived in another state, you might check the directory to see if someone is covering that area. I’m still hoping for a New Jersey and/or Oklahoma Rabbit. 

In the meantime, you are treated to some wonderfully written articles. Myself, I decided to cover the twelve counties that make up The Great Black Swamp area of Ohio. My latest post, Survey of Washington Chapel Cemetery, did not turn out quite as I had planned. I worked a good two weeks creating a slideshow from Photo Story 3, complete with titles and narration. (I was especially proud that I had gone back and rerecorded every piece of narration that I said the word Washington and added the famous Midwestern “R” making it “warsh” instead of “wash.” Man, some parts of the country get really creeped out by that.) 

All was for naught, as the darn thing refused to open each time I tried to upload it to my YouTube account. Finally, I took another route with less than stellar results. However, I was working on a bit of a deadline. The bylaws of Graveyard Rabbits require me to post at least once a month. It’s not clear if that is a calendar month, or one month from your last post. I was closing in on the one-month mark of the latter qualification, and I didn’t want to get the boot, so there you have it. 

If anyone is interested in writing their own post as a guest author for The Great Black Swamp Graveyard Rabbit, please leave me a comment below or email me at Blackswampbunny@aol.com but be patient. Owing to that darn gene mutation which causes me to concentrate on one thing at a time, it takes me a while to remember to check that email address. 

Until Next Time – Happy Ancestral Digging!

© 9 December 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Today I cannot write

Last night, big fat flakes of snow traveled softly to the ground. I could not see the lights of Clyde, a comforting beacon that lets me know the severity of a snowfall or the thickness of a fog. Last night I paced, this morning I stare at a blank screen, unable to summon the enthusiasm for writing about matters of genealogy. 

Last week, I watched with horror the attacks in Mumbai. Half a world away, there were young men, turned killing machines, who embraced not in theory but in deed, the twin evils of death and destruction. Mayhem, carnage, death – how can these be laudable goals, anytime, anywhere? They and their victims, strangers all, foreign to me not just by birth, but by life and life style. I am not a world traveler. I am not an Indian citizen. I am not of the Jewish faith. And yet … 

A father and daughter, visiting India in search of spiritual truths were caught eating in a café and gunned down by terrorists. Their colleagues, who were wounded, survived by playing dead, as the gunmen moved on to other diners. A prominent food critic of The Times of India was trapped in her suite at The Taj, frantically texting her husband as the siege progressed. Her last transmission, early Thursday morning said that the gunmen were in her bathroom, after that, silence. He would later find her body in a pile of lifeless corpses, deposited there by commandos after the final assault. She died of asphyxiation. 

And the vision of a blood spattered little boy, saved by his nanny, after witnessing the murder of his parents. His cries for his mother as the small community that she and her husband served, held a memorial in their honor were too heartbreaking to bear.

I do not know all the stories, nor the names of all the victims who died by man made tragedy last week in Mumbai. But I am filled with sorrow at such a senseless loss. Today I AM a world traveler. Today I AM an Indian citizen. Today I AM a Jew. And today I cannot write.

© 2 December 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

8 Things You Might Not Know About Me

Well, I’ve been tagged twice for this week’s meme that is making the rounds in Geneablogger land. Since I was tagged by two of my favorite bloggers, Sheri Fenley of The Educated Genealogist and Randy Seavers of Genea-Musings, I feel duty bound to play. This time I have to give you eight things about myself that you, the reader, might not know. If you have read this blog on any kind of a regular basis, it’s probably obvious that any thought or experience that happens to pop into my brain makes its way onto this blog. Is there anything about me that you don’t already know? You might not know. . .

 1. I drink hot tea instead of coffee. (A latent English gene, perhaps?) 

 2. I not only passed my college swimming class without finishing the swim portion of the final test, but I received an A, thanks to my sister’s one size too small hot pink bikini and an appreciative student instructor. 

 3. You can count me as another member of the “I took belly dance lessons” club. Had it not been for an emergency C-section, I probably would have been become “Tara the Dancing Princess.” 

 4. I believe God created parentheses just for my benefit. (And since I don’t want his creation to go to waste, I make ample use of them in my blogging posts.) 

 5. I love all things tomato. I love tomato sandwiches, tomato sauce, stewed tomatoes, stuffed tomatoes, but I cannot stand the size and texture of cherry tomatoes in my mouth – yuck! 

 6. I can twist my tongue around so that it looks like I am turning it over. This (along with my Morton’s Toe) is a talent inherited from my dad. It is a useful trick in a room full of rowdy children. They’ll spend a good, QUIET half hour trying to duplicate the feat. 

 7. I played the violin in school, which is how my pal Karen and I first became friends. (She usually sat first chair and I sat second. Once, when the music instructor was trying to teach her a lesson, he switched our places right before a recital that had a solo for the first violin. I was scared to death. My generous friend talked me through it and it turned out fine – but I was happy to have her resume the duties of first chair.) 

 8. I believed my mother EVERY time she told me that taking Pepto-Bismol would make my stomach ache feel better. She lied! 

 Now the actual rules for this meme are: 

 1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

 2. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

 3. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their name.

 4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and to read your blog. 

 Since, I was one of the last to come to this party, I’m guessing that most of the geneablogger crowd that has wanted to play, has played. So, any blogger reading this post, please consider yourself tagged. Ah, that goes for you non-geneablogger types, too!

© 25 November 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

A Little Game of Scrabble

Karen, my friend from California, and I were just talking about how we don’t forward those emails that say “send this email to 10 people within three hours and you will have your most fervent wish come true. If you delete this message before forwarding it on, you will have 10 years of bad luck.”

Okay, you may not have gotten one with the same verbiage but you know the kind of email I mean. By my count, I have about 10 LIFETIMES worth of bad luck. (Hey, wonder if I can “serve” my sentences concurrently and speed things up to say 5 LIFETIMES?) Anyway, the next day I received the following email from one of my geneablogger buddies:

  Scrabble Ok the game is on... Afternoon Scrabble - Keep it going!!! Change one letter of the bottom word posted and let's see who gets stuck and can't continue! Rules: You cannot add letters. You cannot use foreign languages. You can only change one letter. Send it back to the person that sent it to you, plus 10 new people. Add your entry to the bottom after you hit Forward, or to be neater please Copy and Paste!??? Don't forget: send it back to the person that sent it to you, plus 10 new people. To make it even more interesting, let's add what city and state we are from & the date to see how far this goes and how long it's been out...

This one I did participate in and pass on. I did it for two reasons. 1. NOBODY was being threatened if they did not pass it on. 2. It was extremely interesting to see the number of places this little chain email had been. I sent it to people in the geneablogger world (see Karen, I was good to you.), and my apologies to anyone who may have been offended by being included in this little email. My apologies to anyone I didn’t send it to and who, upon reading this, realized that they would have WANTED to be included. You just can’t please everybody.

It started in the UK, but I don’t know which country in the UK because the originating person was not that specific. However, the following countries are represented: England, Scotland, Wales, Australia, Barbados, and the United States. Twenty states are represented in the list. I am the second Ohioan on this particular list. Below is the list. I have deleted names from it, but I thought it was interesting to see the dates, and the places where this game of scrabble has been. 

The first date is listed as 18/08/08, which is August 18, 2008. This form of date changed to the more common form used in the US in Baltimore, MD. 

A special thanks to the fellow geneablogger who included me in this game. I was feeling in a funk, and this perked me up. If anybody recognizes this list, and would like to drop me a comment, I would love to hear from you. The world has certainly gotten smaller! 

Pray Bray -.UK 18/08/08 Tray - Jenny, Essex UK 18/7/08 Tram -, Essex UK 18/07/08 Trap - 18/7/08 Trip -, Essex 19/08/08 Grip - l,Essex , UK 20/08/08 Grid -, Scotland 20/08/08 Grin - , Barbados 21.08.08 Gran - - England 21.08.08 Bran -, Kent, 24.8.08 Rant- England 27.08.08 Pant -, South Australia 27/8/08 Pint - Hervey Bay Queensland Australia Punt _ Craignish Qld. Australia Puny - - Pt Elliot South Australia 29/08/08 Punk - - Goolwa Beach South Austraila 01/09/08 Pink - -Canterbury UK Sink - Herne Bay Kent Link - Herne Bay Kent . 2 Sept 08 Line - Essex 2nd September 08 Lint - Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex 02/09/08 Tint - - Orpington , Kent 03/09/08 Tent - - Sevenoaks , Kent 3/9/08 Rent - - Fairseat , Kent 3/9/08 Dent - - Bromley Kent 3/9/08 Bent - - West Wickham , Kent 3/9/08 Sent - - Borough Green, Kent 6/9/08 Went - - Southport UK - 06/09/08 Want - -Kay Southport UK - 06/09/08 Wart - -Lee , South Grafton20AU -07/09/08 Fart - South Grafton AU -07/09/2008 Cart- Brisbane Au- 08/09/2008 Tart - Maryborough AU - 08/09/2008 Dart - Brisbane Qld Australia 08/09/08 Dirt - Brisbane Qld Australia 8/09/09 Girt - Brisbane Qld Aust 09/09/08 Gift - Brisbane Qld Aust 09/09/08 Rift - Brisbane Qld Aust 09/09/08 Rife - Brisbane Qld Aust 09/09/08 Life - Qld Aust 10/9/08 Wife- WA Aust 11/9/08 Waif - WA Aust 11/09/08 Wait - WA Aust 11/9/08 Bait - WA Aust 11/09/08 Gait - Glasgow , Scotland 15/09/08 Gain -, Coulsdon, Surrey 15/09/08 Pain -, Woodmansterne, Surrey 16/9/08 Rain -, Banstead, Surrey UK 16.09.08 Raid-, Surrrey UK 16.09.08 Paid -, Hants , UK 17.09.2008 Laid - Wales UK 17.9.2008 Lair - South Wales UK19.09.2008 Lain - South Wales UK 22.09.2008 Lean - Birmingham 22.09.08 Loan- -Hampshire-23.09.08 Moan - West Sussex 24.09.08 Moat - Val Wingate West Sussex England 24.9.08 Boat -, West Sussex . England Beat--, West SussexUK 24/9/08 Neat -, Cambridge England 24/09/08 Peat--, Chicago ,USA Feat-- Mountain View , CA 26/09/08 Teat - San Carlos CA , USA 26/09/08 Meat - Baltimore , MD 9/27/08 seat- Raleigh NC 27609 9 /28/08 sear- Boca Raton , FL 9/30/08 rear- Pikesville Maryland bear- Baltimore Maryland 09/30/2008 tear- Baltimore , Maryland 09/30/2008 team- Owings Mills , Maryland 10/1/08 teal- Owings Mills. MD 10/01/08 seal- Phoenix , MD 10/2/08 sell- Framingham, MA 10/2/08 bell- Framingham , MA 10/2/08 lobe- Framingham , MA 10/2/08 bowl - Framiingham , MA 10/5/08 cowl - Framingham , MA 10/5/08 coal - Weston , MA 10/05/08 COAT- Hollywood FL 10/5/08 Goat - Weston , MA moat Marlboro MA Boat -- Framingham , MA Toad-- Framingham , Ma 10/5/08 Told--- Westwood, Ma 10/6/08 bold - Den nis , MA 10/7/08 bald - Arlington , MA 10/8/08 bale - Troy , OH 10/7/08 balk- Pittsfield ,Ma 10/7/08 bank-,lee,ma 10/8/08 tank- Stamford CT 10/9/08 talk- Wood dale IL 10/9/08 walk-, Wood Dale IL 10/9/08 wall - - RLB , IL 10/9/08 wail - - Glenview , IL 10/9/08 pail -, Chicago , IL 10/09/08 sail - - Torrance , CA. 10/9/08 nail - - Torrance , CA 10/9/08 rail - - Santa Clarita, CA 10/10/08 bail - - Burbank Ca 10/13/2008 hail - - Riverside , CA 10/14/08 fail –– Lakewood, Ca 10/19/08 tail –– Huntington Beach , CA 10/19/2008 toil –~ Ceres, CA 10/20/08 boil- ~ Turlock , CA 10/20/08 coil- CA 10/20/09 cowl- Tracy , CA 10/20/09 fowl ~, Tracy, CA 10/21/08 bowl~ Tracy CA10/21/08 bawl- Tracy, CA 10/21/08 ball–Tracy, CA 10/21/2008 mall- Stephanie Waddoups, Tracy, Ca. 10/22/08 call -, Roy, UT 10/22/08 hall - Carrollton, TX 10/23/08 hail - Ponca City, OK 23 Oct 2008 haik – Laguna Niguel, CA23 Oct 2008 hair - Fort Wort , TX 10/23/08 hail - Anchorage , Alaska , 23 Oct 08 Tail - Houston ,Texas , 10/23/08 @ 1:03p.m. Teal - TX 10/24/08 @ 6:21 Meal- TX 10/24/2008 6:30am Lame –Houston , TX 10/24/2008 Lime –, Corpus Christi , TX 10-24-2008 Dime –Corpus Christi , TX 10/24/2008 Mime -- CC, Texas 10/24/08 Mine - Covington , LA 10/24/08 Mind- Sonora , CA 10/25/08 Mild –Pt. Reyes CA 10/25/08 Milk - Ford CA 10/26/08 Mile- Beach Ca 10/26/08 Mole -, Petaluma CA 10/26/08 Pole –, San Francisco, CA 10/26/08 Hole –Napa , CA 10/27/08 Home- Portland , OR 10-28-08 Hope –Lake Oswego , OR 10-28-08 Rope –Lake Oswego , OR 10-28-08 Rose-- Lake Oswego, OR 10-31-08 Rise-- Portland, OR 10-31-08 Wise-- Concord, Ma. 11-1-08 Wipe-- Portland, OR 11-2-08 Wimp-- Portland, Or 11/3/08 Limp –Borrego Springs, CA 11/03/08 Pimp - Vista, CA 11/5/08 Pump - NV 11/6/08 Jump- Incline Village, Nv. 11/6/08 Hump -, Aleaxndria, Va 11/7/2008 Lump - Hernando, FL Lamp - Lecanto, Fl. 11/07/08 Ramp- okeechobee, fl 11/10/08 camp- Taylorsville,NC 11/10/08 damp - Millville, NJ 11/10/08 tamp - Rosenhayn, NJ Vamp - Millville - NJ pave- Millville, NJ pale - Millville, NJ Bale –Millville, NJ Bake- Millville, NJ Rake—Woodstwon, NJ Make - Mannington, NJ cake- Clearwater, FL sake - Naples, FL Wake- Daw Ca. Wade- V.H. AZ Wide - Viejo, CA 11/21/08 Wipe - Ladera Ranch, CA 11/21/08 Wise - CA 11/21/08 Wish - Whidbey Island WA 11/22/08 Fish - Brookdale, CA 11/22/08Fist -- Chula Vista CA 11/22/08 List - Fulton, Mississippi USA 11/22/08 Last – Fremont, Ohio 11/22/08

© 23 November 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

November - I Weep

I hate November. I always have. The days are short and overcast. Even the thought of the annual Thanksgiving feast is not enough to cheer me. As a child, I can’t tell you the number of times my family sat feasting on the luscious bird with all of its trimmings, while I lay moaning in my bed, bedroom door closed, completely nauseated by the smells that managed to filter their way into my sickroom. Having the flu seemed, at times, like an annual November ritual. Something you could count on in the same way you could count on my mom grinding up the cranberries the night before the holiday. So you can have your Thanksgiving and the entire month. I still hate November.


It seems only fitting, then, that November would house one of my worst memories, one of those before and after moments that people call “defining.” In the scale of things, it was just a small moment. I’ve come to realize if you scratch below anyone’s surface, you will find similar moments. I’m not special. God did not single me out, but at twenty-four, with a limited worldview, it felt as if he had.


In my mind, I see a little blond girl, smiling and running towards me with arms outstretched. I smile back.  I reach for her, picking her up and kissing her warm forehead. It is a cherished fantasy, decades old. It’s all I have of her, my youngest daughter, Heather, the fantasy.


When Heather was born, she had massive birth defects. That is what I tell people, when I talk about it. It sounds much better than the truth. That as a seven-month preemie, she weighed over ten pounds. That her little body was so bloated with fluid it had crushed her fragile bones, and made it impossible for her to come down the birth canal.


The fact that she managed to survive for twenty minutes after her caesarean birth, might qualify as a small miracle, on a day when miracles were in short supply. I am haunted with the idea that she was waiting for me, and in one final insult, I let her down, not coming out of the anesthetic fog until after she had died.


Funny, when they told me she was a girl, for a brief moment there was pleasure.  I hadn’t known until that instant how much I was hoping for a girl. In that instant, I forgot that a short time earlier I had begged the doctor to give me some small piece of hope as they put me under the anesthesia. His response had been a negating shake of his head.

How much of my grief-inspired insanity do I share? How much can you hear? Do you want to know that because I never held her or kissed her little cheek, or even saw her ravaged body that the ache of it can still make me weak?


Do you want to know that for months afterwards, every time I got into my car it somehow ended up in the hospital parking lot? Even I couldn’t understand the compulsion, until finally, one day, it dawned on me that the hospital was the last place Heather had been alive for me. The baby that had kicked inside me whenever I stopped rocking in my chair had disappeared. My mind and body were still looking for her.


Do you want to know that it would take five years, but eventually the event would highlight the growing cracks in my marriage, making a divorce the final footnote of the tragedy?


I wanted the world to stop. I didn’t care about someone looking for a new house. I didn’t care if they lost their job, or their plumbing stopped working. I wanted to shout, “My daughter has died! Nothing else matters!” But of course, as everyone knows, everything else does matter, and eventually, even I had to pick up the pieces and move on.


I hope that in your gravest moments of crisis you will find the same support and compassion I found in the cadre of women who nurtured and sustained me through mine. My mother, my sisters - Marcia and Lee, and my sister-in-law Nancy had the difficult task of withstanding all the vitriol and angst that I could muster. Over and over again, they let me cry, and rage and once done, let me regurgitate again all the bile that filled my soul. They must have wondered at times if I would ever stop, and eventually I did, when the well of bile finally ran dry. I don’t know how these women weathered my storm, but thank God, they did.


And so there was before, and then there was after. One day I was me, and then I was another me - not necessarily a better me, or even a worse me, just a different me. That is how life is.


Most of the time, it is behind me, though never lurking too far below my surface. With decades of practice, I can talk about it clinically, dispassionately without the slightest wave of disturbance. Except in November, when the sky is overcast and the calendar stares at me in defiance. Then I weep.

© 13 November 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder