LINEAGE

I come from the horror that was the battlefields of Scotland, and the mountain ranges across the new frontier where the Sioux Indians were butchered and betrayed... these were the beginnings.

More recently, as my own life reaches what feels like a midway, and I watch my parents and theirs begin to slip into the unknown, I am learning again from stories ignored by this rebellious little boy that I come from places even more foreign to us as a human species.

I come from Grandfathers who brick by brick built the homes where their young wives would raise seven children. I come from Grandmothers who taught thousands in her beliefs and who sacrificed at home while their husbands survived and returned from World Wars where their service and acts of heroism promised them nothing more than the opportunity to work harder.

I come from a time when things were simply not had rather than put on a plastic card and paid for later. A time when the basics were more than enough, and taken as a blessing during a nations youth. I (fortunately) come from a family who ranked our togetherness higher than anything that could be bought or sold, that looked at me as a gift, and that treated me as if I was already one of them.

I look around and can't seem to overcome a feeling of guilt in my own abundance. I look into the eyes of the aging and then into those of our youth and can see a difference.  I can see a whole person in our past.  I can see life lived in those that cling to a last breath. But in those eyes of the up and coming I see a dependence, I can feel the disconnect, and I am pushed further away with each swipe, beep or scroll of a phone...