It seems like most conversations I’ve had lately start with “Have you had your vaccine yet?”, and quickly move on to talk of plans for after the fact. We’re all getting a little restless.
Like John and me, most if not all of you that are reading this are retired. We haven’t had to worry about job losses or child care over the last year, and have hopefully all remained healthy. We continue to bide our time at home as we wait for those vaccines and for the world to open up. We might have some moments of boredom, but can pretty much choose how we’ll spend each day: maybe by planning a trip or a reunion with family members later this year, or by tackling some home improvements, or by pursuing any number of hobbies.
I know I’ve mentioned before that one of my hobbies is genealogy – something that I’ve dabbled with on and off over the years. During this time at home, I’ve set a goal for myself of trying to reach as far back through the generations as the records allow – a rabbit hole of hours following a chain of births, marriages, and deaths of the generations that preceded me.
John’s brother has traced their maternal side back to William Bradford and the Mayflower; my cousin’s wife has identified that her roots go back to the 11th century and William the Conqueror. As expected, my search hasn’t revealed any such notables. With the help of a couple of websites, I’ve been able to reach back about six generations of some branches of my family tree – back to the 1700’s – for basic information like names and dates. The trail will probably end there because earlier records are few and far between (even the records of the 19th and 20th centuries are sketchy), but I don’t think I’ll discover any royalty or historic figures.
With the bits of information found, I’ve been able to fill in a vague picture of their lives. Although an unremarkable history, it has certainly altered my perspective on our current situation.
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| A cottage in Jednorozec |
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| My DNA map |
The occupation of most if not all of them was listed as “farmer”. The simple houses they lived in probably didn’t change much from the 1700’s until the mid-1900’s, when electricity was finally introduced to Jednorozec. They married young and had large families, but suffered unimaginable losses, like the story of one of my great-great-grandfathers:
Jakub had been widowed once at a young age, then lost his second wife and four children within the span of eight months in 1866, possibly due to an outbreak of Cholera. He was left alone to raise his remaining two year-old son (my great-grandfather). Fifty years old at the time, Jakub remarried and was subsequently widowed again. He remarried yet again to a woman half his age, fathering several more children, three of whom survived to have their own families. He died at the ripe old age of 73, having survived that young wife – his fourth – by a year.
Jakub's is only one of the biographies that I’ve been able to piece together. It was rare to see anyone live into their 60’s, and of necessity, it wasn’t unusual for widows/widowers to remarry within a month or two of burying their spouse.
Most of them probably never traveled far beyond their county limits. Generation after generation suffered the same tragedies, and celebrated the same joys and traditions.
There were no vaccines for diseases that we’ve long since conquered, no winter escapes to a warmer climate, or any dreams about future travel. No debates about where to go skiing or even where to go for dinner. No fretting about selecting just the right granite countertops/automobiles/medical plans/stock options from among millions of choices. No chance to purchase something with a click of the finger and have it arrive on the doorstep – and then complain because it took a day longer than expected because of pandemic supply chain issues. No chance to get upset because the corner store is out of Proseco, or because those off-season California strawberries just aren’t as good as the local summer harvest.
They couldn’t even to vote for the leader of the country; they could only wait for the 100+ year Tsarist Russian occupation to end.
Retirement would have been a foreign concept, let alone the idea of waking up in the morning and having a choice of how to spend the day, or which hobby to pursue while waiting out the pandemic. In fact, the idea of searching through family genealogy itself may have seemed a novel idea!
So, am I getting restless? Maybe a little – but who am I to complain?
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* Here’s commercial endorsement that I’ve plugged before: go visit Unicorn Bakery in Vernon! It’s named after the village and is owned and operated by my cousin Peter. https://www.facebook.com/unicornpolishbakery/
** Much as John teases me about it – no, my family tree is NOT the shape of a telephone pole – no evidence of weird family intermarriages! However, it seems like every other girl in the village was named Marianna, and – as in any other small town around the world – last names repeated themselves. Thus it was that after my 3rd great-grandfather Szymon Opalach lost his first wife Marianna Sedrowski, he managed to find another, younger woman with the exact same name to marry just a few weeks later. No need to change the names on their embossed stationery.
