You never cease to amaze me, mom
Given the recent spurt of genealogy information I gathered, I decided to email my mother and let her know some of the information I found, in hopes it would show her in good faith that I’m willing to share this information with her. In return, I hoped she would finally let go of some of the information she gathered and share it with me like she promised. I’ve always been under the impression she’s hoarding this information and holding it over my head like a weapon.
These are the replies I get:
Who is this person? I need to contact them. Give me their contact information so I can compare notes, but can’t do it for another week or so.
I do have the names of XXX parents. I just have to look it up. Right now I can’t because I’m in the middle of mid-term exams at college and don’t have time to look for it.
She was originally Cherokee Indian, so her parents would have Cherokee names, not American names. I will have to look at what my cousin sent me. Don’t have time right now.
I dunno, seemed more like a demand to me. And I’m certainly not going to just give away contact information of someone. That’s private. Regardless, I’ve warned my cousin about it, and apologized that I may not have information to share with her because of my greedy mother. My cousin and I both agree that sharing genealogy information is a -good- thing, and don’t understand why people hold onto it like buried treasure.
Whatever. I found information without you mother. If I have to live with just the information that was provided to me from other sources, so be it. You will not use this silly bullcrap against me.
[Edit]: I wrote a reply:
This person gave me all the information I needed, nevermind.
They are checking on the tribe again to be sure.
Good luck with your exams.
To which she replied fast with:
You didn’t tell me who this person is. What information did they give you? I need it for my research.
Yeah. Right.
When I didn’t reply fast enough, I received another:
Hey, are you going to give me the information or not?
To which I finally decided to reply:
Mom,
I have been trying to get some information on my family from not only you but other people in the family and NO ONE seems to want to give it up. Do you know how disheartening this is for my generation? That our ancestors make it so hard for us to find out where we came from?
This relative that I found went through the same thing. People hoarding information and not wanting to share it, they don’t understand it and neither do I. As you and I spoke of before, I will be creating a website with this information to share with all of the people in my bloodline. I will probably be setting up the foundation of the website before the end of the month even.
I’m not giving you their contact information. If they want to contact you, I will let them know. In the mean time you can relay messages through me, or you can stop being so opaque about the whole thing and making demands like you just did.
I just want to know about my family. It is information I want for my kids if I have them, and part of the learning process of figuring out who I am. I understand you are busy, everyone is. I also understand you have mid-terms. But I have been patiently waiting for this information for about a year, and you wouldn’t even give me your grandparents names. I had to find that out elsewhere. I highly doubt this was information you had to look up.
I’m not trying to shake the boat. You and I both know very well that we lead very different lives and that this will most likely never change. Don’t try and make this out to be an attack on you, because it isn’t. See it for what it is.
Her only reply to that was:
Good luck in your research.
Which, knowing my mother, means she’s not sharing squat. And probably never intended to.
Thanks mom.
Entry viewed times. Posted in Genealogy, Mom
One Response to “You never cease to amaze me, mom”
October 18th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Isn’t it weird how we can be so different from the people we are related to, and who raised us?