The other side of the family

This past weekend I drove four hours north to my birthplace of Monroe, Louisiana, also where my parents were born and raised. I have a lot of family there, but I grew up feeling closest to my maternal grandmother’s side (aka my Mama Jessie). When I first got an Ancestry account, I spent two years on Mama Jessie’s branches of the family before even climbing over to the other sides of my tree.

So yesterday, I sat with my maternal grandfather’s sister, Aunt Sarah, and her daughter, Tempie. I was having trouble finding the house and my GPS was tripping, so they agreed to meet me at a pizza place around the corner so I could follow them back to the house.

I met them as a very little girl, but my grown self had zero recollection of what they looked like. A few cars pulled in and I’d look and wait, but it wouldn’t be them. A silver sedan pulled in, a woman got out and I looked and waited. Then an older woman got out looking JUST LIKE my Papa John and I flew into the parking spot and jumped out the car.

“Aunt Sarah!” I called after her.

“Oh my God!” She smiled and pulled me in for one of them long lost hugs.

When we got back to the house, I introduced ’em to CJ — who was born two days before Aunt Sarah’s brother, my Papa John, passed — and Kobe. Tempie, Aunt Sarah’s daughter, immediately pointed out that Kobe looked like her daughter Angie and that I looked like her daughter, Toni. Come to find out, me and Toni got a good bit in common.

“You sound just like her,” they’d say. “She into history and getting the family tree together too.”

I asked about Papa John and their parents (my great-grandparents), Mathilda and Newt. I learned so much interesting stuff about them, especially how they moved from Winnsboro, Louisiana to Monroe and lived in the exact house that I was sitting in.

“It was much smaller back then,” Tempie explained. She pointed out that the living room we were sitting in was half the size it is now and that it was Mathilda’s room. The kitchen was Mathilda’s mother’s room.

I didn’t hardly expect to learn about Mathilda’s mother, my great-great grandmother. Yet, I was in the exact same space that she once lived. The idea of that still pauses my thoughts.

And we laughed. My God, we laughed, especially when Tempie told me the story of how my petite lil Mama Jessie went to mouthing off at my tall, solid boned Aunt Sarah. Sarah went after Jessie and Jessie took off ‘cross the yard and over the fence, tripping in the ditch, to get away.

Tempie is an excellent storyteller. Funny as all get out and so animated she pulled CJ and Kobe’s attention from their phones to her stories. I took hella mental notes on that — ’cause I wanna add some of that sauce to my own storytelling skills (and ’cause my phone was dead as a damn doorknob). Initially, I was devastated about that. Then I reminded myself that recorders ain’t always been around. And not having my phone made me extra present and observant.

When Aunt Sarah asked to see a picture of Mama Jessie, I showed her what I had and she beamed. “She always could dress and she know she was one pretty woman.” Bygones are bygones.

I didn’t stay long, a couple hours, but I’m already looking forward to visiting ’em again in April and connecting with my cousin-twin Toni 🙂 The more family I sit with and the more I study the cities that made me, the more I learn about who I am, what I come from, and what I’m capable of.