The Veil Is Thin - Ancestral Memory

I can feel them calling across the ages. Call from dream and stream and an open heart.My tongue dances with their words and stories.My grandmother, Louise Ewing.I had been wanting my ears pierced for ages, but my father forbade me. I was 11 or 12. One day she was pissed at my father, and was babysitting me. She asked me if I wanted to get my ears pierced still. I said yes, oh please yes. We went to the mall, to one of those ear-gun places that lead so easily to infection, but its what was available 20 years ago in a place like Bellevue, Washington.  The pain, the joy, the smile on her face.  The anger on the face of my father. Her silent gloating.She was the woman who taught me to blow bubbles in my soda. She died her hair green and went back to nursing school late in life. She was a bartender back in the day, and would drink younger men under the table. She raised strong children, even when it was hard times and they literally had to live on national lout of a tent (two of my aunts are half-Lakota, so they had the right to do so). She carried grudges, and in turn, worked hard to help anyone who had touched her heart in any way.  She cared for the sick, and laughed out loud.My father's mother's mother.She died young. She struggled with depression. My grandmother swore she looked just like me. That she worried I would not live longer than her.  And perhaps she was right.Bridgett Louise Ashlee Jauregui Harrington.I buried her, and let her go, finally, two years ago. She does the work she needs to do on the other side of the veil.She did not live much longer than her great-grandmother.  She too struggled profoundly with depression, the stamp of her father's bloodline upon her life.I love Bridgett more than I have words for.Today I call upon the names of ancestors I have been profoundly touched by.I call upon the name of Kay Smith, who wove her dreams into giant wall hangings, danced with the Dadaists, and in her youth modeled for fetish photographers in France. Who I have profound sorrow around her choices to abandon my grandfather at an orphanage. Whose loss shook our family to the core.  But no one wants to out-live their children, and she had outlived all of them. Kay Smith, whose smile melted me when I sat with her in the gallery of her home.Jack Harrington. Her son, who worked his days on the railroad until he retired and opened up "Harrington's Olive East" - the first coffee shop in Seattle to import coffees from around the world. The man who gifted me with my first bicycle, though I never learned how to use it well. I remember how deeply his death affected my father, guns and sorrow and credit card debt. Alcohol for generations echoing through the darkness. I touch back through time, pet his face, and remember my tears locked inside a closet, hooks in my back.Nancy Greytak. His sister, who would babysit me. Her smile a mile wide. The smell of cigarettes. Her laughter.I call the name of Warren Jauregui, who I never knew. His second family, his long beard, his mythological existance. The fact that though he and my grandmother had not seen each other since my mother was two or three, that they still died within a few months of each other, less than 200 miles apart. Sometimes heartstrings bring us close, throughout the pain.Edith Ewing-Dimico. Peach scarves and strong opinions. The gift of strength.Jack Curtis, second grandfather on my patrimonial line. I hear the echoes of Beirut and Boeing. Airplanes in my line.My heart sings the generations that dance back to Ireland, Basque Spain, Northern Europe. I dance through the mines of Cork and Butte. I hum with horse thieves and revolutions. Ellis Island and sealed adoption records. I sing with pride and sorrow alike. I am blessed that they were born, that I could be born.In the inheritance comes mental illness, addiction, resentment, sorrow.In the inheritance comes strength, capacity, creativity, passion. In the inheritance comes family no matter what went down before. In the inheritance comes a web of family around the world and back. Heritage, hope, artistry.In the end, the gifts outweigh the weight of the line.My blood sings with my line, and I thank.I give thanks.Thank you for bearing, being. Being, and gifting me with all you are and were.