DON'T IT TURN MY BROWN EYES BLUE?

Since the time of the Pilgrims, New England has been steeped in many traditions. One of these traditions came to mind this morning as I prepared a pot of Boston baked beans to go in the oven for a traditional Saturday evening "supper." My grandmother also came to mind as I prepared my beans because she always told us that she put bluing in her beans. For those of you who don't know what bluing is/was used for; it was to get white clothes white. I guess before bleach was around people used bluing. Of course, my grandmother didn't actually add bluing to her baked beans, but she told us she did so "we all would fart a blue streak!" As I stood there, I lovingly smiled as I remembered my Nana.

As a child we would sing this ditty and giggle:

Beans, beans, the musical fruit
The more you eat, the more you toot
The more you toot, the better you feel.
Then you're ready for  another meal...

What exactly is it about a fart that makes it so funny? And so embarassing?

I looked up bluing and found this additional use for it and got even more tickled and thought maybe my grandmother did add a drop or two of bluing in her beans since our bloodline is descendants to the Salem witches. Of all the people who were accused, imprisoned, tried and executed for witchcraft, I am directly related to over 40 of those people. I've been doing genealogy research for almost 30 years and have done a couple DNA tests. It's truly amazing what you find out when you start digging...

Obviously, my grandmother had her own method of cleansing a house of evil spirits.

THERE'S A TRAITOR IN THE HOUSE!

Lately, my mindless distraction has been doing genealogy research. This isn't something new for me. In fact, I started poking around in my family tree back in the 1990's. Since then, I've found many interesting facts regarding my ancestry and a lot of not so interesting facts. I guess you have to take the good with the bad!

Since my family is all from New England finding out I had ties to the Mayflower and the Salem witches came as no surprise to me. In fact, I'm related to a dozens of the witches. Elizabeth "Goody" Proctor is my 9th great grandmother.  She's the one the book, The Crucible was written about so when it's a full moon and I get a yearning to rip my clothes off and dance naked in the backyard now I know why or at least I have a story I can tell the police when they come to get me. Speaking of books and authors...Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House On The Prairie) is a cousin, also, but I don't think I have that prairie thing going on, but Mildred definitely can rock a witch's hat!

Today wasn't a great day for discovery. Benedict Arnold popped up. I know all families have skeletons and scalawags, but traitors??? Okay! I guess I'll have to own it. It's not a close tie. He's like a 4th cousin 8 times removed. That doesn't even qualify as a kissing cousin, does it? Who of you out there understand the generational relationship when someone says so and so is 2nd cousin 3 times removed or 2 times removed? Anyway, I'll take Benedict Arnold just as long as I don't find out I'm related to Donald Trump. I know there's a fat chance of that happening because all my DNA is planted in the British Isles. I better shut up. He might have a smidgeon of Irish or Scottish tucked up his fat ass somewhere and it really would make me cry if I found out we're kissing cousins.

Speaking of crying, yesterday while sitting at a traffic light I had my one of my "moments." There was a lone bird sitting on a wire and as I watched it, I started crying. Now, as I type this I'm starting to cry again. My mother used to tell me that all birds sit on wires in the same direction. I used to tell her she's crazy. Every time I'd see birds, I'd always look and they'd never be sitting the same way. Where she got that idea I never knew, but it became a standard joke my kids and I would tease her about. Yesterday, there was just one little bird sitting alone and it made me cry. The flood gates opened and I cried all the way to the doctor's office.

I went there because I haven't been feeling well. That was an ordeal! No one there knew my mother had passed away. No, I don't want anything to help me to sleep! No, I don't want an anti-depressant. I just want my stomach to feel better (I have serious digestive issues) and I want my blood pressure to behave itself. My doc changed my blood pressure med and decided to let my gastro doc handle the other issues since I had an appointment with her today. Maybe I'll be able to sleep better and actually eat food once in awhile. That'll certainly improve my whole outlook or at least make my digestive system do a happy dance. Does anyone remember what it felt like when you were a kid and you just felt good? Well, that's my goal! I want to remember what good feels like. Not great, but good. I know there's going to be days when I hurt, but I'm tired of this "golden years" bullshit that we get fed and then we get here and it's a bunch of lies and bullshit. 

My goal tomorrow is to do some more work on the bedroom so I can work towards getting it ready to move into it EVENTUALLY. My kids are worried that it will bother me to move into my mother's old bedroom, but I think I'm okay with it and of course, my dogs are okay with wherever I am as long as they get at least 75% of my bed. 

THE ROAD TO NOWHERE - PART X

Are you still with me? If you are, then you've reached the moment of the big reveal. From 1975 when my daughter was born until about 2 years ago (2016) my daughter always believed  her father was Kenny Rowe. I never for one moment thought he was an actual possibility. All one had to do was do some simple math. That's why we have fingers and toes! For my daughter to be his, she would have had to have been born prematurely at about 7 months. Have you ever heard of a 7 month old fetus weighing over 9 lbs? 

I'm to blame for this lie and do take full responsibility for telling it and for letting others tell it. You see, way back when I was still in Chipley before I came back to Pensacola to give birth and I told Kenny I was pregnant.  But before I could tell him it wasn't his, he beat me to the punch by assuming that he was the father.  Instead of setting the record straight right then and there, I got my ass bent out of shape when he jumped in before I could tell him and he beat me to the punch by expecting me to get an abortion. I guess his initial reaction about my situation pissed me off and I just let the whole thing ride and let him continue to believe a lie. For the longest time, I thought my secret would never come back to bite me. I thought my secret was safe and that I was protecting my daughter when in reality all I was doing was taking the easy way out by protecting myself from dealing with the truth.

Like most lies, they may not catch up to you at first and sometimes they never catch up to you, but anyone with a conscience eventually feels guilty for telling a lie especially when it's a huge lie. At that point, any honorable person will decide to finally do the right thing if they can. Sure, I felt pangs of guilt over the years, but I wasn't ready to do the right thing until a few years ago. About the time I decided to come clean, I also decided to do some genealogy research so my daughter could at least have a more complete picture of the gene pool that created her. Before that all she knew were all the kooks on my side of her tree.  Doing genealogy research has been an on again off again project of mine for about 20+ years and include being related to many of the Salem witches, Laura Ingalls Wilder, several passengers on the Mayflower, William the Conqueror and thousands of weirdos and misfits that have given me a certain flair.

Telling my daughter the truth was difficult, but I did it without making any excuses for my deceitful behavior. I did what I did many years ago and it was wrong. Period! I was then faced with an entire new set of decisions to make. I figured tracking Donnie down would be relatively easy, but that wasn't the case. Doesn't Murphy's Laws state "nothing is ever as easy as you think it will be?" For the last two years I've chased a "ghost." At some point, I thought "maybe he's dead," but if that was true, there would have been a record of his death and I couldn't find one. 

When I started my "project, I had my daughter do a DNA test through Ancestry.com to give me a place to start my search. Until very late on August 10, 2018, I wasn't able to connect all the dots that would lead me to finding Donnie. Up until then I found plenty of people who showed up as DNA matches for my daughter, but the closest match I had to work with was a couple first and second cousins. Those people never responded to my request for help filling in the blank spots on my daughter's tree. Go figure! I guess on August 10th all the stars and planets were in perfect alignment because I finally located him. The Donnie Arnold I knew long ago is Martin Eudon Arnold. A couple details I discovered made me laugh out loud. The first was that he lives in a place I lived about 30 years ago. It really is a small world when you get right down to it! The next thing that amused me was that I found out when I located him that his birthday was on August 11th...the very next day. Happy birthday, Donnie!

As I dug deeper, my amusement turned into a really sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I discovered out he had gotten married in 1973.  OMG! Was he married when we had our little brouhaha in Panama City Beach?  The answer to that was no. He had gotten divorced the month before I met him in August 1974. I guess I was both his birthday gift and celebratory freedom lay that summer.  He did however manage to get his ex-wife pregnant after they divorced and she had a baby boy a month after my daughter was born. He also got married in 1988, but his wife died in 1991. Since that time, he appears to have remained single or at least never married again.

Now, I'm faced with what should I do next. Should I do nothing and just be content with handing my daughter all the info I've found or should I rock Donnie's world by contacting him with a "hey dude, remember me and guess what we did?"  I think my daughter deserves an opportunity to know her father if he's open to that, but I definitely don't want to hurt her by throwing her to the wolves. I have a letter written and saved on my computer, but I don't know who I should send it to. Should I send it to his two adult children and let them be the bearer of good tidings and joy or should I bite the bullet and send him the letter? I'm not usually this indecisive, but then again I've never been in this situation before.  Any advice anyone wants to toss my way will be deeply appreciated. I'm seriously running on empty. I haven't had a normal sleep pattern for a long, long time. I feel anxious whenever I start thinking about this and I just want to put this behind me once and for all, but I can't do that until I do something...and hopefully that something I ultimately decide to do is the right thing for everyone concerned.  I used to keep an 8-ball on my desk at work for situations that required decision making. Maybe I should dust it off and consult it now!