Legacy

It started with my father. He distanced himself from his very large family by choice. He had seventeen siblings, and by the time I was three, with both of his parents deceased, he moved away from the small village we lived in. Putting an unbridge-able distance between him and his siblings. He also managed to estrange my mother from her five siblings to a certain degree, even though there was closer, and time wise, a longer involvement from that side of the family. I couldn't tell you who's who on my father's side.

I have only three siblings, but due to the circumstances of my childhood, I chose to take my father's path. Moving thousands of miles away, preferring the physical distance to make room initially for my own pursuits. My twenties were the hardest for me, the main thing keeping me on some sort of focused course was "to make it". To accomplish something I could show off to my father to be proud of. Alas, he died before I could finish. In retrospect I doubt that he would have cared. Not that he didn't care, but I now believe that being able to master other things in life were more important to him for his children to accomplish. He just didn't have the parenting skills to impress that on me. He had no one before him teaching him the little parenting skills he had.

Now there is the legacy of my granddaughter having come into this world. Both my parents have long been gone, and my daughter's paternal grandfather by personal choice has no involvement in her life, therefore, he also has no involvement in my granddaughter's life, his own great-granddaughter. My daughter's paternal grandmother has no relationship with her. Unlike with her paternal grandfather, it is much more so because of my daughter's choosing. Even as an infant she rejected her on an energy level.

So it’s up to me to end the legacy. It’s not like there is any particular family tradition or trade to pass on. There is no business to learn and inherit. There really is not even much of a cultural passing down of anything, even though there is a very colorful variety of culture on either side of my granddaughter’s family. But I do want to pass on my being-ness to her. I don’t think there really is much more than that. We are so ignorant to the fact of how deep the impressions lasts that we make on our children and grandchildren. The things they remember about us are never what we would have thought of in our wildest dreams. Maybe it’s because we were so concerned with impressing other things on them or maybe we fell on the other end of the spectrum and simply didn’t care what impressions we left behind.

I will do whatever it takes for my granddaughter and I to get to know each other. She already shows a strong preference towards me, picking me as her shield against “others”, if her parents aren’t around. I am overwhelmed by that trust she places in me without having established a long enough bond yet. She is only one after all. Understanding that I am one of the chosen spirits for her whom she trusts is all I need, to be whatever resource and nourishment she will require me to be as she grows.