An Essay on Ancestors and a Poem of Intention

We may think that we are living our own dreams, our own destiny, but are we really?

Dear Reader, you haven’t heard from me for about a month as I work to figure out what writing schedule works best for me to keep up with my poetry, my memoir, get my novel out into the universe and create this blog. Oh, and there’s an event every day called a job, complex, interesting and demanding of my focus too. But writing and needing to write never stops and calls to me each day.

Here is the poem I wrote when I was thinking about 2024 and setting some intentions out into the universe.

The year of 2024

This is the year
I am here for more
in the Now of the Now of the Now
in this moment
of boundless possibility

This is the year
beyond the year
I looked back
on me, saw
the bound feet
the bowed down spirit
the shackled wrists
the fettered mind

The prison of imposed
impossibilities, the you can’ts
you shouldn’ts, what will
others think, the what ifs,
the buts, the no’s

I had to step away
from the well-lit paths,
remove the weight
of worry and doubt
unleash the restless
hands that cry

Look up
to the darkened sky,
the wheeling stars,
Look out
to the expanding
universe, expanding, expanding,
tethered to nothing we know,
nothing we can imagine

And in that space
I see room for me
to grow, to explore, to become
my calling

It’s time to break up
break out break away
from the expectations of society
the demands of work, the
fears of mothers

Loosed from the past

I approach the font of wisdom
drink from the unending well
of creativity, dine at the spring
of the eternal mind

go forth

become
the woman
the poem
               the I am
                              of my own life.

                                                            Janell Strube 1/6/2024

Right after I wrote this poem, I got an urge to go and play Maple Leaf Rag on the piano. This is a song I have played since I was about 12 years old. When I learned it, I imagined that Scott Joplin was my relative and that I loved ragtime so much because I was related to the one who invented it.

It turned out to be a song my white birth great-grandmother played the first time I met her. She was not to know who I was, so everyone treated me as a family friend visiting from California. I was thirteen years old.

It’s Black History Month. Last year I introduced a book a day by a Black writer. This year, I find my response muted, as I work to find the time to realize what boundless means in my life. We are bound by one principal, and that is that we have one life. But if we say we have no time, that is an excuse, and we are putting obstacles in front of ourselves to avoid realizing our potential, our calling. I’m reading the book, The 5 am Club. Anyone who knows me knows I am not a morning person. I’m not grumpy, I just can’t get up because often, I don’t fall asleep until 5 am. So, I’m working on new habits. More to come on that in an essay later.

But back to Black History Month, I also find my response muted because of so much missing in my life that would connect me to that history. As an adopted person, I have no cultural connection, no shared experience, no stories to bring into my life to hold up as examples of perseverance, of overcoming, of hidden talents and interests to explore.

I don’t have any history.

I can only lean into me.

But as a writer, as a person of imagination, I can ascertain some clues, make some speculations, come to some conclusions.

First, on my birth father’s side, an ancestor named Mary was one of the first enslaved people to be listed by name in a Texas census in the late 1840s. What dreams, what aspirations, what talents did Mary bequeath to future generations? What children did she lose before the end of slavery, before the additional year stolen by Texans, before that grand Juneteenth when she was freed? What wisdom did she have to teach? I will never know.

Then on my birth mother’s side, several generations back, a woman whose name I don’t know, a Native American. What circumstances led her to become a wife outside her tribe, her people? Was it for love? Was it for loss? Had she been stolen away? Had her family, her people died? Did she ever keep in touch with her family once she married into my grandfather’s family? What was her comfort as she turned away from her culture, her roots? What did she miss the most? I will never know.

But even further back, for those great-great-great….grandfathers, one who came on a ship to America in the 1600s, another who fought in the Revolutionary War. What were their motivations? What drove the one to turn his back on their country, leave for another land? What drove the other to fight against a kingdom, an ancient way of life, to create a new nation? I will never know.

But somehow, the blood, the thoughts, the needs, the likes, the desires, the hopes, the dreams, of these ancestors stir in me now. When I ponder these people who lived centuries ago, but whose DNA survives in me, I see echoes in my life – a break with culture, family, past, a world traveler, a bold pioneer into the future, one not afraid to reinvent one’s life, or one overcoming in difficult circumstances, surviving to pass the light of life into the future. Even though I was not told their stories, this cannot be taken from me.

It’s like finding out that both your birth parents played the same instrument you took up as a child, or that they both wrote poetry in college.

And the need to play the Maple Leaf Rag the moment I wrote that I could become the I am of my own life? Just the universe letting me know that we are never loosed from our past, because our past is what sets us on the way to our future. No matter that someone tried to break the links in the chain from my past to my present.

And just perhaps I will be the one who realizes the dream of an ancestor who lives on inside me. It might be my victory, but it will be their triumph as well because they have cheered and led me all along the way. And that will be okay.

The wonder of looking out into the night sky and comprehending that we are made of stardust, that our existence is both ancient and evolving, that no matter how infinitesimal we are, we are connected to a past beyond our comprehension and tied to a future far beyond ourselves.