Stalking Family and Feelin' Good!!

Birds flying high
You know how I feel
Sun in the sky
You know how I feel
Reeds driftin' on by
You know how I feel                            
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good!

~Michael Buble

So it is a New year and I AM feeling good! 

I have decided this year to try and find the branches of my tree and reconnect with the family I do know and maybe connect with those that I don’t.  I have written of it before when I posted It's a Dogs Life last year.  The thought that I don’t even know the family I grew up with anymore has weighed on me most of my adult life and continues even today.   My daughter is about to have her baby girl any day now so this is the year that I will stalk my family!

On New Years day, I was on my facebook page and as I was going through some posts on one of my friend’s pages, I noted that a post on her wall was made from a name I recognized.  Friends with my friend, was my cousin!  I didn’t know her married name (for shame) but she had included her maiden name, which I most certainly knew.  Excitedly, I went to her page and found that she had been married three years now, had a child and two stepchildren and had just graduated from college.  I suck, was the only phrase in my head.  So of course, what would the long lost cousin do?  I friend requested her.  She accepted almost immediately, and it was so nice to message back and forth to catch up.  (I know, we could have called, but this IS 2012! Who calls anymore?)

Next I looked through her friends as we chatted where I found her sisters and brothers, so of course I requested them and once they accepted, I was listing them as my family!  I was so excited!  The memories came flying back to me as I was looking through their pages!  I felt a little like a voyeur as I strolled through time with a click here and there. They all looked so great! So grown up, some married, some not and their children were all so beautiful.  All the holidays, birthdays and triumphs they had celebrated with their families and friends.  The day was growing melancholy as I looked at my very handsome cousin’s page that now lives on the east coast, with his wife and two children and I teared up a little at how his son looks just like my older son. 

I thought of the times we shared when we were young, like hiding up in the tree in my backyard and throwing oranges down on our siblings.  I thought about how we would give weekend shows to the parents, aunts and uncles with sheets tied around our necks or towels clipped by clothespins while singing Jeremiah was a Bullfrog holding stinky dog brushes as microphones. I thought of all the camping trips we took, our family would take up most of the campsite, just as the reunions that took up most of the parks.

That’s when I decided to hunt everyone down, so I grabbed some paper and had to actually draw a tree to list everyone down, and then I began the stalking. I found that I am quite good at it!  I spent all day doing this while Sweet worked on his bike and after about six hours (yep 6, wheeww!), I even searched for them on the Internet and got all their addresses and most phone numbers.  Yep, real life stalking… I was surprised at how much info I was able to pull up and then the idea blossomed into a full flower right there in my brain.  I was going to create my family tree on both sides and find out where everyone was and write about my journey! 

So I called my dad and told him what I was planning and he surprised me by telling me that he had a tree that one of my cousins had started some time ago and I could have a copy if I wanted to get started.  I guess he was supposed to but hadn’t done anything with it yet.  Actually not really surprised by that, but that’s a whole other story that will be written.  So here I go, on my new dawn, my new day and Thanks to Sweet my new life!