Reaching Back

I wish I had my camera. I left it at work because the office boy was going to use it and he has forgotten for two days in a row now.

The vista tonight is amazing. Dark, lazy clouds rising up from behind the mountains. Meeting a sky that is robin's egg blue. With the sun peeking out at the eastern edge of the storm. It would make a nice picture and if it weren't the middle of July, I'd be thinking that we were in for a snowstorm.

I've been researching my dad's family the last couple of days and I can trace him clear back to Charlemagne, (and further to **Arnulf of Metz**) which I thought was cool until my dad pointed out that more than half of the world can probably be traced back to Charlemagne in some way, shape or form.

There is a sense of grounding for me in all of this research. The realization of just how far back part of my DNA can be pointed out to me is incredible. It's amazing to look at all of these names and picture their lives. Knowing that they are part of... well, me. I feel a sense of a familial tie to just the names and most of the names have no history attached to them, and yet, I wonder about them. Who they were, did they love their spouses and children? Did that one guy REALLY die on the day that he got married or was it a screw up in the research? What about the one lady that has the same birth day as mine, only 250 years earlier, what was she like?

I've always liked history and I am finding I really like the research. I have been immersed, totally in it for the last two days. I like finding out where they came from and who they were. I want to find out more and I am starting to think that this is going to turn into a HUGE project.

**I had NO IDEA who Arnulf of Metz was until I got to the last of this research and then, it hits a dead end. Hell, I didn't really have an idea of who Charlemagne was. OK, I had an idea, but I didn't really know...