A rose by any other name...

Before I get started, please let me make a disclaimer: This is my blog, my thoughts, the things that are important to me.  I know that not everyone will agree with what I write, nor do I really care about my use of proper grammar, spelling or punctuation.  I am not writing a book-I'm just telling a few stories...so criticism, while taken and duly noted, really doesn't matter in this forum.  I'm not out to win any awards, nor am I out to make people feel all "warm and fuzzy"...you may be bored out of your skull.  I'd apologize, but it wouldn't really be genuine since everyone is free to navigate away and no one is obligated to be here. So, now that I have that out of the way, on to the blog...



My Dad sent me a couple pictures of the cabin this week...he hauled off about 15 or more bags of junk we sacked up last week when we went for the inaugural clean up visit.  He took a picture of the clean porch and then today sent me a picture of the land where he had gone down and mowed it all...it looks wonderful! Family...what would we do without them?
I come from a very eclectic family on both sides of my tree...my Mom's family tends to be more artistic and has more entrepreneurs...my Pop's family has more farmers and musicians...all some of the hardest workers I have ever seen in my life, although all worked in different arenas.  I talked about the love without surrender that I inherited from David Henderson...I guess technically I got it from him first...but I sure do know that my Dad has it, too, and his mother, my Granny, before him.  Dad's a little different, though, because he has sense to sever ties when they hurt him.  I don't.  I love every single member of my family, no matter what their faults or issues or drama. They could stab me in the eye and I would still want them over for lunch on Sunday.  My heart overflows with love that I can't explain--even knowing when I am going to be burned or regret it, I dive in anyway.  To me, it's worth it.  I believe that we are called to extend grace, over and over and over, regardless of the outcome.  To love without expectation...and if we get hurt in the process, that's okay, because we did what we were supposed to do.
David and Elizabeth married and had 10 children.  Five lived.  I walked around in the cabin and I thought, some of those babies were born here-in this very room.  The five children who lived appeared to be successful people...I don't know many of the other branches of the first five...most all of the ones I know are from Sandy's line, which is my line, but here's something that intrigued me...Sandy's sister, Eady, married the brother of Sandy's wife, Nancy.  According to family tale, Eady was a few fries short of a happy meal, and William, her husband, kept her locked up.  Now, this may or may not be true...I know of plenty of families with a "touched" relative who probably needed locking up but wasn't...or those creepy houses where they kept "Uncle Bob" in the back room...but whatever the reason, Eady was locked up.  David Henderson did not like that idea at all, and went to tell William to stop mistreating his daughter.  William beat the dog tar out of David.  I guess maybe he wasn't the kind of fellow who liked being told what to do...but seriously, if you were going to lock your wife up and you had someone there who was telling you not to do it, wouldn't you just have said "Well fine, then. You take her crazy butt to your house?"  I don't know what could have happened that was so bad that William felt the need to kick a handicapped senior citizen's rear, but he did it.  And it must have been a pretty rough beating, because two of David's sons decided that Mr. Land needed to pick on someone his own size.  They went and found him and beat him so bad that he died two days later.  Eady snapped out of her "spell" after his death and went on to remarry...the brothers had to flee the state and settled down in Mississippi...and David got his daughter back.  Now how's that for family loyalty?  And think about Sandy, being married to William Land's sister---can you imagine how much strain that would have put on Sunday dinner conversation? But despite it all, I keep asking the question "Why not just let her go? Why fight with a man over his own child?" We'll never know, but we see what happens when you spit in the wind, now don't we?

So I walk thru the cabin--it's in such disrepair and full of garbage right now that it's hard to tell how much we'll have to do before it is ready for restoration-and I think on this family and all the generations that came from here.  And I wonder why some families feel they are better than others---it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things how hard you worked, how many books you read, how many countries you traveled to...how much money you have...the real question is "How much did you love?"  When you die, whether beat to death or in your sleep, what will people say about you?  Will they pity you?  Will they praise you?  Will your story be told?  When I die, all I want is for people to know that I loved them---and to me that is all that matters.  I'm not the best wife, mother, or daughter.  I'm not even a very nice person, for all intents and purposes...I'm grouchy and unreasonable at times...especially since I have been sick. I do have faith and won't apologize for my beliefs, nor do I feel it is necessary to justify them to anyone else.  I am honest, to a fault, usually, and above all else, I open my heart to love all those that I know. And for those whose blood runs the same as in my veins, it's quadrupled.  I feel my heart exploding out of my chest when a new baby is born to our family--even when I will never get to see it.  I have cousins I have never met, but still, there's love there for them. My chest is full of song when someone gets a raise or a new job...and I physically hurt when there are tears.  So family is everything to me--and whether you agree or not is irrelevant.  You are only given one shot on this sphere...and if you show up to your grave with only your accomplishments to show for it, I hope you enjoyed them.  Because where you store your treasure, that's where you get to enjoy it-be it here or Heaven.  Love, and you'll have the best of both worlds.

It is what it is...

I look into the mirror every day and I'm really not liking much of what I am seeing.  Wrinkles, a double chin coming along quite well...I weigh entirely too much.  In my old age I am turning into a toad. Yeah. Except I'm a toad who'll never jump because I get winded too easily.  So who did I inherit that from?   Who knows-I really didn't know we had a toad gene.
I've been into genealogy for several years.  I love being immersed in census records, old Bibles...and I will hike anywhere I need to go to get to a cemetery-they're my favorite places.  When I found out that David Henderson's cabin was still standing down in that holler, I couldn't wait to go.  But first, I had to go to the cemetery next to it.  What I found there was Henderson after Henderson after Henderson...but no David.  He's not even buried in that cemetery, although he gave the land for it to be created from.  His wife is there--Elizabeth--but her grave isn't actually marked.  Her grave is approximated.  It's a beautiful cemetery, really, as cemeteries go.  The best-kept cemeteries, though, of all the ones I have been in, are in West Virginia.  My husband says when I go I am "digging up bones".  I prefer to call it "visiting relatives".
 I'll never forget going to Stewart Cemetery with my mother.  I was going from grave to grave, snapping pictures and looking at the family connections--the Lincoln County Henderson's were a HUGE group of people--and my Mom says "let me know when you find Cootie Brown".  "Brown" is a family name I was researching, and I had seen a couple of "Brown" stones, so I start looking at every single headstone, searching for the one she needed.  I finally just said "Momma I have been all over this cemetery and I have not seen Cootie Brown anywhere." And then she started laughing so hard at me that she cried--in my "genealogical stupor" I had never even realized that she had me looking for a mythical person--that the phrase "drunker than Cootie Brown" had been used since as long as I could remember, and that wherever Cootie was, he was ripped.
But that's how it goes...sometimes you find what you are looking for, sometimes you don't.  I have often wondered in my life the reasons people do the things they do.  I do believe in God, so I know that whatever the reasons, they are according to His will and not ours.  Some things on this earth we'll never know, and I am good with that--that means they just don't matter that much, really.  I'd like to know if David and Elizabeth Henderson fell in love, or if they married because it was expected of them, but in the grand scheme of things, it probably doesn't matter one way or the other in my life now.  It was what it was.
Now understand, I think David was probably a living paradox.  He farmed, made whiskey (which was actually a cash crop back then), he owned slaves...and some of the things written by family members say that he was as hard on his children and white workers as he was the slaves.  He didn't allow anyone to loaf.  Everyone worked, not just the slaves. I am not, for the record, condoning slavery.  I never have, never will, and certainly would never in a million years pretend that it is okay for one man to own another.  And I don't for two minutes believe he was "just as hard" on the whites...history is always written by the "winners", remember? But, slavery was a fact of life--all the way back to Genesis, and it's something we have had to deal with and try to understand for that long, as well. So, now that we have that ugliness out in the open, let's keep thinking about what I said about David being a paradox...In the same cemetery that David Henderson's wife is buried, along with hundreds of his relatives, there is a small marker up near the edge of the property line.  It reads "Will--beloved slave of David Henderson".  A beloved slave buried in a white cemetery before the Civil War ...yet he owned slaves to begin with...paradox.  Did he love Will? I believe he did.  I read a post by a lady on a popular cemetery website (yes, we have those), and she saw this headstone and posted "If he had been beloved, he wouldn't have been a slave."  That's true, in a perfect world.  God allows things to happen for the good of those who love Him...and we don't live in a perfect world, and never will.  (That's what Heaven is, hello?).   David Henderson, in the early 1800's, publicly buried a slave in a white cemetery, and didn't care what the world, or his family, thought.  He loved Will.  And that speaks volumes to me about the kind of person David was.  He may have been ornery, and he may have been cocky and mean...I'm sure he probably was after hearing other stories about him...but he cared enough about Will to make sure that he had the best of what he could give him...in David's world.  Not ours.
Now please, don't misunderstand what I am saying.  Slavery in any shape, form, or fashion is morally wrong in my opinion. I am not saying David Henderson was a saint or that slave owners should all be painted in pastels with butterflies and bubbles.  But I am saying that I believe he did love Will, and there's nothing wrong with that.  Some parents push their children to have only straight A's in school...even when the child may not get to do the things other kids get to do on a regular basis (watch TV, for example).  Those parents will tell you they do it because they love their children. I don't doubt that they do.  They are giving their kids the best they have--in their world.  See?  The perspective changes according to the circumstance.  What's okay in one person's mind becomes completely wrong in another's--and no one can ever win those arguments.
I have gone over and over this in my head...and in my heart.  I don't want to argue with anyone about the rights and wrongs of it.  The bottom line is that it was for God to judge then, and it's for God to judge now.  But when one person gives to another the best of what they have in their world, then that's love.  And I cannot find fault with love.  So that being said, I think David did love Elizabeth.  He wasn't a man who would waste time on things that didn't matter to him...and all those things I talk about inheriting? That love without surrender thing? That's what I got from him.
The toad thing I think came from my relative Cootie Brown.