Pass it down, the way back when,
the ancient history of our long-lost kin.
Remember their names,
every now and then,
the places they travelled to,
the places we’ve never been.
Pass it down, the way back when, 
​all the forgotten moments of their lives:
how they loved, and how they sinned.
 
​My grandmother, Velva, was just two weeks past her twenty-first birthday when she got married. Her groom, my grandfather, was just twenty-two. They got hitched on Saturday, September 20, 1947, at about six o'clock in the evening at an Anglican Church in Toronto.
 
Their marriage newly minted, they travelled to their small apartment on the third floor of a house in the High Park neighbourhood of the city. The glow of their nuptials was dulled a day or two later, however, when my grandfather suffered a setback with his lung and had to go back to the sanatorium for treatment. Luckily he was able to come home for Christmas that year. The Veterans Department helped him get a job at City Hall.
 
**
 
There is a famous picture in my family. Everyone seems to have a copy of it proudly displayed on their mantle or wall. It’s a black-and-white image of a glamorous young couple walking down Yonge Street, the longest street in Canada, back in the 1940s. It was taken one evening after my grandfather picked his bride up after work. She was employed by Eaton’s, the country’s biggest department store at the time.
 
It’s also the place where my parents first met. My father ended up working for the company for 30-odd years before it eventually went bankrupt. I also worked there for several summers to save money for university. Long gone now, this social institution has played an interesting role in my ancestor’s history. In some ways, it seems to almost have its own branch on the family tree.
 
**
 
My aunt shared a new memory with me recently: How my grandmother would walk by the College Street store window displays on her way to work and pick out her dining room set. It seems like something she would do. I can imagine her meticulously putting aside a portion of her wages each week, mentally decorating the rooms in the new house they were having built.
 
My grandmother didn’t move into her dream house until the spring of 1956. Their home on Elvaston far surpassed the one they had lived in after they got married, and it went on to become her most cherished sphere, the place she felt most comfortable, most herself.
 
From her teddy bear collection to her beloved garden, my grandmother filled the place with her own sense of style and grace. She took such pride in her unique possessions, from her Underwood typewriter to her rotary telephone. As kids, we sometimes felt like we were stepping inside a family museum.
 
In my memory reel, I can still see my grandfather tapping his cigarette ashes into the vintage ashtray stand placed beside the couch. He was always telling us amusingly run-on stories, tales that would to drive my grandmother nuts.
 
Elvaston is also where we celebrated all our family get-togethers and holidays over the years. Where we would drink tomato juice in tiny glasses before dinner, then wear coloured paper crowns and play Trivial Pursuit. It was the hub and heart of a huge part of my past, which is why it makes me so indelibly sad to think of it sitting empty now.
 
**
 
Last week as my aunt was clearing out clothes and cobwebs in my grandmother's vacant house, she came across some old newspaper lining the drawers of the hutch in the dining room. Velva had carefully placed stories from The Globe and Mail in there when she moved into the house 60 years ago. The print and words had endured, just like she did in that house. At the end of her life, she only had to spend two weeks away from it in hospital when she got sick.
 
 
**
 
We can never fathom all our family history. Sometimes we even forget the snippets and stories that we’ve been told, time and time again. Our memories, like newspapers, often fade, shoved in a drawer somewhere, gathering dust. But here’s something I’ve learned since my grandmother died: love is passed down, too.
 
Just like dispositions and unconscious gestures and the presence of freckles on skin, it lives on in our DNA. But in order to remain a legacy, our family history needs re-telling. The only way to keep those generations and genes alive is to talk about them.

A couple months ago I took the Ancestry.com DNA test, and I have been waiting not-so-patiently for the results to land in my inbox ever since.. Now, I don’t need to spit into a tube and have it analyzed halfway across the world to know certain things about my background. I’ve always sensed that I come from mystics and poets. As my grandfather used to say, I can feel it in my water.
 
But there’s more to my genetic story than the glorious green dot of Ireland. I claim it, of course, but I’ve also been open to other far-flung lands my ancestors may have travelled through in their journeys. I’ve only begun to research my DNA and all the spirals of molecules inside me, but it’s an exciting endeavour. Who wouldn’t want to read their genetic instructions? Learning the names and some of the histories of these characters in my family tree makes me appreciate my loved ones in the here and now all the more.
 
Here’s what pleasantly surprised me about my results:
 
1) The fact that I am not 99.9% Irish in origin (only 67%, actually!). I am happy about this mainly in the name of science, and not wanting to be genetically boring, because my greatest fear after stuffing my hope and spit into that tube was that it would actually come back 100% leprechaun.
 
2) I seem to have more Eastern European blood (i.e. Polish, Russian, Romanian) in me than Western European (German, French, Dutch). So odd! I have never really identified with anything from Eastern Europe, except the lovely Polish people I met while living in Dublin. Maybe my connection is hidden somewhere deep inside my psyche, like inside one of those famous Russian dolls.
 
3) The fact that I have any Spanish/Portuguese in me at all is amazing with a capital A. Would you seriously think it to look at me? (It's the highest of the "trace" amounts at 7%, so not a huge amount, obviously, but still, it's just under Western European at 8%, which says something.) You could've knocked me over with a feather when I saw this one. Maybe I'm one of those "black Irish" after all! Suddenly all I'm thinking about are tapas...and siestas.
 
4) My Great Britain bloodline contribution is only 4%! How is this even possible when I have so much English reserve in me? I guess I've been overestimating the Anglophile part of my background my whole life, even though I do really relate to Very British Problems (check it out if you haven't already). Maybe more of my ancestors on my father’s side are actually...ahem...Scottish (which seems to be unceremoniously lumped under the "Ireland" category, which is perhaps more popular from a marketing standpoint).
 
5) I really thought I had more Viking blood running through my veins, given my coloring, but alas, at only 3%, my ties to Scandinavia are slight.
 
6) Ironically, despite the Spanish/Portuguese drops of DNA in my body, there doesn't appear to be any Italian genes there at all. Uh-oh. This will NOT go over well with the in-laws. Once they hear I am part-Porto, I so won't be welcome during World Cup time. Does this mean I have to start rooting for Ronaldo? The hubby will be most displeased.

I've always loved hearing about my family history, looking at old black-and-white photographs, and imagining what life was like for my ancestors. I've always been curious about my origin story. I could sit for hours and listen to tales about events that occurred before I was born. How my predecessors' combined struggles and travels led them to the particular place and time where I presently exist.
 
As a parent, the urge to preserve these stories and find out more about my lineage has become even stronger. I want my daughter to know who she descends from as she grows older. Understanding where she comes from can only help her figure out where she's going in the future.
 
"You're never alone, even during what you think are your weakest moments. You have thousands of years of powerful ancestors within you, the blood of The Divine Great Ones in you, supreme intellect and royalty in you. Infinite strength is always on tap for you. Know that." ~Unknown Author
 
Some days, l look at her, dressed up in all her modern glory. She'll be wearing her Elsa dress from the movie Frozen, or Velcro shoes and a jean jacket, and I'll suddenly see a face from another time staring back at me. Other times it's my mother's famous eyes I see reflected. It's always fascinated me how the random entanglement of our DNA strands makes us turn out a certain way.
 
My little girl is an individual. With a zany sense of humour all her own and a unique way of processing the world, she strikes my heart as the ultimate original. But I know sections of her psyche and parts of her body have been passed on from somebody else.
 
As she grows into herself, I hope she'll celebrate her uniqueness, yes, but also marvel at the fact that her hands have been handed down, and that her eyes, as magnificent as they may be, have been around for generations.
 
Often I catch myself in mannerisms that remind me of my own parents. I'll sit back with my hands crossed behind my head while talking to my husband, and realize my body has inherited this habit from my mother, just as she got it from her father before her.
 
Sometimes the traces of our descendants are slight in us and slip right through the strands of our DNA. They are just faint echoes in our behaviours or predilections. But other times, ancient characteristics come through more forcefully and stick. My ancestors may be dead and gone and long under the ground, but I like to think of them as old friends who've helped shape the person I am today.
 
So who do I think I am, anyway?
 
The rememberer. The observer. The investigator.
 
I've been taking some time to research my line. Why? So that the people in my past are more than simply names on my family tree. I want to imagine what life was like for my great-grandmother Nellie, who was born in England and married her Alfred. I picture other female ancestors who came before me, people I've only heard bits and pieces about. How many fragments of Agnes, Elizabeth, Ellen, Roseanne and Janetta are embedded in me?
 
If I could, I would travel back in time and try to get to know them. Have a one-on-one conversation with them. Even just writing about them and acknowledging them makes me feel like a part of something bigger than myself.
 
So I will continue to be the rememberer, the observer, the investigator. I firmly believe that if we don't make an effort seek them out, our ancestors' names and stories will become lost, like pages stuck together in an old book nobody reads anymore.
 
That's why I feel it's important to recount our own family tales, even if they seem silly and unimportant at the time. They're actually more significant and influential than we think: they help glue us together and make memories for the shared family archive.
 
I want my daughter to go beyond the formal and know the personal: her great-grandmother didn’t just go by Molly (instead of Mary). She also used to love performing recitations in front of an audience. Her great-grandfather wasn't just a guy called Cliff born in 1925, but a proud member of the Royal Canadian Navy in WWII, whose experience stayed with him so much, he put the name of his ship (K03) on his license plate.
 
We all carry, inside us, people who came before us. ~Liam Callanan
 
I walk around with a unique constellation of traits and tics that are part my own and part on loan. Who gave me my pale skin? Who passed on the poet gene? I'll never get answers to these esoteric questions, but it's fun to wonder and learn more about the people who came before me. Their experience is inextricably woven into my own, and I feel somehow bound to them. So I write about them now to honour them. It may sound absurd, but it's also my way of getting in touch with them.
 
They are behind me, my ancestors, but also beside me as I walk my path. I find immense comfort in the idea that parts of them somehow survive in us. I watch my own daughter take bits of me and bits of her father and cast them out onto the world along with herself. This gift of DNA, of life, is so easily taken for granted. So let us remember the links, the souls we have inherited in our own. Let us hang on to our past, and hold it close, as if it were a shared and sacred promise.