I’ve been getting lost in another family’s history, unearthing their stories
and the stones of old foundation walls in the rolling Ketucky hills and hollows.
I pried one loose today, from old farm dirt, like it’s been waiting for me all this time.
Bulldozers and death can’t erase all the memories, even when they try. 

I didn’t know 20 years ago that one day I’d need to know how the air can be perfumed by sprawling tobacco leaves drying in southern sun,  just knew I liked the smell that reminded me of some kind of deep, dark tea brewed from old men’s beards and ladies high heels.  

Couldn’t have seen that my penchant for flea market shopping would help me save a stranger’s love story from mold and negelct and rabid crafters lusting for vintage paper.

Couldn’t have guessed that my personal quest to resurrect my own lost ancestors from the gaps of history would teach me the genealogy skills to help another family fill the holes in their skies. 

All the books I’ve read, that Master’s degree I was afraid I’d never get to use, my innate love of asking the aged for their wisdom, of saving the forlorn, forgotten things,
all the lives I’ve already lived and all the places I’ve already been,
my own loves and losses and fears and falls, all
-all-
were preparing me for this adventure.

To gingerly unseal foxed and faded love letters, overflowing with passion, war, and poetry, to invite a new generation to fall under the spell of young Kentucy lovers long dead,
but alive forever in the sweet nothings penned by their innocent hands. 

To act now as abbess, priestess, scribe, storyteller, protector
of a family and story now as dear to me as my own. 

(thoughts on the excitement of working on my first creative non-fiction book, and my amazament at seeing how so many of my life experiences have been preparing me to tell this exact story…)