Hey Pop -- that is, if you really are my Pop

Grannie and Granddad. What she didn't know didn't hurt her, I can only assume

I am the last of my line. If my 30-ish niece marries (again) and decides to change her name, there will be no more Lidsters in my branch of the family. I suppose at one level that’s kind of sad, but I lose little sleep over it. I don’t know how my brothers feel in that regard. Do they believe we let down the side? I think my father kind of thought that we had. But, that was his problem.

Some people put a whole lot of stock in familial heritage. They put massive efforts into researching their family stock back to the 47th generation; they join heritage groups; they hang out at the local LDS Church genealogy libraries, and they scan the Internet. There are hundreds and hundreds of sites that will help you in tracking down your kin from days of yore. I don’t much see the point, you know, unless you are looking for congenital illnesses that might have impact on later generations. My ex has MS and it was very important to her to find out if she carried the gene -- the jury is still out on whether MS in genetically transmitted, but she did find out, to her dismay, that it was present on both sides of her family -- and did her only child stand in jeopardy of getting it.

Sometimes there can be interesting six degrees of separation things, I suppose, like the revelation that Dick Cheney (shudder) and Barak Obama are actually cousins a few zillion times removed. That should make for an interesting family reunion, much like those held by Thomas Jefferson’s ‘other’ descendants. I guess Barak should only hope that Dick doesn’t offer to take him hunting.

In my case, in that regard, I was in conversation with a Jewish friend of ours. Her maiden name was Goldring. Her predecessors came from Buckinghamshire, England. So did one branch of my family. And it is the only branch of my broader family that actually has a published family tree going back to about the 15th Century. I recalled that my maternal grandfather had told me that there was a Jewish connection in the family, which was why we were distantly related to 19th Century Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli. Well, I scanned my photocopy of the tree and there it was (don’t remember the date, but sometime in the early 18th Century a ‘Pontifex’ (family name) married a young lady named Goldring. “Cousin,” I cried out and embraced her.

Of course, the whole thing about genealogy was rent asunder in recent years due to studies in DNA. And, those studies have revealed that it would be a very wise child who knows his father, because his father, grandfather, great-grandfather etc. might not have been who he thought he was. The highly titled might just find they have a gamekeeper or costermonger in their heritage. Personally, I think that would be cool. I was always hoping for pirates, highwaymen, royal whores and assorted other blackguards, knaves and jackanapeses in the mix.

So, I thing genealogical research, while it may be fun, is a kind of a mug’s game, and probably no more valid than a belief in that if you are playing Monopoly, you are somehow, by default, involved in the stock market, or assuming that the purchasing of lottery tickets should secure you a little retirement nest egg.

On the other hand, I really liked, and maybe even loved my grandparents, so I kind of hope I am a lineal descendant, despite the fact that Granddad, as a young man, was too rich and too horny to have behaved himself in regards to siring progeny on the other side of the sheet, as it were, so a body never knows who is actually kin. Supposedly I have a Native Canadian aunt out there somewhere (all his children deny this, except for one son, who spilled the beans to me) and I’d like to meet her.

By the way, Granddad was a very respectable older gentleman. At the same time, he taught me an awful lot of invaluable woodland lore (which has stayed with me) when I was a kid.

“So, Granddad, how is it that you know the forest so well? It’s almost like you spent a lot of time there.”