Prompt: From an excerpt written by Terry Tempest Williams
Dear Laura,
Thank you for thinking of me and taking the time to chart out your family history. My fire had no longer burned, but you re-ignited it. No one has thought of me for 50 years. My life ended 70 years before you were born. Yet now, spontaneously, you reach out to my spirit and I’m thankful for that. I know you often imagine my life as one of hardship. You imagine me, the daughter of German immigrants, widowed with a three-year old child. Yes, I was widowed at 26 in 1867, and I lived with four siblings and my parents. Dad was a mason and I worked in a factory making sewing bags. But remember to look beyond what you read in the Census. I’m sure my sense of humor, my manner of being, the identity of my best friends, aren’t in the Census records. I was a little like you, as strands of my nature passed through me to you through my son. I too stayed up at night wondering about my own German ancestors and the land my parents left behind. And someday, I promise, one of your descendents 100 years from now will study you and remember you. Your spirit too will twitch from a deep slumber. Your energy will already be spread back into the cosmos, but you will reawaken. Keep honoring the past, Laura.
Sincerely, Johanna Ziller
Johanna,
Thank you for connecting with me. I know if it wasn’t for time and space, our beings – along with every other being - would collapse into one. We would not be separated by time. I spent evenings imagining your life and your little son. I wonder about his father, who died so young. I know if it wasn’t for your short marriage, I wouldn’t be here, so thank you for raising him and working so hard to give him and his descendents a good life. I will no longer assume too much from what I read in the Census. You were human and so much more than that. Keep your spirit with me, so I can live with your perserverance.
Love,
Laura
