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This
question asked of different people would certainly yield many different
answers. Probably the most
common would be plain old curiosity. People want to know where
they came from and how they got to where they are today. In the process of
tracing their family roots, some people also discover that they
learn just as much about their own lives as they do about
their ancestors'. This
happened to be the case with a close friend of mine named Randy who
was inspired by me to trace his family roots. Although he
started out with the intention of finding out something
about his ancestors, it turned out that he found the
answer to a personal question that had plagued him since
childhood concerning an aspect of his physical appearance.
According to him, he has what he describes as “little,
beady eyes,” which have often been the subject of
negative comments from different people throughout his
life. As a child, the small size of his eyes seemed to be
a constant source of teasing from his siblings and even as
an adult, his wife would make the occasional joke about
the small shape and size of his eyes. By then, he had
grown quite accustomed to such comments and had already
learned how to hide his feelings of isolation caused by
people's comments. It was not until years later after he
had began tracing his family roots that he discovered he
had eyes like his great grandmother. This he learned from
his mother one day while he was interviewing her about
their family history. “You know, you get your eyes from
my grandmother,” she told him. “She had eyes just like
yours. I can see her face right now when I look into your
eyes.” “Well, you could have bought me for a
nickel,” he tells me because he never expected to find
out anything so personal about his own life through
genealogy. Now he actually welcomes those same comments
about the size and shape of his eyes whereas in the past,
he did not feel so good about them. But this is definitely
not the case any more. In fact, he says that he feels
proud now when he hears similar comments about his small
eyes because he knows where he got them, and they turned
out to be his personal connection to his great grandmother
and to the past.
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