Someday I'll Go

When we are searching for self we often look toward the past in wonder. Not to our past but the past beyond us. Who were our ancestors? What were they like? What was life like for them? What were their passions, their goals? What did they love? Why did they leave and relocate to other lands? What were they seeking? And did they find it?

I miss not knowing any grandparents. It seemed as if my history ended with my immediate family. They didn't remember France because they hadn't been there and seemed to have no desire to go. Any yet my father had dreams of exploring. We planned many vacation that we never took. Places he was going to take us to see that never came to be. But he himself was on the road a lot during my childhood.

Crossing many states and seeing places we only dreamed of. He loved the life of a trucker and the freedom and the broad vistas and the life on the road. We were a place he returned to briefly but his heart was on the road, in the adventure he sometimes would share with us in his stories.

I would dream of seeing them with my own eyes some day, of wondrous mountains, vast plains, deep forests and of sailing across the sea to visit other lands, but especially to France where I felt my roots called to me. To walk the land of my ancestors walked. To see the churches here they prayed, the towns in which they lived, the cemeteries where their own loved ones were buried. To taste the food they brought up from the sea and that flourished on the land.

Years have passed and yet my passion to go back to where they live, laughed and loved is still alive. What was my grandmother like as a young girl? What were her dreams? How did they meet, court, get married? What made then leave? It is a question no one can answer and haunts my subconscious.

We all search for something, what were they searching for? And so I buy books and look at the pictures and buy maps and seek the towns. I talk the talk but when will I be able to walk the walk? I think you mean for me to go back, Dear God, or you wouldn't give me the dreams I dream and the hope I hope. I feel it getting closer and someday I will be seeing it with my own eyes.

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