Today is my grandmother Pearl’s 94th birthday! When I called her to wish her well this evening she was watching a calculus DVD on her MacBook. Have I mentioned how proud I am of her? In general? We talk about FDR and history and Roman epics and argue about Clinton vs. Obama (she tends toward the former, I the latter). Her life has been a winding and marvelous tale, which she’ll occasionally remark on.

As if by some sort of stroke of coincidence, a heretofore unknown second cousin of mine got in touch with me today. She is the grand-daughter of Pearl’s sister. Hence the wonderful photograph of Pearl, as nurse, from the WWII era.

Here are some things I have figured out about my family recently:

• My great-great-grandfather is named Andrew Jackson Fister. I think that’s neat. I also have another relative named after Andrew Jackson and a third named Ulysses Grant. On my father’s side, there are some Napoleons.
• My great-grandfather (Pearl’s father)–it is rumored–killed a man, moved to Colorado, and changed his last name. I happen to know what his original name is so I’ve been able to trace the family.
• Pearl spent her early life in Pinyon Mesa, Colorado, a place that doesn’t really exist now and was never much more than a sheep-herding region near Grand Junction. They lived in the open spaces, and as a girl, Pearl spent time in the wildflowers, searching for arrowheads, riding horses.
• My family on Pearl’s (father’s mother’s, I think) side goes back to well before the American Revolution, in Pennsylvania. I could be DAR if I wanted.
• Go back far enough and you’re suddenly in Hessen, Germany in the mid-17th century.
• Women in my family have a rather appealing tendency to live well into their 90s and surpass 100 on occasion. Can’t complain.

Researching family history is a wondrous but heart-wrenching process of forward and back, revelation and mistake. What have you discovered about your history? I have found intrigue, heritage and some darkness and the shadows of people, some escaping, some reinventing themselves, some hiding. Some hiding in Colorado.