Mariann S. Regan's Blog, page 5

Don't Mind Me. I'm Only Listening.

On visits to my Southern relatives, I wanted to be an honest researcher.

What type of honest? After all, they were Christians and conservative Republicans. I was neither.

I decided that if they asked me about my religious beliefs, I would tell them.

If they asked about my politics, I would tell them.

Yet I myself would not bring up politics or religion. My goal wasn't to make speeches but to listen hard, year after year. I was seeking my family's views of themselves and our ancestors.

I expected they might be suspicious of me. Who was I, anyway, to swoop down from the North and ask questions, after all these years?

So we had our candid moments, when we jostled each other.

A few cousins asked me what church I attended. My true answer was that I did not go to church. Their reaction was swift:  "Why, Mariann! What do you mean?"

So I opened an honest door, explaining that I believed in the goodness of humanity and admired the life of Jesus.  They nodded. We gave each other space.

Some other relatives, over dinner, asked about my choice for President in 2004. My indispensable husband, a graceful adapter to Southern ways, joked that he had been a "yellow-dog Democrat" his entire life. With that remark, the tension broke. My cousins then ribbed us about John Kerry's awkwardness.  A kind of "let things be" mood settled over the group.  It was all right. We were Family.

It was harder to admit to my relatives in 2008 that I supported Obama. Some feared his election would bring on a race war. Considering the white South's longstanding fear of slave uprisings, I listened to their feelings.

Over the years, as I heard multiple versions of family history, I saw that any crusade for pure "facts" might set my family members struggling against each other.

Our grandfather was shot near the heart by a black tenant farmer. Related "facts" diverged like buckshot. When was he shot? Did he die soon? Years later? Regain his health? Was the shooter caught? Jailed? Lynched? What happened?

Our grandmother left the family homestead in her old age. Was she cherished or was she neglected? Who was or was not loyal to her? How did she die? When? Each story varied from the others.

Neither referee nor judge, I honored all their motives.

An honest researcher, I imagined, would assemble their disparate accounts into a mosaic. With great care.

Haven't We Met Somewhere Before?

I was in Yankee land, contemplating visits to my Southern family. It was 2003. I was feeling intimidated.

I had lived in Connecticut since 1964, far from my South Carolina cousins near the family homestead. There had been little contact between us since I moved to the North. They were Southern conservatives; I was a progressive.  It seemed hardly possible to bridge all those miles, years, and worldviews.

I needed to re-introduce myself to them. As a child in the South, much younger than my cousins, I had wondered whether they even noticed me. Now as a researcher, I felt like a stranger at a party. I imagined myself accosting some cousin with this opening line: "Hello. Haven't we met somewhere before, long ago?" Awkward.

Even so, I gathered my courage in 2003 and wrote to my cousin Joe in Sumter. I told him that I was the scared little six-year-old cousin from long ago, whom he had kindly reassured during a visit to the family farm. Joe was a large, confident high-school graduate back then.

I was writing to ask Joe's advice in researching our family history.

The bridge was under construction.

The next summer, Joe welcomed me into his home as the "long-lost cousin." Old and new relatives sat around the table. The familiar barbecued chicken and butter beans and biscuits were laid out for mid-day dinner. For my part, I had brought along the courtship letters of our grandfather, Tom Kirven, and our grandmother, Laura Fraser, written between 1894 and 1897. I had found these in my parents' attic and had typed their faded handwriting into a bound document of 135 single-spaced pages. I gave each of my family members a copy, as a token of my good faith.

For the next seven years I drove from city to city in South Carolina. I interviewed many branches of relatives in Sumter, Columbia, Greenville, Anderson, Darlington, and Kingstree. I talked with other cousins in Georgia, North Carolina, and Kentucky.  They were kindness personified, eager to help me with research. They allowed me the benefit of the doubt, I think, because I was Family. In the South, Family is pronounced with a capital letter.

These visits were not without conflict. We all steered our talks about family history through our different views on politics, religion, and race. My next blog post will delve into our struggles.