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.