My Cousin and Me
 |
| Bob Stevens and His Wife Ann |
Well
Ann, my wife, has been threatening me for a long time and now it has
happened. She said she has no choice but
to divorce me. Usually she makes that
threat when I leave the cupboard doors open or let warm air into our pantry
where she feels the temperature should be kept somewhere south of 30 degrees
below zero, which is about ten degrees warmer than she lets me keep the temperature
in the den where I spend most of my waking hours. Sometimes she also threatens divorce when she
feels that I have embellished the things I share in this column. But this time she really sounds like she
means it because she said, in a rather crisp voice, "Robert Leland, our marriage is toast, and you are the crust that
I am chucking. So get out your alimony
wallet because I am going to ask for big maintenance payments to help defray
the cost of me moving down off this hill." The other reason I know she means it is that
it has nothing to do with her complaint that I am an irritating old coot. This time there are serious biological and genealogical
concerns driving her ire.
To
explain: I discovered a really interesting genealogical tool called a Fan
Chart. It is a chart that displays
you along with eight generations of both your direct-line patriarchal and
matriarchal ancestors on one page. It is
especially useful in seeing areas where you are missing ancestral information
and have more detective work to do. It
is also interesting just to read through the names of those that preceded
you. Our grandkids, for instance,
noticed that one of my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfathers,
on my mother's side, was named Chief Big Thunder. I was getting ready to build a casino, then
Ann said that maybe my excitement was premature, since the Chief's father's
name was Foss and the Chief's son's name was Foss and that might mean that "Big
Thunder" was an honorary name, not a real Indian Chief. The thing that really got Ann stirred up, though,
was something SHE noticed by comparing her Fan Chart to mine. Without even hunting she noted that in
addition to her mother's maiden name being Spencer, the maiden name of one of
my great, great grandmothers on my father's side is also Spencer. After seeing that, she began to worry that she
was married to a cousin, albeit a couple of times removed.
Ann
is now in a real tizzy. Although she has
checked and found that the three children we have appear to be perfectly normal,
she is currently worried that our next child may be born with two big toes on each
foot as a punishment for her having married a close relative. I reminded her that a "next child" was
unlikely to occur in our case considering that I am seventy eight, but she just
kept mumbling something about Abraham and Sarah. In the meantime I have been doing
genealogical research 24-hours/day in hopes of finding that my Spencer line is
on a completely different tree than her Spencer line. When Ann heard of my investigation, she
responded that if her Spencers were on a different tree than mine it is likely
that hers would be found on a Redwood and mine would be hanging from a Weeping
Willow. I am looking feverishly to
confirm my theory because if it turns out that we were related before we were
married I am in deep trouble. While I
might be able to learn how to do my own laundry, it is unlikely that I could
afford the big alimony payments Ann will demand to help her get off the hill.
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