I’ve been thinking recently how I made up of components that come from my four grandparents. Each of them contributes one-fourth of the factors that helped determine what I would become. For a long time, I’ve been daily aware of the contribution of my two parents, each of them contributing one-half of me. It is another matter for me to think of the contribution of each of my grandparents.
For me, it is more than being attentive to the genes I got from each grandparent. I have a growing interest in attempting to see into the shadowy recess of my origins. The more I search, the more these four grandparents seem to be with me. I have more acceptance of how I have come to be connected to this body and mind.
It has been a startling reminder that both my grandfathers were alcoholics. They were classic drunks. They led disfunctional lives, so the sketchy and whispered stories go. One was ‘kicked out’ and lived in isolation and obscurity. There are conflicting accounts about whether he was alive after I was born.
The other grandfather was only an image in a portrait that hung on my grandmother’s wall. He passed on the name ‘Charles’ that became my father’s middle name, and is now mine.
I suspect that the seeds that grew and prospered in them were scattered into my parents’ make-up and subsequently are part of mine. Each of these alcoholic progenitors give me one-fourth of my determiners and fashion the base of who I am.