Roots to Fly

I'm editing my Mother's letter to her grandchildren.  It's more like a book and is a delightful look at her growing up years.   It's gotten me to thinking about my roots.  The faces in the old photos look out in an unblinking stare at the world.  What were they thinking?  What were their lives like?

This is my Great-Grandmother, Maggie Barton Mahaffey. With hands folded in imitation of his Mother's is my Grandfather, James Wylie Mahaffey. Before them stand generations of Mahaffey's, Barton's, Robert's, Harper's, Phillips', stretching back to the late 1600's when my ancestors stepped on a ship to cross an ocean. Once they arrived in upstate South Carolina they stayed put for another 400 years.  

So what motivated those people that stepped foot on a ship to cross into the unknown? Courage, desperation, a search for a better life? What drove them to leave behind all they knew to sail to foreign place? What were their hopes, dreams? What were they striving for? What made them different from the generations before and after that they would undertake what had to be an exciting, but frightening, journey? Leaving everything they knew behind. Knowing they would never see their families again and journeying to what had to have seemed like jungle wilderness . . . it's hard to fathom the guts it took to do that.  

Our summer adventure pales in comparison and I'm taking heart in that and sometimes feel their presence standing at my shoulder. What would they think of our trip? It's not done out of desperation but we are seeking something ~ a little adventure, exploring our personal limits, living a little closer to nature and getting away from some aspects of modern life for starters. But it's really a luxury in a way. Not something we have to do to survive, to eat, to put a roof over our heads. What would they think of an era where people have the luxury to do something like this? I hope they would smile and say the 17th century equivalent of "Go for it! Live the dream. We did and it turned out stupendously."