What’s more, other seemingly unusual family traits crept into the narrative. Mental illness runs rampant on my maternal side it’s woven tightly into the folds of Newton’s as well. I could have made this exact comment, but about my mother. Of her father, Maud claims to have “loved and feared him.” She writes of lying awake in the dark night the significance of having half his genome embedded within her very being. Maud Newton and I seem to be cut from the same cloth. Like Maud, I we both drank alcohol very sparingly as younger people and rarely drink now. Alcoholism ran in my family, too. Didn’t my ancestors want me to speak their silences? I had questions and quandaries, worries and reservations. Like Maud Newton, my Southern roots were showing. These were the questions that plagued me as I set out to unearth the silences buried in my family tree. What happens when a curious writer is riddled by her own ancestors? Is writing about the dead an act of honor, or intrusion?
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