Sans Diou Rein
Forgive me for being silent on this blog for the last month. It has not been for want of words to post, but just the opposite, I can not say little enough to confine thoughts and sequences in my life into single posts. So, in my current inability to contain my present or future in words, indulge me for a moment to let me take a moment to celebrate my past…
At 25, I already have more memories and stories than one brain can contain, but I want to tell you about the memories I don’t have. I want to tell you about the memories that have been passed down. I want to tell you about my family.
The more recent family history – my loving cute missionary parents – Andy and Judy with my oldest sister Sara Beth in Ghana, circa 1980.
I really want to have exotic roots. There’s no hiding that I don’t find my identity in American patriotism, and I wanted to have something exotic to point to – You know, so I could say, “I am American, but my family is historically from Sweden, no – Ukraine, hm… perhaps at least France?
But when you squeeze in all down to that one drop of blood that runs in me, I’m pretty much just one eighth fireball Irish and the rest a smattering of hundreds and hundreds of years of Anglo-Saxon mixing in America. Seriously, I’ve got roots in the US that go back to the 1600s. But I’ve been surprised to discover that my Anglo-Saxon roots are more interested than I had suspected…
For example, on my mom’s side, my great+ grandpa and his brother were US Marshalls, the only case in US history where two brothers served as USMs at the same time in different areas. (Check out the mustache and cowboy hat on a great+ grandpa in the photo above!) I’ve also got a great grandpa who engineered uranium extraction plants for building of atomic bomb. And a great grandma who learned to fly at a time when women didn’t get pilots licenses, a Cherokee or Black-foot Native American, Viking connections, a bucking bronco champion, a cousin in France, and a partridge in a pear tree…
When I tried to find out about further roots on my grandma’s side, she gave me the response that her father gave her – “It’s not worth talking about. There’s too damn many horse thieves back there.“
So there’s some of that too…
All this, and I’ve really only just started peeling back the layers into my family history. Most of the above points of interest are all from my mom’s side – the Terrills. The Norman side is a bit muddier, but we’re guessing French roots from the Normandy region…
So let’s just say “I’m American, but I LOOK German, grew up in Nigeria, speak Chinese, live in…”. Yeah, that’ll do.
Me – Identifying with my cowboy roots.
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The title of this post is the inscription on the Terrill coat of arms – “Sans Diou Rein”
Without God, Nothing.
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