Every once in a while I go through this phase of intense genealogical interest where I'm desperate to find out my family history. Being the youngest of four, by the time I came around my parents didn't have much interest in talking about the family. Either that or they figured it was all common knowledge. Being the youngest also meant that most of my relatives were either very old or dead by the time I was old enough to care about stuff like this. My grandmother had my mom when she was 48, and my mom had me when she was 36, so that pushes things back quite a bit as far as aunts & uncles go. Plus my grandmother had a huge family, so I feel like there could be so much going on in my family history.

I've done a bit of investigating online and did find an entry on one of these family tree sites for my grandmother, but the only thing I was really able to distinguish from that was that her middle initial was A, she was born in Queens in 1897 and her husband's name was William (he left the family when my mom was a little girl so I never knew anything about him). I could subscribe to these sites, or go to the trouble of investigating old records, etc. But to be honest, I don't think that's enough for me. I don't really care that much about a bunch of names on a tree, what I'm really looking for is anecdotal history. What was my great Uncle Harry like? What was it like for everyone when my grandfather left? Why is it that Aunt Florie lived with her two sons up until she died, what happened to her husband? And who is this ancestor mine who was supposedly the mayor of Glasgow?

Part of me wants to sit down with my mom and do a This American Life-style interview where I ask all sorts of questions. But first off, I'm afraid it might sound really gay to be like, "Mom, tell me about your family." I know that's a silly attitude, but it seems like something people do in the movies, not in real life, and certainly not in my family - we're not very open about a lot of things. Being the youngest I have this sort of weird "baby of the family" relationship with my mom, where we're not really two adults, we're mother and daughter. I mean, I love her to death but there's certain things that I'm nervous to talk about with her because I'll come across as nosy or open up old wounds that I don't feel entirely comfortable dealing with. I've always been one of those people who doesn't particularly want to see the icky side of my parents, so I'm totally afraid to bring up any overly sensitive topics.

I think I'm going to do it anyway though. I need to come up with a list of interview questions, because I'd really like to know a bit more than the history of my immediate family, which I barely know to begin with. I'm just afraid that one day my mom will be too old to remember and then I will have lost everything.