Bringing My Ancestors Home

In February I moved my ancestors to my storage unit for safe keeping until I knew where I would be living.  I knew I would be moving, but not sure where until summer.  Today I finally started bringing my genealogical binders home to my new apartment.  I didn't realize how much I missed them until I started unwrapping them and putting them on the shelves where they will live now.  I had wrapped them in plastic to protect them from dust and moisture and as I unwrapped them I easily got sidetracked by looking at the contents and reliving the experiences I had in finding this huge amount of information.

It was like running into old friends and having a lot of memories to share.  During all of the time they have been gone it never occurred to me that I missed them so much.  I guess the fact that I knew where they were and they would be brought back after I was settled seemed to hide the fact that I truly missed having them with me physically.

But today I realized I have to have them close by.  So this sort of answers my thinking about starting to get rid of these records.  I can't do it, it is a deep feeling I have for these people and I can not discard any part of them.  The new trend is to go paperless but I can not go paperless, and now I know why.  I need these binders, pages, charts, documents, and scraps of paper with me.  So in the end the storing them away for a few months was a good thing.  I now know I will keep them until the very end.  After that I won't have anything to say about it, but until then, I do.

So welcome home ancestors!  I missed you and will keep you near always and take care of you.   Patj