Got perfection? Buh-bye

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“Pretending to be perfect is the perfect way to not develop a relationship.” — Donald Miller, Scary Close

Full disclosure: I’m disinclined to short reads lately, so I haven’t yet read Scary Close, but I think I might. If nothing else, than for this quote.

I mean, with our culture’s obsession with perfection – at least, cosmetically speaking – could our world be headed in any direction other than away from building real relationships?

And who takes the time to actually stop and do that work?

The idea that the gap is widening between those who are willing to risk being honest and real and …. pure …. and those who won’t or can’t drop the act is a bit unsettling.

But it’s nothing we can’t change.

When in doubt, switch sides

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That’s my new motto for doing family history research. If I don’t succeed on one side, I’ll just hop over to my other parent’s line and see what’s up.

For now, I’m still stuck on my paternal great-grandfather Braulio, not knowing which family he really came from. Researching different possible mothers until the dots connect somewhere.

So while Braulio is on “spring break,” I’ve decided to switch gears to my mom’s musician grandfather, Froilán, who supposedly was shot while playing in a night club.

Shot – or not?
On looking more closely – well, at first blush anyway – it appears he may have survived that gunshot. He shows up in the 1920 Census a state away, in New Mexico – married, but with no spouse or family (both of which he actually had – in Texas).

Did he get run out of town? Was he on the lam for some reason?

If he did survive, he fared better than his marriage did, because that didn’t survive at all.

1920 census screen capture - Froilan Garcia family

1920 Census showing my great-grandfather, Froilan (28), my great-grandmother, Reyes (25) and my grandfather, Jesus (Jesse – 7 years old). After this record, this family seems to fall apart fast.

Lend me some sugar — I am your neighbor!
So, what happened to his wife (my great-grandmother)? Turns out in 1912 she remarried someone who, according to the 1910 Census, had lived just a few doors down.

And the neighbor, Jose Maria Salinas - who also becomes my great-grandma's husband in 1912.

And the neighbor, Jose Maria Salinas (the “brother in this record) – who eventually married my great-grandma in 1912. He’s single and 30. Whattya think – spells trouble? By the way, no record so far of a shooting. Waaah, waah, waaah…

Sounds like a love triangle to me, if the lore is also true that my great-grandmother married either the shooter or his relative.

All I know is that, my grandpa was orphaned very young because, just six years later, his mother Reyes died from typhoid fever.

Funny, I have so much documentation for this side of my family, I thought their recent history was pretty cut-and-dry. But what happened to my grandfather’s natural father is a fairly big mystery at the moment.

Note to self: Don’t expect closure from following an alternate trail just because you couldn’t get closure from another. Much like an unfinished quilt, these loose ends could paint an incomplete picture for some time to come.

Sigh.

Why just start stuff (great!) when you can finish it? (AWESOME)

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TheQuiltI come from a family of entrepreneurs, so I’m wired to start stuff. Ironically, when I have something big on my plate — especially if I’m passionate about it — I’m also driven to finish it.

Starters aren’t usually lumped in with finishers. There’s a reason for that. We love variety and hate routine. We look for the zig when everyone else is looking for zag.

We absolutely need the dynamic of seeing things develop, watching them evolve.

An old boss used to tease me about being a terrible finisher. That was years before I’d led a project to stand up a big, enterprise-wide system that’s now part of business as usual for a large global nonprofit.

Did I love all the details and meetings? Not so much. But the end product motivated me so much, it was worth slogging through it all (with a lot of help from my friends and coworkers, of course).

My quilt wasn’t anywhere near a big project vocationally, but personally it was huge. By the way, it’s officially finished now. (Full reveal soon.)

But not 15 minutes had passed before I wanted to start another one.

It reminds me how completing something significant spawns the need to do it all over again — warts and all.

My quilt is far from perfect, but learning to make it ranks high on my Things That Make Me Really Happy list. More importantly, my friend’s son, the recipient, can know it was made with so much love.

And the next two quilt projects — they’re already lined up!

How [Irish] [Mexican] [Fill In Ethnicity] are you?

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DNA helix under spotlight against red background

Photo by Svilen Milev at sxc.hu

I *could* have signed up for a DNA Kit from Ancestry.com at their $99 rate , but I really didn’t want to spend that much. It’s just that, the more I feel like I’m not from a Cabello bloodline, the more I wonder, Where the hell did we come from?

So when I saw a discounted rate on the kit in honor of St. Paddy’s Day, I told my hubs: “Hey, let’s find out how Irish I am!”

To which he responded: “Why don’t you just wait till Cinco de Mayo and find out how Mexican you are?”

Touché.

Is this where I get a mulligan?

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Golf ball on green

Photo by Andy Steele at sxc.hu

I’m not a golfer, but I do love to borrow one of its best words, “mulligan.” It’s golfian for “do over.”

Today was one of those days when nothing on my to-do list got done – and it wasn’t even a hard to-do list.

  • My nearly finished quilt project went a wee bit sideways (although it’s fixable);
  • My family research resources exploded (a good thing, actually; a different post about a whole new list of to-dos);
  • My next project is about to come in; and
  • It was 80°F today.

Needless to say:

  • The to-do list has a very small dent in it.
  • I figured out a fix to my quilt problem but it didn’t make sense to move the sewing machine outside, so it didn’t get done.

It’ll be 30 degrees colder tomorrow. Do over!

Ms. Peterson and writing for mobile

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Journal being written in by a hand holding a pen

Photo by ynsle @ sxc.hu

A project I worked on recently re-taught me something I learned way back in high school English – but only because I’d gotten a big, fat, red “F” on a term paper.

At the time, I was crushed.

How could it be that, after spending time reviewing my draft with me, my teacher, Ms. Peterson – who’d even told me she’d not seen some of the perspective I’d presented on that classic work – still gave me an “F”?

Ms. Peterson: Nydia, I couldn’t even read it. It was all in one paragraph.
Little, naïve me: So what’s the problem?
Ms. Pete: You can’t write a paper all in one paragraph. Every new idea starts a new paragraph. Give it back to me that way tomorrow and I’ll change your grade.

Ever had that Why-didn’t-anyone-ever-tell-me-that-before feeling? Yeah, that one.

One idea, one paragraph – or less?
These days, the one-idea-per-paragraph rule applies more than ever. With more people accessing the web via mobile, most ideas need to be broken down, sometimes to one sentence per paragraph. (I don’t do it often, but it can be helpful, especially in longer-form pieces.)

After all, what fits on a web page doesn’t necessarily look as good on the screen of a handheld device.

Chop, chop
It feels choppy to write like this sometimes, but when I look it over on my phone, for example, I know that if someone can finish a paragraph there, they’ve completed a thought. That means they’re more likely to finish the article.

So if you’ve gotten this far, thank you. Clearly, Ms. Pete gets at least partial credit for it.

In an Instant

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Underwater

Photo by neil2580 @ sxc.hu

Tonight we watched a new ABC show called “In an Instant,” a series of mini-“documentaries” about how people’s lives have been changed in the blink of an eye, usually by adversity.

It brought to mind two important things:

  • How important cherishing family is, regardless of time, distance, estrangement, whatever. Much easier said than done. But the bottom line is, I have one shot – and only one – to give them my best, so I’d better make it good.
  • I need to take what has happened in my life, own my response to it and come out of it newly equipped and empowered to make the most of it. A reminder to let the waves carry me, rather than crash into me.

Slow going

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Up there with slow food lately is my interest in slow learning. As in, learning new things at my own, leisurely pace.

I’ve had a lot more time and flexibility in recent months for things like writing, meditating and – wait for it – learning to quilt.

The quilt that started it all. I've been obsessed ever since with modern quilting.

Hot Spot by Alissa Haight Carlton. The quilt that started it all. I’ve been obsessed ever since with modern quilting.

If you know me at all, you may need to pick up that jaw from the floor. Except for classes in Home Economics in, what, 7th grade? – now called Family and Consumer Science – I’ve really never made anything by hand in my life. Two semesters of pottery don’t count.

I have more gifted artist and craftsman friends than I can count, yet I’ve always assumed I couldn’t make much besides food, music or a little trouble on the dance floor.

Then again, until recently I’d never found a craft I wanted to learn. Enter modern quilting, my new inspiration.

Today, I was mostly offline, and it was great. I am nearly finished making my very first quilt (to be revealed later, probably on Instagram, after I’ve gifted it to my friend).

The idea of taking things slowly today gave me the time, permission and freedom I needed to get this project near the finish line. One more step and I’m done.

From what I hear, unfinished bindings mean Purgatory for most quilts. So getting over that hump the first time around feels like a pretty big deal.

Not only am I happy to finish it — I’m thrilled to pick up a new skill I can enjoy and share with others the rest of my life. It can be my new gift of choice — along with fruit cake.

Avoid the drama. Just say no

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You’ve probably been there – getting sucked into drama that has nothing to do with you. It’s no secret it can be toxic. There’s just one way to handle it: Don’t.

And this might help: Pin this up on your wall, click your heels a few times and repeat after me this old Polish saying:

Not my circus, not my monkeys

Printable by Vanessa Brady, Tried and True

Waiting: How long is long enough?

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If there’s one thing I’m learning from researching my family’s history, it’s that waiting for the right thing is worth it.

Looking for my great-grandfather Braulio isn’t the only thing I’m waiting for in my life, but it is symbolic of other things that have been on hold for awhile. Patience isn’t one of my stronger suits, so this lesson is as invaluable as it is counterintuitive to me.

I have decided I need to trust, somewhat blindly but mostly with faith, that the wait will be worth it. And with my luck, that’s when Braulio will show up.