you should know where you come from.
you should know
whose blood is in your veins,
you should know
whose sweat watered your family tree.
you should know your land,
the acreage and the money that paid for it,
and who fought in which wars
and on what side
to earn it.
you should know your mother.
your mother, like you,
experienced yearning as a teenager;
lust in her twenties;
possibilities in her thirties;
aging in her forties;
and the violence of change after maddening change
during all of those years.
your father, like you,
tried his first cigarette,
tried his first beer,
tried losing his virginity to some girl at prom
and failed,
tried being a son and a brother
and a friend and a lover,
tried on all of these roles before you did.
you should know your grandmother,
and her childhood,
and your grandfather and who he was raised by.
you should know where you come from
so you can appreciate
the opportunities provided to you
by those who came before,
so that you can know the actual cost
of your ability to go to school
or marry who you want
or have a job of your choosing
or stay at home or go abroad or live in
all fifty states before you die--
since someone died for your ability to do that,
someone mourned that death,
and someone picked up the pieces and then
moved the entire family forward.
you should know where you come from
so that you can know your own momentum,
so that you can know
the inertia of your body and what
the marrow of your bones is longing for--
which is different from everyone else,
which is yours and
only yours and belonging only to your family tree.
you should know where you come from
because even if you don't know the story,
you will live the narrative
of your family and your blood and your roots,
and your ancestors have left footnotes
to guide you through that reading.