“This is my cousin John,” he said.
The four of us sat around the wooden picnic table
in the community garden—
volunteer apiarists, deep in hive talk.

“Is this it then?” he asked.
John handed him a scroll.
“We have to keep updating this—
every time it’s printed,
it’s already out of date with all my grandchildren.”

He waxed lyrical about his family tree.
I was restless.
Keen to get back to bee business.

“Have you done your DNA?” She asked.
“I’m mostly Norwegian.
My mother’s a Shetlander.
Interesting, isn’t it?”
I nodded.

This wasn’t the time.
My ancestors deserved more.

“And if the couple aren’t married,
the woman’s name doesn’t go on here—
just the kids.”
“Oh, half of my tree would be missing,” I said.
“That’s very patriarchal.”
“It’s just wrong!” John laughed.

And yet here we are, I thought.

Marginalia

Just like The Pendulum in the Pub, this moment was mundane and yet profound. I was meant to be beekeeping; instead, ancestry was forced under my nose.

Only a week before, I’d written It Began with a Name—of a woman in my lineage who’d used names as power on her son’s birth certificate. Now, I’m reminded again of how women were treated, and how that pattern insists on being seen.