Quotations pertinent to Time and Family History

In her excellent book, Four Souls, Louise Erdich writes:

"Time is the water in which we live, and we breathe it like fish.

time is an element no human has mastered . . .

For what is a man, what are we all, but bits of time caught

for a moment in a tangle of blood, bones, skin and brain."

and in David Ray's luminous poem, Thanks, Robert Frost, he quotes the poet as follows in answer to the question "Do you have hope for the future?"

"Yes, and even for the past, he [Frost] replied,

that it will turn out to have been all right for what it was,

something we can accept,

mistakes made by the selves we had to be,

not able to be, perhaps, what we wished,

or what looking back half the time

it seems we could so easily have been, or ought..."

* * * * *

We are all simply moments caught in the time in which we were born. And life does go on and, yes, it does end. Family history, though, gives one a sense of continuity.