Blog 3172 – 07.07.2024

Our Legacy

I recall and so very well seeing the joy in my parents eyes as they beheld and held my baby boy thirty-four years ago. They already had at that time three other grandchildren for my brother had a daughter and son and I had a daughter. Celebrities, royalty, and politicians spend a lot of time thinking about and talking about their legacy, but our true legacy is our children, their children, and their children’s children. In them we live on genetically and in their memories hopefully.

My son and I were just talking about this as I drove over to visit him and my only grandchild Emma Grace White yesterday, pictured here in Grandpa White’s arms wearing her space PJs.

What a happy little bundle of joy she is.

Jay was saying that we see ourselves living on in our children. He is at that age where he wants to know more and more about his ancestors and since most of mine and my wife’s ancestors were not wealthy the records get pretty scarce the further you go back. We have been able to trace my mother’s paternal line, the Davidson’s, back to seventeenth century Scotland.

Several years ago I had a seven week work assignment in Scotland and while there I was able to purchase my uncle on my mother’s side and his only surviving son a tie and a scarf respectively in the Davidson tartan. I used to joke with my mother that I was a Hardly Davidson. Once as a boy to get a family discount my mother, brother, and I said we were all Davidson’s to get into Rock City Gardens with her mom and dad, known to my brother and I as Paw Paw and Lily.

Paw Paw and Lily were proud to claim us as part of the Davidson Clan. I saw that look of kinship in their eyes.

I believe we are all of one blood, and that we are related in many ways. Still it is those close connections we focus on the most and feel the most duty to preserve and protect. One of the reasons that I want to live as long as I can is to show my granddaughter that she has extended family and to teach her something my daddy taught me. My daddy never met a stranger. He saw others as reflection of his self. My daddy was not perfect, but then he did not expect others to be either.

I hope Emma has a full and happy life and I hope to be around for as much of it as I can, just keeping an eye on my legacy.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White