She Gave Me the Finger!

Aunt Louise, my dad’s only sister, was my favorite aunt as a child. She had grandchildren my age, but still always made time for us six Carson kids. In the summers she had us to the farm in shifts – the girls for one week, then the boys (or vice versa.) But either way, we all got a week with a trade-off trip in between where my folks would pick up one batch and drop off the next. (Here we are on the farmhouse steps in the summer of '62.)

Aunt Louise could do it all. She introduced us kids into Apple Jacks and cherry trees. She made the most marvelous applesauce from the apples she grew in the orchard on her farm, and buttered baby parsley-potatoes dug from her garden. She showed us how to draw fresh water in a bucket from the spring house and painted and sewed and knitted.

As much as I hated my middle name growing up, I felt honored to be named after her. She was amazing and invincible, but ever so warm-hearted and intuitive and kind. I longed to be like her.

It broke my heart when, in March of 1991, I flew back to visit my cousin (yes, the trip of the crystal dish bomb!) and went to see Aunt Louise in the nursing home. My heart ached to see her her marvelous mind now lost in a fog of incomprehension and unresponsiveness.

We sat with her for a while as I held her hand. We spoke to each other and to her as she sat in silence. Occasionally she would chime in with an observation or some childhood memory totally out of sync with what was going on around her; or speak to a childhood friend only she could see.

And as I sat there holding her hand, I noticed the slight imperfection of her middle fingers for the first time. Each middle finger rotated slightly outward so that the fingernail was on a different plane than the others. And each finger also bent outward slightly at the last digit, so the finger itself wasn’t straight.

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I turned to her daughter, Peggy Lou. “Have ever noticed her fingers?” I asked, perplexed and yet pleased.

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“Oh, it’s from the arthritis,” she told me.

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“No! It’s not!” I said excitedly as I held out my own hands, palms down.

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It took her a moment to understand what I was trying to show her. But she looked for a moment at each one, and then at her mother’s, then held her own fingers out as well. I realized for the first time that Aunt Louise and I shared something more than just the name Louise. I had her hands!

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If only my hands could be as amazingly creative as hers had been before time took her memory, I thought.

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On the plane ride home at the end of my way-too-short week’s visit, I contemplated my hands. I’d always been told I had my dad’s hands – long and slender – but never realized until that moment in the nursing home what that really meant.

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Growing up in various places around the world, I’d been denied the family connections that so many have. Though I had twenty-three cousins on my mother’s side and another eight on my father’s side, we grew up cousin-less. And moving around as we did, my parents didn’t have any family photos of cousins or ancestors hanging on the walls like so many folks do.

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So it never occurred to me that, other than having my father’s hands, I had family traits.

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My mother died when I was young, but I still remember the odd freckles on her forearms – the ‘normal’ brown freckles and the strange anti-freckles as I thought of them. Those white spots of no pigment that showed up only when she tanned. Then her arms were barely-tan with tiny brown and white spots confettied across the skin. I thought they were ugly. I also thought her legs would be prettier if she had smaller ankles and shapelier calves like other mothers had.

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Well, now that I am an old lady (well at least now that I’m almost ten years older than she was when she died), I have to smile. I have her both her anti-freckled arms and her “cankles” as I hear ankles like mine are called today - as they go straight from calf to ankle.

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My son always got joy out of comparing his summer tan to my freckled- and anti-freckled arms as a boy. And my daughters have both moaned and groaned over inheriting my “cankles," which will only get worse with age.

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Over the years, I’ve become very interested in genealogy and tracing my family tree. (Probably in part because of that dearth of relatives growing up.)

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And I’ve traced my family tree back to mid-1600 Germany, to King Edward I of England, King Philip I of France, William X of Aquitane (and his father, William IX of the Crusades), as well as numerous knights and barons and earls of Ireland, many of whom lost their lives (and their heads) in the Tower of London.

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But even more special to me are the many family ancestral photos I’ve been able to track down over the years.

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Through them, I’ve discovered that not only do I have my father’s hands and my mother’s anti-freckled arms (which all three of my children avoided thanks to their father’s Hispanic blood) but I was pleased to discover upon the brief reunion with my daughter Jen, in 2004 and 2005, that she also has the graceful Carson hands (and was slightly less enthusiastic to find she also has my massive rib cage and short waist.)

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I got my cheekbones and drooping eyes from my maternal grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Jane “Genevieve” (Maurer) Lee, who got them from her father, William.

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He apparently got them from his father, Johan Georg Maurer.

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(And I am forever grateful that I didn’t take after his mother, Libbie Bullinger - in the photo with her husband, above!)

But then, maybe the eyes came from her as well.

And I am glad that a small part of her devoutly spiritual nature (discovered in an old German letter from back in the 1840's) passed down through her offspring to me.

My non-existent waist line (my rib cage practically sits on my ilium – upper crest of my hips) may have come down from my Irish great-great-great-grandmother, Mary (McDonough) Golden (with her husband, Patrick Golden, left.)

She emigrated to America (via Quebec) in 1835 and actually met her husband-to-be while disembarking from that ship. (I’d have rather inherited my paternal grandmother’s famed 19-inch waist! Though I imagine that had to come with a corset, which makes it a lot less desirable.)

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I discovered that my brother, Tom, looks an awful lot like my maternal grandfather, Benedict Herman, who died before either of us was born.

And my beautiful cousin, Julie, is the spitting image of Grandmother Lee. (right)

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The lack of lateral incisors (the teeth between the front teeth and the pointed canine teeth) is apparently another family trait shared by many in the family.

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And my son, Nick got his tall good looks from my father and his father before him – minus their large noses (thank goodness!)

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And my daughter, Jen, has some of my mother’s stunning beauty. (left)

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I saw a photo of my younger daughter, Erin, recently and was startled by her comment about how she didn't like the way her pinkie finger always stands off to the side alone in photos. Mine does that too! (And I hate it just as much.)
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And it seems I come by my bent for educating from a long line of teachers. 

My mother Mary Catherine, her mother, Mary Elizabeth Jane (also known as Genevieve), and her mother’s mother, Mary Louise, were all teachers before me! Here’s my grandmother’s graduating class of teachers in 1910. (She's second from the right.)

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And yes, there is a point – other than the fact that I inherited my mother’s worst features and Aunt Louise's middle fingers, and am descended from royalty and lesser nobility.

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The point is that we are all recipients of so many gifts handed down to us from our fathers and their fathers back through generations. We all have qualities and traits that show we belong to them.

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The point is that as children of God the Father, we are all descendents of the King of Kings. And in His image were we all made. We've inherited so much from Him.
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He didn’t create us with anti-freckles or “cankles” or thick waists or droopy eyes or missing lateral incisors (and now wrinkles too.)

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He made us perfect, in His image. Sin has given us all the rest. And, short of braces and laser eye surgery and dental implants and plastic surgery, we are stuck with crooked or missing teeth, and other human flaws - at least for this lifetime.

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The point shines clearly in the moving lyrics of Dierks Bentley's song, My Last Name. He says it so well:

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...Passed down from generations, too far back to trace
I can see all my relations, when I look into my face
May never make it famous, but I'll never bring it shame
It's my last name....
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Daddy always told me, far back as I recall
Son you're part of something, you represent us all
So keep it how you got it, as solid as it came
It's my last name....

And it is encumbent upon us to "...keep it how we got it, and never bring it shame...His great name..."

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Liz Carson Rosas
20 Novermber 2009

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him…" -- Genesis 1:27

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"...for in the image of God has God made man." -- Genesis 9:6

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“But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” -- Matthew 5:44, 45.

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