This is me.

The photo is by O. Winston Link, taken in 1957 in a tiny town on the outskirts of the Appalachians. Here is the link: http://www.robertmann.com/artists/link/full_01.html

This is where I came from.

Well, partly. It's a picture of the land I'm most at home in.

I am a descendant of a great family. I don't mean great in the sense of blue blood, or genteel Southern ladyship, or a shallow, iffy claim to be a direct descendant of royalty.

Great, to me, means honesty, kindness and perseverance.
Great is putting family first, always.
Great is, even though Dad might work for a week and then drink up the profits, coming home and giving the family not cash, but the telling of stories, the singing of old songs that crossed the ocean with his granddaddy, and perhaps the cooking of a rare treat such as an oyster stew that he learned to make while he was in Annapolis.
Great is stretching food to last a week longer and taping dollar bills to the underside of a sofa in case of dire need (Granny would inevitably end up forgetting where she hid the money, a habit I inherently picked up from her.)

Granny died in 1992, before she ever saw my father's first-born grandchild. My father's father died in 1970, a year before I was born. But--they left a timeless legacy that lives in me. I can hear the call of my ancestral home, the crooning of the fine mountain women and ringing, gruff shouts of railroaders, the Irish and Scottish immigrants who settled in these West Virginia hills to sculpt a life that could not be found back home. They left their parents, friends, maybe even children until they had the money to send for them--maybe they never were reunited. I am a child of greatness. My children are direct descendants of the Appalachian children, but they carry too within them the blood of the Pennsylvanian German immigrants and the English Virginia farmers. Our blood swells with proud heritage and I am certain to keep the pride alive in my offspring.

Spring--freshness, quenching, renewal.
How appropriate.