Ancestry was about twenty dollars a month. Roughly two hundred and forty dollars a year. I cancelled it on a Tuesday and called my grandmother on the Wednesday, which is the fastest I have ever turned a cancellation into a plan.
She is ninety-one. She has been in that house since 1961. She knows who everybody is, back to the point where the names stop being written down and start being repeated out loud at gatherings.
I asked her how far back she could go. She said for a cake she would go as far back as I wanted.
So the subscription is gone and the money is going to my grandmother, in the form of a cake and a chair and a machine that records her voice, and the rest of this is what I need in order to do it properly. Everything is ordered from the least defensible to the most, which is the only honest way to present a list.
about twenty five dollars. Shark rating 0.6.
The written record stops somewhere. The family does not. I am not going to sit there and let a gap stand when there is a board on the closet aisle that has been doing this work for a hundred years. The rating is low because Donna has a rule about bringing things into the house that have their own rules.
about one hundred and forty dollars. Shark rating 0.9.
Grandma says the old farm had a well that was filled in and nobody remembers what went into it. I would like to know. This is not a hobby purchase, it is a records request with a handle.
about three hundred dollars. Shark rating 1.1.
Every family has one branch that was doing something in the old country. Mine was doing it with a sword. I am not going to be the generation that lets that go unacknowledged. It would hang over the fireplace. Donna has already said no to the fireplace, so it would hang over a different fireplace, in a house we do not currently own.
about four hundred and fifty dollars. Shark rating 1.3.
You pay a designer and then you have one. That is the entire service. I looked at the form. There is a field for the shield and a field for what goes on the shield. I have opinions about both fields and I do not see where the objection is.
about thirty dollars. Shark rating 1.6.
If you have a coat of arms you have to seal things. Otherwise it is a drawing. The kit comes with three stamps and a little melting spoon and a bag of beads in a color called antique gold.
about sixty dollars. Shark rating 1.8.
For reading the records. They are old. Some of them are handwritten and the handwriting is not generous. Donna said I do not need one. I said need is a strong word, and anyway the eye strain is a real consideration here and nobody at this table is taking it seriously.
about two hundred and twenty dollars. Shark rating 2.0.
We are told we are a tartan family. I have not confirmed which tartan. The company lets you choose from a list and I intend to choose carefully, possibly over several evenings. Donna asked which one and I said I would know by Friday.
about three hundred and fifty dollars. Shark rating 2.2.
An expert sits with you for two hours and explains what your family is and is not entitled to display. I think it is worth paying a stranger to tell me the sword is fine. I would rather hear it from a professional than from Donna, who is not a professional and has a tone.
about nine hundred dollars. Shark rating 1.4.
A painter does me in the style of an eighteenth century ancestor, in the coat, with the sword, and I hang it at the top of the stairs. Our grandchildren will assume it is a real ancestor. That is not a lie. That is how portraits have always worked and I will not be the one to break the tradition.
about one hundred dollars. Shark rating 1.0.
He is part of the family. He has no paper trail at all, none, and he has been with us for six years. If I am going to do this properly I cannot only do the ones with names.
about one hundred dollars. Shark rating 0.5.
She did not ask for this. I think she will come around when the results arrive. There is an entire side of her family that has never been mapped and I am offering to map it at my own expense, which is more than the subscription ever did for anyone.
about two thousand four hundred dollars. Shark rating 0.7.
It is a cruise where the talks are about records. Meals are included. I would attend the talks. Donna said it is a cruise. I said it is a cruise with homework, and the homework is the good part.
about eighty dollars. Shark rating 2.4.
Brass. It goes on the front door and it announces that this is a house with a documented line. Guests will ask about it. I will have an answer ready, and the answer will be at least four minutes long.
about four hundred dollars. Shark rating 1.7.
For the interviews. Her voice deserves better than a phone. A phone compresses it and throws away the top and the bottom, and the top and the bottom are where the person is.
about one hundred and thirty dollars. Shark rating 2.1.
A good microphone picks up the room. I want the room. I want the clock in the kitchen and the chair she sits in and the neighbor’s dog, because in forty years that is the part that will be unbearable to have lost.
Cassette recorder and blank tapes
about seventy dollars. Shark rating 2.3.
A backup. If the big machine fails I do not get that afternoon back. She is ninety-one and she is not going to do it twice, and I am not going to ask her to.
about twenty dollars. Shark rating 2.8.
For the things the machine misses because they are not answers to questions. The asides. The parts where she corrects herself and decides the correction is the truer version.
about two hundred dollars. Shark rating 2.6.
She has a shoebox. Every family has a shoebox, and the shoebox is the actual archive, and it is going to be scanned one pass at a time with the lid up and no glare and no flash.
about forty dollars. Shark rating 3.0.
Cardboard from the liquor store is what got us here. The photographs have been in a shoebox for sixty years and it shows in the corners.
about twenty five dollars. Shark rating 3.1.
Every sleeve is a small promise that the next sixty years will be kinder than the last sixty were.
about thirty dollars. Shark rating 3.2.
I will label the boxes. Not with a pen. Pen fades. I have seen it fade, on a box in her garage, and the box is now a box.
about thirty five dollars. Shark rating 2.9.
Some things should not be laminated. I know that. The newspaper clipping from the wedding is one of them, and I am going to laminate it anyway, because it is currently in three pieces and the alternative is watching it become four.
about forty five dollars. Shark rating 3.3.
The tree does not fit on paper. It keeps going sideways. On the hallway wall, with the erasable markers, it can go sideways for as long as it needs to.
about thirty dollars. Shark rating 2.7.
For the parts of the tree I am still arguing with. The yarn is for the arguments. It connects two names that may or may not be the same person, and the board holds the question until the answer shows up.
about ten dollars. Shark rating 3.4.
One card per person. Born, died, who they married, what they did, one thing they said. If I run out of things to say about a person I write unknown and move on. That is honest, and honest is the only standard I can actually meet.
Three ring binder and dividers
about twenty dollars. Shark rating 3.5.
The printed tree goes at the front. The cards go in sleeves. The photographs go behind the cards. The whole thing lives on a shelf and can be handed to a person, which a website cannot do, no matter how many little leaves it draws.
about one hundred and eighty dollars. Shark rating 3.6.
One shelf for the binders. One shelf for the boxes. One shelf left empty because the tree is not finished, and an empty shelf is how you know a project intends to continue.
about sixty dollars. Shark rating 3.0.
The births and deaths go in the front. It is a book with blank pages at the beginning, which is a rare and good idea, and it is meant to be written in by hand.
Courthouse copies of vital records
about fifty dollars. Shark rating 4.0.
This is the part the subscription was actually doing. You send a form. You pay a fee. You get a certified copy in the mail with a stamp on it. It costs less than a month of the service and the copy is mine permanently and nobody can put it behind a login.
about one hundred and sixty dollars. Shark rating 3.8.
For the old country. I want to stand in the church where the records were written and look at the same water. I think that is a different thing from reading about it on a screen at eleven at night.
about five dollars. Shark rating 4.2.
The trip is going to take a while to fund. Having the jar on the counter is how it gets funded. Every time I do not buy something I put the money in. So far there is a jar.
about twenty dollars. Shark rating 4.4.
There is a stone with the family name on it and nobody has been in years. I found it on a map, not on the service, because the service does not care about the map. I am going to go and I am not going empty handed.
about fifteen dollars. Shark rating 4.1.
There is a small bed in front of the stone and it is bare. I have seen it in the photographs. It has been bare for some time and that is a thing a person can fix in an afternoon.
about twenty five dollars. Shark rating 4.3.
There are four cousins in three states that I have addresses for and no other way in. People answer a letter. They do not answer a message from a stranger with a link attached.
about fifteen dollars. Shark rating 4.5.
The letters are useless without them. This is after the stationery because it is the smaller purchase and the more certain one.
about four hundred dollars. Shark rating 4.0.
Two hours in a kitchen chair is too long for a woman her age and she will not say so. If the chair is comfortable the afternoon is longer. That is the whole calculation and it comes out in favor of the chair every time.
about forty five dollars. Shark rating 4.6.
You do not sit someone down for an interview without tea. It stops being an interview then. It becomes a conversation with a machine running quietly in the corner, which is the thing I actually want.
about twenty five dollars. Shark rating 4.7.
A cake brought to a table on a plate looks like a cake bought at a store. A cake on a stand looks like a thank you. She will notice the difference and she will not mention it.
about thirty dollars. Shark rating 4.9.
This is the arrangement. I cancelled the subscription. I asked her about the family. The money goes to a cake. She said she would tell me anything I wanted for a cake and I believe her, because she has never once said a thing she did not mean. It is from the bakery on the corner and it has to be ordered two days ahead and Donna said just buy the damn thing, which she has said before and which has never once been wrong.
about five dollars. Shark rating 4.8.
You cannot have cake in someone’s front room without napkins. It is her carpet, and the carpet is older than I am, and it is not going to be the thing that ends a good afternoon.
about twelve dollars. Shark rating 5.0.
For the walk to the cemetery, which is longer than it looks on the map. Nothing about the socks is a statement. That is why they are last on the list and first in the cart.