Journey to Myself

My cousin Patricia died and I flew to Dallas to attend her funeral.  To understand my story, you need to know two things.  1.)  I haven’t seen most of my cousins (the Ellis clan) in over 50 years, and 2.) for reasons I don’t need to go into, I have pretty much deleted most of my childhood memories.  I have a small collection of “snapshot” moments from my past, but for the most part, my self-knowledge has been built entirely around my experiences as an adult.  

I got to Dallas on Thursday for the funeral service on Saturday.  I spent the first couple of days with my cousin Bobby and his husband, Jimmy.  Even though we hadn’t been face to face in half a century, Bobby and I had reconnected and become friends through Facebook.  

 The first day, Bobby showed me pictures of my cousins, my aunts and uncles, my parents, and even some relations I had never met.  He told me story after story about his past and our shared past, tales of my grandmother and my Aunt Lee.  And I listened with sadness because I didn’t have his wealth of knowledge about my own childhood - my life.   

The next day he drove me around to vaguely familiar places.  He showed me his old house and I could imagine myself, a young boy, chasing after my cool older cousins.  He drove me to my Uncle Teddy’s house and I could almost picture all of us eating watermelon in the backyard.  Finally, he took me to my Grandma’s house, and with excitement I said, “I used to play and watch TV in that front room!”  He smiled as he showed me the old church across the street and the little store where we would go for Dr. Pepper.  

As memories began to trickle in, God showed me a picture of a richly woven tapestry, detailed and intricate with many different pictures and symbols.  It was the weaving of my life, but it wasn’t anything I could identify.  As Bobby talked and showed me around, it was as if he were a tour guide to my past.  I found myself hungry to know more.  I wanted to point to each part of the tapestry and say, “Tell me about this!  What does this part mean?  Who am I?” 

I realized in that moment that by pushing away my past, I had lost connection with so many of the threads that God had woven together to make David.  I can’t know who I am without understanding who I was.  And who I was was an Ellis.  

My love of music and joy of singing came from wonderful times singing with my Ellis cousins around the piano.  My creativity came in part from my Grandfather who was a tailor.  Like my Grandmother Ellis, I love to cook.  Maybe my love of acting came from my Aunt JoAnne.  I have the same love of performing that my cousin Teddy does and the same playfulness that flows so quickly from my cousin Tommy.    I am eager to learn more.

God showing me what I had lost has ignited my desire to reconnect to who I was all those years ago and to understand my roots - my Texas roots.  Yee-Haw, cowboy!  I’m curious to see where God takes me next.