“An Ancestor a Day,” Ensign, July 1995, 38
An Ancestor a Day
When my husband and I moved from California to Wisconsin, I missed my family. At age forty-one, I was a first-time bride. My husband had been married before, so I became a stepmother to five grown children in the blink of an eye. In our new apartment, the sheer numbers of my new relatives seemed to outweigh the influence of my own family in California.
It was then that I got the idea to create a calendar featuring my own family and ancestors. Where store-bought calendars have pictures of birds or mountains, mine would have biographies of some of my favorite ancestors. As I began, I felt close to these loved ones who shared a commitment to the gospel and who had also moved away from extended family.
I filled the date boxes on my calendar with birth dates, marriage dates, and death dates of many of my living and deceased family members, and then included notes about minor events and important occasions for everyone. Before long, it became a long-distance family project. My mom, dad, brothers, aunts, and uncles began sending me information—dates on which they proposed marriage or lost a job or experienced other events. The whole experience brought us closer together as families and helped dissolve my homesickness. The calendar became my Christmas present to them.
Every day I look at my own copy of the calendar and remember some important event or story about my family. This has had a great influence on us as well as on our grown children and grandchildren. When we are reminded of our roots, we feel a part of an army of ancestors. We know we are not alone.