My Genealogy

there's a family photo (sepia-toned, so you know it's old) of four generations of my dad's family hanging out around a dinner table in regina, seskatchewan. the oldest of them is my great-great-grandfather, standing out from the pack because he's wearing an eyepatch. when i was a kid, that eyepatch fascinated me; i would stare at it for hours. i thought he was a pirate.

in the 1910s, my great-great-grandfather and his family were living in a small jewish town in what was then bessarabia and is now present-day moldova. after the russian revolution of 1917, the government went wandering the countryside, rounding up every able-bodied man to serve in the new army. but my great-grandfather had just been born, and my great-great-grandfather didn't want to leave his young wife and newborn so that he could go off and die in a war for a cause he didn't believe in. so, instead, he lay down on a wooden table in the middle of their kitchen, bit down on a bullet, and had his best friend jab his left eye out with a stick.

a few months later they fled russia for canada, and, almost a century later, here i am. 

this is the story i tell myself whenever i want to remember that, however bad things might be, at least i haven't had to relinquish any body parts to make it better.