of: Legacy *
I am extremely fortunate to have a large family. It can be taxing collecting all of us for gatherings - or even when keeping secrets - and we are not without some drama or trauma, but for the most part, we’ve become a tight-knit quilt of grandparents, step-parents, step-siblings, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, boyfriends, girlfriends, nieces, nephews, fiances, and a lot of dogs.
In recent years, I’ve sat in small silence during our loud animated dinners - regularly about 20 of us, more if you count our frequently invited family friends - and considered legacy: biological, cerebral, spiritual.
Whenever I feel pensive like this, undoubtedly encouraged by a few glasses of sangria - I excuse myself for a well-timed, opportunistic bathroom break. Sometimes I do actually need to pee, or fix my lipstick, or puke and rally, or reapply an eyebrow I haphazardly wiped off when hollering with laughter, but mostly I stare into the mirror - my slight buzz beginning to warm my face, moving upwards starting from my jowls.
I think about who and where I get certain traits - I trace the inventory of my physicality while mulling over three decades of memories and at least three generations of features. My chin, paternal grandfather: a sharpness distilled to precision in my father then replicated in myself and my youngest sister. My nose, maternal: though less pointed with a smaller bridge. My eyes, maternal great-grandmother: almond and revealing, a gift to my mother, then inherited by me. In the drunken confusion, I trace the small constellations of my freckles (not a genealogical gift, just sun damage), until my thoughts wander to the idea of a true originator. A nameless ancestor, who may be the spectral duplicate of me. I contemplate: how far towards the roots did the genetic code for this chin, this nose, these eyes get written? In what century and on what soil? What secret rendezvous might have led to these eyes or a slightly longer right leg?
A roaring wave of laughter from the living room urges me to refocus, readjusting my train of thought: did our ancestors have gatherings similar to this one? Was my great-great-great aunt also quick-witted and hell-bent on a good joke like me? Was she doubly proud of herself if the joke made her grandmother throw a small fit? Did a far-reaching ancestral relative give my uncle his sense of sport and adventure? Did this ancestor attempt to sail to Oceania by primitive boat with an unsure but joyful eye to the horizon, in the same way my uncle took a mountain biking trip to New Zealand? (Where he broke a bone or two, and ignored it until he returned home?)
I inevitably stray into the spiritual: do we share spirits with our ancestors? In this body and in this life do we leave our own marks on this borrowed soul until we become part of the legacy line, in the same way water runs through million-year cycles and atoms come and go but always remain?
I reason: short of mutation, every part of you is a Frankenstein collaboration of DNA. Who do you think in the far distant past had your same smile? Your same penchant for trouble? Your love of salty over sweet over spicy? Stretched apart by time and memory, who are these forgotten relatives whose ghosts walk in our mirrors each day, who share your face and perhaps even a small part of your soul?
And what legendary and maximally consequential decision did they make as they traversed the plateau turning West instead of East, or approached a neighboring tribe’s village ignoring social decorum during famine? What natural disaster did they unknowingly avoid when they slept without clocks and woke without hurry? How many stories are contained in our library of blood written by different authors in different eras on different continents?
Knock knock. One of my sisters interrupts my train-gone-off-the-rails thoughts. “Are you okay in there?” She nearly whispers into the crack in the door - a kind gesture: unwilling to out me to the family if I need some time away from the chaos, but equally concerned I am asleep in the shower.
“I’m okay - coming out soon. I lost an eyebrow.”
She giggles in acknowledgment, “Okay, take your time. Just checking.” I listen to her walk back into the living room where someone has yelled at a dog, and the dog has yelled back - cueing a round of disbelieving hoots.
Closing my eyes, I try to isolate and identify the sound of each family member's voice from the pitch of their laughter. An instant identification: my grandmother clicking her tongue between chuckles - meant to be a soft disapproval, amidst an otherwise funny situation. I wonder if perhaps her own grandmother’s arches fell - leaving her flat-footed on dirt roads back in our home country. This ailment, pes planus, is one I have acquired through the genetic gamble, though oddly in only one foot.
Readjusting my shirt and tucking it back in to my high-waisted pants, the outfit now too tight from an overload of alcohol and salt, I open the door to the full brunt of previously shielded noise: my younger cousins have moved upstairs and are watching videos at full volume, my grandparents have migrated outside to the lawn chairs and my father is fussing over the mosquitoes, my mom and aunt are riling one another up until they’re reduced to choking on their wine.
I think of a place closer to the roots - in a humid jungle near rice terraces, with a tall fire, and consider how the sound of a celebration like this one would carry through the narra trees and echo against the hills.
I think of a place farther from the roots: where might our own distant descendants go? What hidden features will reveal themselves for them to tally and take stock of when sober or drunk or high? Who will I be reduced to in four generations other than a nameless ancestor: what will be my legacy?
Walking into the living room, I catch a final glimpse of myself in one of my mother’s decorative mirrors and in a split jarring second reckon with the fact that one can’t observe their own legacy - I will have been swept away by the cosmic wind long before my legacy can be consumed and pondered by a nameless descendant. Clenching my jaw, I clear my throat in discomfort and consider returning to the bathroom - but my dad re-enters from the backyard with his head thrown back in a giggle threatening to burst into a trademark gasping exclamation - and this image grounds me: these moments are the shared legacies we will pass down the branches. In the next centuries, an innumerable amount of celebrations like this one will take place and gather rings in the tree’s bark - just as they have before. And somewhere deep within the bark, echoes of our laughter will be there - recorded in the moles and freckles of our descendants, trapped in their cheekbones, locked into their double-jointed hands.
The realization causes me to tear up, but before I can mourn my mortality, my sister hands me another sangria, the dogs begin to bark, one of my uncles starts to yell at the game on the television, and my dad tickles himself into his ever-contagious boyish laughter unable to tell us what was so funny outside.
Throwing the drink back, and succumbing to the shared cackling - I reach for a lumpia. “So what did I miss?”
My mom, just now registering my prolonged absence, makes an exaggerated gasp. “Where did you go? I thought you were fixing your eyebrows.” I look over at my sister with a smirk, which she returns sheepishly behind a Solo cup.
“I was,” I try to say ever so coolly while reaching for something sweet now.
My dad, pink with a fixed grin, chuckles, “Then why are you missing half of one?”
“Ah-”
It then dawns on me that my family thinks I tried to sneak off and take a long shit, and they have caught me red-handed with my alibi smeared against my temple.
Another wave of hysterics rolls throughout the house as I throw a used napkin at my sister and scuffle over to the decorative mirror. My mother, still laughing, reaches into her bag for an eyebrow pencil. My sister makes an “Oops” face and her boyfriend tries not to laugh too hard at his future sister-in-law, but I egg him on and encourage him to join the fun, allowing this joke at my own expense.
I reckon with a final thought before giving in to the night: I imagine what could have made us laugh this loud in the jungle generations ago, and for one sliver of a surreal moment I believe I can hear this familiar ancestral sound resonating throughout my bones, and I believe I can feel our descendants listening. I make an observation quietly between the shouting as we all raise our cups: the louder we laugh, the better.
May your laugh be so loud your ancestors can be heard
May you laugh so loud your descendants can hear you
”Considering Legacy” - October 2024
