🕯️The stories continue

Thanks, Ann G. Forcier, for suggesting turning a note I published last week into a post because it gives me a chance to make a few updates!

Between deadlines, travel, and ghosts that refuse to stay buried, the past keeps resurfacing—in data, in stories, and in a pair of familiar blue eyes.

The last few weeks have been a time—work, travel, travel for work, four kids, plus coming down with a truly nasty case of the annual seasonal plague (possibly courtesy of chaperoning the 5th-grade Halloween dance).

Between home, family, and a full-tilt job, the hours to actually finish and publish anything have been few and far between.

I’ve been writing constantly; I have drafts everywhere, but I get caught up in that final stretch of type A perfectionism: triple-checking sources, nitpicking my words, pairing the right photographs to make each story sing.

This week’s goal? To remember that done is sometimes better than perfect (even if I’ll probably still check everything twice).

Stay tuned for reflections from Austin, where I recently traveled for a work conference on AI—a city built, boomed, and rebuilt more times than I can count, where ghosts wander beside driverless cars and the past and future do a strange dance in our present.

Austin also has some of the best street graffiti I’ve seen in any city.

I published the second installment of the Relia Weaver series: Part I and Part II are here; Part III is nearly ready, and I’m excited to share what I’ve found.

And closer to home, dear readers, I found Margaret O’Brien, my grandfather Joseph’s birth mother.

Or rather, I found the memories of her that remain.

I recently connected with her niece, Marge, who lived with Margaret as a little girl, and through Marge's stories and memories, I feel like I’m starting to get to know my great-grandmother.

I can now begin to imagine, in profound ways, the choices she faced and the world she moved through when she went to St. Ann’s to have my grandfather, Joseph Gabriel.

We spent All Saints’ Day in Long Island City—at Mass at St. Mary’s, their parish, walking the old neighborhood with my mom, Marge’s daughter, Tara, and Tara’s husband, Joe.

It was a truly special day and one I never thought possible when I first began this research. I can finally see where my eyes come from; Marge and I share the same bright blue eyes, as did Margaret O’Brien.

And now, I have pictures of her, which I’ll share soon.

To put a face to what I’ve imagined all these years has made her all the more human—and therefore, all the more precious to our family story, and to mine.

The stories continue. Thanks for being patient with me, for encouraging me, and for reading.