A Quiet Life

             What’s a quiet life?  Is it living on a farm? Or is it a small community? Or is it in the big city?  Is it during peacetime?  Or war?  Is it somebody who lived a short life?  Or is it retirement?  Is it somebody who travels?  Or a stay at home person? Or is it an ancestor you haven’t researched?

I have over 7,000 names in my family tree; covering both my family and my husband’s family.  Maybe that’s the quiet life – researching your family tree.

Do I think I have a quiet life?  I have a very busy life.  So, I do need those “down” times.  I grew up on a farm.  Yes, it was quiet but it was work – pulling tansy so that it won’t get mixed in the hay or the cows won’t eat and get sick.  You had to get to it before it blossomed and went to seed.  It was hay season where  you had to stack the bales either on the truck or in the barn.  It was weeding the vegetable garden then harvesting it in the fall.  It was moving the cows from one field to another.  It was bringing them in to be treated for pink-eye.  It was feeding them hay in the winter months.  But there was a fun time!  In the winter when it snowed, we got to go sledding on our own property using an intertube.  In the summer, we rode our bikes to either the river or the neighbors to swim.  We had our quiet times too – camping, fishing, and hiking.

I started working for a living when I was 17.  At first, part-time as I was in school.  Then in 1979, I started working full-time for the State of Washington and going to school part-time to get my degree.  I did take vacations – like a trip to South Dakota to visit an old high school friend and a trip to Kentucky to meet family and do research.  I met my future husband at work.  We dated for a little over a year before getting married and having a family.  I still worked until 2021, when I retired.

When did genealogy come to play?  1980.  That Kentucky trip? – it was in 1982.  1984 was a trip to Iowa to meet and research my dad’s family.  After that it was just short road trips to local cemeteries, courthouses, and libraries until retirement.  My husband & I took a vacation in 2016 by flying to Virginia to visit our son who was stationed there.  We had rented a car and visited sites in the area before moving on to Washington DC area then on to Butler County, Pennsylvania.  It was in Pennsylvania that we did some research on my husband’s family.  Visited a cemetery, a community that was owned by an ancestor, and a courthouse.  We returned a few years later (2025).  In 2021, when we did our Route 66 road trip, we took some time to go to Wisconsin where my family had lived.  Wasn’t able to do as much research as desired.  Was going to do more when we were back in the area last year but that didn’t happen.

I’m looking forward to our next cruise for that quiet down time.  Yes, cruising is our quiet time.  We’ve done several since our first in 1995.  We’ve done Alaska (2x), Caribbean (2x), New England/Canada, Panama Canal, and now Hawaii this fall.  Another Caribbean cruise is planned for 2028 in the spring.