The Dash Between Those Years...or, I'm Taking on Yet Another Project

"He noted that first came the date of birth

and spoke the following date with tears,

but he said what mattered most of all

was the dash between those years."

Excerpt from "The Dash" by Linda Ellis 

Click here to redirect to the author's website for the full poem. 

Last month, a family member reached out to me (hi, Aunt Donna!) to ask if I still had any of the family history research I did back in college.  It was my freshman year, and the half-semester-long project in my English Comp class was to write yet another research paper.  I'd been writing research papers since middle school...and I was so sick and tired of having to research and write about the typical, overdone topics.  When my professor met with me to discuss/approve my topic, he encouraged me to think outside the box in regards to what we typically think of as research papers.  We tossed around several ideas together, but as soon as the idea of researching my family history came up I knew instantly that was the topic I wanted to delve into.  

What followed was weeks of reaching out to older family members, conducting telephone interviews and exchanging letters.  Extended family members shared photocopies of genealogical charts, public birth/marriage/death records, and even pages out of books that referenced our ancestors.  I had never enjoyed a research project more during my entire educational career.  

While I struggled a bit in how to correctly format my sources for the research paper's works cited page, I still received an A on my project.  And then I tucked it away, having to focus my attention on the next assignments. 

When Aunt Donna asked if I still had this research available to share, it took quite a while for me to figure out where I had tucked it away.  If you're curious, it was in my old trunk, tucked in with high school journals, my baby book, and a scrapbook filled with clippings from teen magazines about the New Kids on the Block.  That was a riot to revisit!  But I digress... 

I'm feeling so inspired, and after rereading this decade old college assignment, I find myself wanting to continue researching.  I want to not only see if we can reach even further back in time on different branches of our family tree, but I also want to see if we can fill in the gaps.  I want to see if we can flesh out our family history beyond just dates and places, but learn as much as we can about the lives that were lived between the dashes.