yearning for freedom

 the traditional storyteller, the keeper of family histories, character asides, and the essence of the very fabric of our lives, told stories for us and for our children. they told stories for our grandchildren. they told stories that one day would touch and be a conduit to the old ways, the old country, the old ones who have passed before us.

and now, that task has passed to me. the line is not my responsibility, but the story of our line is. and no matter how vocal my predecessor was, it is my time to speak, to rhyme, to reason- to tell the history as it was told to me. and maybe make it a little more interesting in the approach to it, without sacrificing the truth.

because in that line there were character models, there were people striving to touch the tops of mountains, to settle safely in their valleys, to be free in a crooked land... 

to be a character yearning for freedom.

such was the story of little Jimmy, a man with a pike, and a hoe, an axe, and a rake. a man of the land he did not even own. a man, who, oppressed as he was, looked out upon his fields yearning to call every foot, every yard, between the rock walls...his own.

his neighbors...most of them...had a similar story. and some of them looked around and saw the injustice and called for action. the kind of action you could do without losing everything you owned. and then some.

when you work yourself tired every night, to sit by the fire in the thatched house and wonder where your life has gone, surely, that in itself, may become a burden. not just for yourself, but for the wife, the child in her rocker, and your neighbors. when you are all afraid to act, because the history against your own has been brutal, you tend to steep in anger or relax in defeat.

but little Jimmy refused to sit still. he was neither little, nor in a mindset of defeat. he spoke the language of the sod with his neighbors- the one his oppressors could not understand- and as time passed, small measures became bigger measures until little Jimmy joined some of his neighbors by the light of the moon. 

in the dark farm country of rural Ireland in the 19th century, the British had a singular disadvantage- they lacked the same desire for freedom.

i have no idea how many times my ancestor Jimmy showed up at the meeting by the ford or at the clump of holly trees, but the meetings were frequent enough that he, and his fellow Moonlighters, up to mischief in the eyes of his masters, finally found themselves bound in chains and heading for Australia. 

many a man, yearning for freedom, found himself on a boat for the penal colony on the other side of the world. many lost ties forever with their kinfolk. the branch of Jimmy's line disappears in a mist of history, the details forgotten by the ones who have passed beyond.

but the story reminds those who now live, and who will follow me, that there was a character within our family who fought oppression the best he could and suffered a life of exile because he fought to free his family from tyranny. my children, my grandchildren, and my cousins should know what i know, that the story passes on, that we remember that our line has always fought for freedom, for a better life for our families. it is a story reminding us that we should never take our freedom for granted, because what we have, they did not have.