Extending the Silvan horizon

The pages continue to fill up within my manuscript with some amazing additions to the story. Another descendant from another family that traveled on the S.S. Orteric with my grandmother has surfaced and shared stories, people's names, relationships and documents with me (thank you, Julie!) Incorporating these Silvan friends and Martin relatives has added depth to our story, the good, the bad and the sad. It was real. It was frightening. It was awesome. Manuela's Petals now stands 135 pages long and going strong; quickly becoming three dimentional, as has always been my intent.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day traversing the country of Spain, minutely dissecting its mountain ranges, the railroad tracks in the early twentieth century and the villages and cities that lie between Fuentesauco and Seville for the Spain part of our story. Seeing these Spanish names and learning how the rivers run hither and yon and the mountain ranges stretch across its bounty has made me itch to move up my Spain trip but alas! June 2011 it is.

I work hard to buckle down my impatience as I wait for family members to complete and return family history forms for the other parts of my genealogical research. Sighing loudly does not hurry the post office lady, nor does it rush their email responses. But it feels good so I will continue to sigh, write, research some more and look forward to new family horizons.

If only, I'd started this quest sooner; talking with my loved ones and writing down their stories. For now, I rely on all the descendants they shared their stories with and I smile toward the bulk of them as they grow and come alive with their telling.