The Family Matriarchs

What would our family trees look like if we focused on the matriarchal line?

I come from hearty, Mormon pioneer stock on both sides of my family. My ancestors were brave, faithful, somewhat wild individuals who packed up their lives and walked across the continental United States toward what they hoped would be a better life. They were deeply distrustful of the federal government of the United States and many of them were polygamists. Still, there was something powerful in their particular brand of zealotry.

After their cross-country trek, they settled a valley that was desolate and, up until that point, untouched by European settlers. Imagine walking thousands of miles, crossing mountains and valleys and plains, losing loved ones… and then completely starting a society from scratch.

I’ve thought about this courage, this strength my ancestors exhibited, often. They buried people on their journey here. Wives lost husbands, husbands lost wives. Children lost parents and parents buried their babies. It was harsh, unforgiving, and isolating. They had been driven from place to place, community to community, all because they were desperately trying to find home.

Once they got here, they had to quite literally start from scratch. They built their homes, irrigated the desert valley, created industry, founded cities, fought and died and gave birth and fell in and out of love.

Brigham Young, the perplexing prophet of old, famously proclaimed upon arrival to the future Salt Lake Valley, “This is the place.” Maybe he said that because it burst out of him spontaneously, an exclamation of joy. Maybe he said it because he had to convince those around him that yes, this dry, desolate, unforgiving landscape was indeed where he believed God had lead them.

It must have been hard to believe, looking at what there was and trying to make sense of it. Seeing 150 years into the future wasn’t possible for these sturdy men and women, but even if they had imagined it, I’m sure they had no concept of what Utah would someday become.

And even then, there were hundreds who didn’t make it here.

I’ve visited several sites where these pioneers lay buried across the United States. Some places are humble and isolated, not drawing much attention. Some are more frequented by visitors and have been memorialized by stone epitaphs or grave markers.

But there is a common theme in these places, no matter how humble or grand.

Women walked every step of the trek to their promised land. My great, great, great grandmothers walked alongside the men in their lives. They sacrificed everything, just as the men did. They left behind family members they knew they would never see again. They abandoned their homes and their friends, the only communities they knew. Many buried children along the way, and the guilt and pain they must have felt while doing so is profound. I believe in intergenerational trauma, and if I look at my daughter for long enough, I believe I can feel traces of that grief, buried deep within me.

Their faith was zealous, hard to understand, and without perfection. They chose their path, and while doubts surely followed them, they followed through. Many gave their lives in pursuit of what they hoped would be Zion, and of those, many have been forgotten in time and the harsh landscape where their cobbled-together graves lay.

The women of this generation — this time and place — were every bit as hardy, self-sacrificing, and ludicrous as the men.

And yet, their names aren’t remembered, even on their own headstones, those markers at the spots where their living sacrifices ceased to be enough.

This is the common thread which runs through all of these places of rest.

I visited one of these graves last summer. It was a beautiful site — a green valley siloed between rolling hills on either side. The beauty did not belie the atrocities which had taken place there.

Hundreds of people were slaughtered in that spot over the course of a few days, many years ago. Women and children died at the hands of people they thought they could trust.

A beautiful monument marks the place where it happened, on a hill overlooking the valley below. Though the monument couldn’t be more than a few decades old, the names weren’t updated to reflect our times. While some women had their full names carved there, many others didn’t. They are remembered in tandem. Robert Thornhill and Mrs. Robert Thornill, Stephen Lancaster and Mrs. Stephen Lancaster.

Women whose entire identities — every part of their being, in both life and death, reflected through the names of the men in their lives. Best case scenario: she loved the man whose name overrode her own. But even then, should love wipe out an identity? Should partnership replace personhood?

Worst case scenario: she neither loved nor respected the man whose name she shared. Perhaps he was cruel. Maybe he saw her as little more than another mouth to feed, much like cattle or dogs.

There is much distinction between the best and worst case scenarios in this case, but the end is the same. Names overriding identities, etched on stone in an attempt to create a memory, which instead was memorialized erasure.

We trace our lineage through our fathers. It takes two to create personhood, and yet only one is usually remembered. Not the one who carries the child to life, who feeds it with their own body and soul, but the one who could be important or unimportant, depending on what they choose. A mother cannot ever stop being a mother — her very body is etched with the evidence of that relationship. A father can be wonderful, can be terrible, or can not be at all. It is through our mothers, then, that we should remember our history, because in their history, they can never forget us.

When I was born, I was named Samantha Fox Seegmiller. Seegmiller was my dad’s last name, and in turn, his father’s. My paternal grandfather was one of those fathers who hovered between terrible and nonexistent. The marks he left on his family were more like scars. He is still alive. I hardly know him.

So, I was Samantha Seegmiller because of him, and because of my dad, who stood and stands solidly in the wonderful category of fathers. I’m proud to have his name, but I believe that if he considered it, he wouldn’t be proud to have his father’s.

My middle name, Fox, was my dad’s mother’s maiden name. She has been Seegmiller for the last 60 years, even though she and my grandpa are long divorced. But for the first 20 years of her life, she was Fox, and I became a living relic of that time.

As a little girl, I was proud of my middle name, too. I loved to tell people I was named after my grandma, and such a pretty name to have. I dreamed of one day having my own children, so I could pass on this memory of my matriarch to them, as well.

Last November, I got my chance when my daughter was born. We chose her name early on, months before she came. Rose Fox Aramburu. Rose for me (who always wished it were my name), Fox for my grandmother, and Aramburu for her dad (another one who is undeniably wonderful.)

She and her name hold multitudes. She is not a Seegmiller. She does not hold that particular line of patriarchy in her name. I chose, instead, to preserve Fox — to preserve my grandma — in the arrival of this new, precious life.

My grandma is my hero. I could write a list of the reasons why, but I’ll share a memory instead. Walking into Barnes and Noble together on November 20, 2010. She purchases the thick, red and gold book for me and my hands shake with excitement. We walk to a Mimi’s Cafe across the parking lot, and over crepes, we read the first chapter of Harry Potter 7 together — the end of our favorite story.

My grandma is still alive, but her health is failing. I don’t know how much longer we’ll have together. But when my daughter was placed into my arms the first time just five months ago, I felt that they had been waiting for each other. Fox and Fox and Fox, all alive and breathing the same air, even if two of them won’t ever remember it.

My grandma will never die — not really. One day, her physical presence will leave us. I dread that day. But even then, she’ll continue in some, expansive way. Rose may not remember her, but she is her. She is Fox. She is the living legacy of a matriarch who, in my mind, is both the roots and branches of our family tree.

I am grateful for both the women and men in my family. Even the men who were terrible fathers, who turned their backs, who saw no value in seeing their wives as people. I may not hold respect for them, but I am them. That is the nature of a family. We must hold the good and the bad in both hands and force them together, into ourselves. We cannot be without both.

What I want — what I ache for — is the remembrance, reverence, and respect for the matriarchs in my family, and all families. The women who toiled, who suffered. The women who found joy in darkness and yet somehow fought for a better world. I wish I could go back and know their names and see their faces and hold their hands.

I wish I could learn from them. That is the true tragedy of what has been taken away from us in our patriarchal family trees. We’ve widely lost the ability to learn from our mothers and to revere them, as they deserve to be revered.

A part of me wonders if this is an inextinguishable fact of motherhood. That somehow, our toil and sweat and sacrifice brings along with it some lowering of esteem. Maybe the lines on our bodies and the widening of our hips and the breaking of our hearts — maybe it would mean less if we were revered more.

But that part of me is small, and probably wrong.

I will fight for the reverence of my matriarchs. I will work to remember their names and to know their stories. Not the stories of their marriages, or even of their motherhood. The stories of who they were, as people. As individuals, with identities of their own. With (gasp) names of their own. They were them, and they are me.

To know them is to know myself, and to love them is to complete the circle that has been broken for so long.

So to my mother, Marci, the love of my life. To my grandmothers, Anne and Bonnie, the builders, captains, and crew of our family ship. To Lavella and Thora, Sidsel and Leona — the women whose memories are foggy in my mind but whose influence has been profound. To Mary Ann and Jennie Belle, to Lola Rosalia and Julianne Maria. Mabel Helen and Mary, Annie Matilda and Martha Alsina. To Lorene.

Thank you. I love you. I am you.