Pt. 1: Why We Are Cousins

EXPECTATIONS MANAGEMENT NOTE: This is not a parody like others you’ve seen on UsedWigs. It’s not supposed to be funny. This is real.

Fact: My grandmother’s maiden name was Heath. Fact: Sarah Palin’s maiden name is Heath. Republican-style fact synthesis: That makes us cousins!

Jealous?

From having a shared last name to being cousins might sound like a stretch, I know. From PTA to small-town mayor to ceremonial governor to leader-in-waiting of the free world sounded like a stretch, too, a month ago. Stretching is in. Don’t worry.

Fact (true, non-Republican kind): The Heaths in both my family tree and Sarah’s can be traced back to England in the 1500s, and came over to Massachusetts in the 1600s, right at the founding of this great U.S. America.* In case you don’t understand: Our ancestors were also cousins.

As if the family tree weren’t enough proof: Just look at the noses of my Great-Great Grandfather Heath (Nose 1) and her dad, my Uncle Chuck (Nose 2). They’re clearly the same. Cousin Sarah and I share a nasal heritage. Maybe that’s why we talk the same, too!

I wasn’t surprised when I seen my cousin up there next to John McCain on August 29. I knew she was ready. Well, I was a little surprised. I was surprised before I wasn’t surprised, let’s put it that way.

I was also surprised that she was my cousin. But she clearly is.

Why did I wait till this moment to announce this fact? Because we Heaths like to surprise ya.

Now that I’ve established to everyone’s satisfaction that Sarah Heath Palin and I are cousins, how do I feel about it?

I feel AWESOME about it.

Mostly I’m excited that when (not if!) McCain/Palin wins in a landslide (FOUR MORE YEARS!) and the Palins move in to the vice president’s house at the Naval Observatory, which is, like, a mile from my apartment, that she’s going to be calling me to baby-sit Pillow and Trog or whatever their names are! My little cousins.

I don’t know nothing ’bout no baby-sitting! LOL. I guess it’ll be okay, though. I can watch the little special-needs baby, no problem. What could go wrong? Cousin Sarah doesn’t have much experience doing a lot of things, either, like whatever it is that VPs do. Who needs it? Everything will be fine.

In exchange for baby-sitting my little cousins, though, I expect to be handed a cushy government job from Cousin Sarah when she gets to Washington to clean it up. And I’ll say “Thanks,” but NOT “no thanks”! I’ll just say thanks, in other words.

Good luck in your debate tonight, Sarah! OMG you’re gonna do so good! But you wanna know what? No matter how good you do, you’ll still be my cousin.

Coming Soon: “Sarah Palin Is My Cousin, Part 2: First Cousins Putting Country First!” in which I discuss how Sarah and I are going to remake America. As a family.

*Shortly after that, the Supreme Court introduced the Constitution. But more about Sarah, Todd (hint, hint! Who’d be a good Supreme Court justice, huh?) and I and our place in history in Part 2.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

As another garbage year comes to a close, we traditionally gather with family and loved ones to count our blessings.

Okay, done.

Actually I had a very blest year and a nice holiday. I lost a few pounds, too, while I was home at the ancestral estate. My manorexia is out of control, which is a blessing.

During my visit I did some genealogy, which is a subject I plan to write about at greater length for Arianna.

When I was a teen I got these giant white poster boards and drew lines in pencil at every inch mark and then typed family members’ names on a typewriter and cut the names out and pasted them to the poster board, then drew family-tree lines to connect people. I did one for my mother’s side and one for my father’s side, naturally. I got all the information from my grandmothers, whose memory must have been extraordinary. They were the last generation to care about people, I guess.

Me, on the other hand… If you held a gun to my head, I still couldn’t even name all my aunts and uncles, let alone their kids. What? Oh, I mean my cousins.

Besides having a sieve-like memory, I’m an unlikely candidate for family historian for another reason that’s obvious to anyone who knows me.

Yet I diligently transferred all the information on those old poster boards into the computer. Hard work. I added it to the information I already had: I’ve traced my genealogy back hundreds of years on both parents’ sides. It’s easy to do now that the pro genealogists have been online long enough that all their work is there, pre-done for you at such free sites as RootsWeb.com and FamilySearch.org.

If you know a great-grandparent’s name (and it doesn’t hurt if the name is kind of unusual; some of my favorite first names in my tree are “Mehitable,” “Deliliah,” and “Chauncey”) and maybe their rough birth/death dates, you’ll be on the road to complete genealogical knowledge faster than you can say “killed by Indians” (a cause of death that crops up a lot in narratives about my family).

Speaking of that… My mom has befriended a neighbor who is, um, reputed to be in organized crime. Basically my parents are to them as the Cusamanos are to the Sopranos. Except my parents aren’t Italian.

(I’m scared to write about this! Luckily the reputed mobster is too old to Google-stalk me. Also, I will remain mute on the identity of my parents and where they live, just in case.)

So she went over there on Christmas Eve to say hello and he gave her this giant block of Parmesan cheese as a present. I had been needling my mom since I got there about being friends with people who may, for all she knows, be murderers, and she kept poo-pooing me in this weird way where I wasn’t sure if she was serious or not (“Nooo. They have very nice kids!” As though that and being in the mafia are mutually exclusive.)

So when she offered me a wedge of the Parmesan to take back to Washington with me, I demurred dourly: “I can’t take that cheese, Mom. It’s blood Parmesan.”

Unlike the big, reputedly mobbed-up family down the street, who had a large family gathering on Christmas, the closest I got to any relatives besides my immediate family during the holiday was seeing their names on those poster boards. That’s just as good as talking to them, though. The alive ones and the dead ones.

When I remember to do it, I derive strength from talking to my ancestors on the other side. They whisper incantations into my ear that I can use against my enemies. And they protect me.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.