Three weeks into Coronavirus lockdown and I am berating my teenage son. In his boredom and anxiety he has taken to spending every available hour on Minecraft and much as I love to scorn helicopter parents, it worries me. I too am bored and anxious.
‘Well if you’ve nothing better to do…,’ my mother’s voice reels off a list of jobs: practice your trumpet; mow the grass; clean the bathroom. All equally unappealing, even to my own ears. He gives me the death stare and I leave the room quickly, before he senses my hypocrisy. I am already too late.
Some time later, becoming aware that I have heard neither music, nor mowing, nor splashing from the bathroom, I seek him out. He is sitting on the floor in the living room, surrounded by papers and photographs. In her last year, my mother developed an interest in family history, and he has found the fruits of her research. I consider my child of the future, adrift amongst the flotsam of our shared past. Names, places, dates float to the surface: Murdoch Maclean, born 1791, Gairloch, crofter; Mary Lamont, born 1804, Lochcarron, domestic servant; Alice Armstrong Mitchell, born 1907, Callander, scholar.
‘Who were all these people?’ he asks, and I explain that they were the people that came before us, who thought the world was theirs, just as we do now. Generations of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Long ago they too slouched about the house, tried to dodge their chores and argued with their mothers. Long ago they eagerly anticipated their futures and learned to cope with life’s disappointments. They lived, laughed, loved, and, if we are anything to go by, also slumbered, sulked, sniped. Now all that’s left are their empty names.
My son picks up a photograph. A young-ish woman, dressed in her best clothes for the picture; a silk jacket with half an inch of white lace at the neck. Her hair is plaited loosely round her head and she wears a small smile, as if she is unsure of what to do. This is Mary Maclaren, my great-grandmother, the photo probably taken towards the end of the nineteenth century. Although I never met her, I know that she was tiny yet formidable; a woman who, as a young wife on the unfamiliar Canadian prairie, remained undaunted by the astonishing apparition in her yard of a First Nation chief in full regalia; a woman who, in her old age, lived alone in a house perched high on a Berwickshire clifftop.
‘She looks a bit like Granny,’ my son says, handing the photograph to me. He is right, there is a strong resemblance to my mother, particularly around the eyes and in their smiles. Suddenly I am reminded of another striking similarity and scroll through the photos on my phone to find the picture of my sister’s daughter, her pale youthful face a palimpsest of these two women from previous generations.
I tell my son that Mary Maclaren was just one of his sixteen great-great grandparents and that by extrapolation his DNA is comprised of thousands of antecedents: those he knows and loves; some whose names and photographs lie here on our living room floor, others whose names have long blown away on the four winds. And that in time he too will contribute his genes to future generations and perhaps be recognised in the features of someone not yet born.
This both intrigues and horrifies him. As children, we are often told we are “the spit” of someone, but rarely do we acknowledge the capricious coincidence behind the likenesses and the sheer arbitrariness of what emerges from the gene pool: Great-Uncle Murdo’s crofter’s hands; Auntie Alice’s dainty feet; Mum’s knowing smile. Of course, physical likeness is not all that’s bestowed. A sunny personality or a tendency to alcoholism – it’s all paid forward by the spin of the genetic wheel. Personally, I have always hated my shyness, while my children all lament their freakishly small ears, but it could have been so much worse…
I decide to cut my son some slack. Small ears notwithstanding, I realise there are some things I can choose to impart for a better future. Kindness and good humour have been sadly underappreciated in a world obsessed with wealth and celebrity. Self-confidence is more useful than straight A’s. The ability to love is the most precious gift of all.
‘Tidy this up, and you can go back on Minecraft,’ I tell him. He looks at me narrowly, disbelieving his luck, then swiftly bundles all the papers up and scurries off, before I can change my mind.