‘Dancing with Ancestors’ began as a quest for my family history; reaching back and pulling threads through to the next generation; giving my children and their cousins a future with a connection to the past. A family history, whose absence, due to the ravages of war and immigration, I have mourned. There were threads I knew and many more that I didn’t. Some were particularly strong; refusing to be severed, hanging on tenaciously and waiting for someone to pick up and weave back into the family narrative. These threads were my mother’s memories. Memories that she would sprinkle sporadically into conversations when were little. And over time, when as adults, we prodded more, they flowed from her with more intent.

Of the core six memories I start with Waiting for Father: Part I. The process of recreating a memory requires excavation and it is in the excavation where I been able to pick up and transform some lost or broken threads of my ancestors and carry them through to uncover the truth about who I am by uncovering who they were; even if I have had to mend with my own surmising.

In my quest, I have often taken comfort in these words of the late Israeli novelist and journalist Amos OZ, “facts have a tendency to obscure the truth.” We are all connected to the past and even if the threads to our past seem slight, I will find them and make them visible. And if facts obscure the truth, then my mother’s memories can serve as the foundations for new ones.