You see, my great-grandfather was an archeologist specializing in the Hebrew culture of the Solomonic period.
He led an expedition to Saudi Arabia to find evidence that Solomon’s empire had extended deep into what is now Saudi Arabia.
He found some ruins, a temple complex I believe, that he thought marked the southernmost border of Solomon’s empire.
His theory wasn’t very well received.
The archeological community was pretty uniform in their opinion of his discovery.
He was wrong, dead wrong.
At least that’s what they thought.
My great-grandfather never got a chance to show any of his evidence.
The temple complex was Egyptian, period.
Case closed.
His funding dried up and he was forced to abandon the dig.
He came home and retired from the university in disgust.
He never spoke of it again.
My great-grandmother had died early in my grandfather’s life, while my great-grandfather was on a dig.
My grandfather was raised by my great-grand-aunt.
My grandfather never forgave his father for his mother’s death.
He believed his father had killed his mother by leaving her at home to raise his two children while he went off for a year or two at a time on digs.
When my great-grandfather died, my grandfather packed everything in a steamer trunk (That’s the one sitting by the wall next to the fireplace.) and put it in the hay loft of the horsebarn.
My father died when I was ten and I went to live with my grandmother and grandfather.
My grandmother died when I was nineteen, while I was away at college.
It was cancer, I think. Grandfather wouldn’t tell me what she died of.
After I got my masters and finished graduate school, I went to work.
Within a few years, I found a man and fell in love with him.
We dated for a year, then we got married.
The first few years were good, but we were poor.
After a few years our marriage palled, my husband was a good man but he believed that the man should rule the household.
(Yes, I am that old! Just wait until you’ve heard the whole story, then you’ll understand!)
When he found out I couldn’t have any children all the joy seemed to go out of our marriage.
He blamed me for not having a family.
We couldn’t adopt, we didn’t have enough money.
I know he was upset the he couldn’t provide enough money for us to adopt.
Even with me working there wasn’t enough money.
He became authoritarian and tried to control every aspect of our lives.
He seemed to think if he watched every penny, there would be enough money.
But it didn’t help.
Then my grandfather died.
