
I Want to Know the Leaves
My great-grandmother deserves better than a name on a family tree. I want to understand the people between the names and dates, and leave something of my own story behind.
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My great-grandmother deserves better than a name on a family tree. I want to understand the people between the names and dates, and leave something of my own story behind.

A day at the scanner becomes a Birdwell family album: Ivana Sue, Papa Birdwell, Big Mama, and the lives that still shape ours.

Four gold crowns, three generations on the road and the woman who kept the clock.

Boarding school, invisible fatherhood and what happens when a girl dad is left alone with modern technology.

A number crosses generations and refuses to behave like a coincidence.

A restored portrait, a DNA cluster and the patient labor between them.

An heirloom becomes evidence when the story stops floating loose from the object.

Restore the damage. Preserve the people. Leave uncertainty visible.

Highway 6, the Brazos and the institutions that keep a family trail legible.

Two hundred fifty years later, freedom remains both inheritance and unfinished work.