I laughed when I typed the title of this piece.

Why I write this story? I cannot imagine not writing it.

My paternal grandmother, Helen Margaret Cain, and I were very close—especially during the first eight years of my life. I cannot remember a time when stories of arriving in the “new world,” traveling west by covered wagon, stagecoach, sea, and foot were not part of my everyday world. These were not stories pulled from books. They were living memories, handed down across generations, told with affection, humor, and reverence.

She spoke of cooperation and coexistence—of positive relationships with Native Americans, of shared knowledge, mutual support, and respect. As I grew older, I came to understand that what I had been given was a braid of truth, historical fact, imagination, and thoughtful supposition. And I came to see something else clearly: our families are far larger, far more intertwined, and far more blended than most of us ever imagine.

My paternal grandparents were my first teachers.

From a very young age, my grandfather took me outside at night to watch the stars. He pointed them out one by one, told me their names, and shared a child’s version of their stories—ancient, mythic, and scientific all at once. They took me to old forts, stagecoach stops, places where Native villages once stood, and even to the grave of a young Indian maiden. These were not tourist outings; they were lessons in memory and place.

We gathered manure from mountain pastures—rich fertilizer carried home in boxes to feed their garden. That garden was known throughout town for its beauty and fragrance. I loved eating meals outside on the old brick steps, surrounded by birdsong and blossoms—unless, of course, we had just fertilized.

Sometimes they played old records on a Victrola. The sound was scratchy and imperfect, but if I listened closely, whole worlds emerged—stories that would be considered politically incorrect today, but that revealed the attitudes, assumptions, and voices of another time. They also had a Steinway upright piano, which I was allowed to “play.” To my young ears, every sound felt like music. Both my grandparents played, and at different times all three of their sons took lessons, though music never quite claimed them the way it claimed me.

From my grandmother I learned practical skills—how to sew on a button, mend a tear, fix a zipper. She insisted her boys know how to cook, wash clothes, and repair their own clothing before she would allow them to marry. Her reasoning was simple and profound: life is fragile, and a person may one day have no one else to care for them. Independence was not optional; it was a form of respect for life itself. Though I wasn’t a boy, she made sure I learned the same lessons.

This is how knowledge is passed.

Much of what we know comes from someone else—who learned it from someone before them. Our tastes, habits, and preferences often trace directly back to childhood. The foods we love are often the foods that appeared on our family tables.

At my grandparents’ home, meals were rituals. The family sat together. Flowers from the garden were placed in the center of the table. The setting was formal and exact: dinner plate aligned with the chair, salad plate above and to the left, bread plate above and to the right, water glass above the bread plate. Napkin, knife, soup spoon, and teaspoon to the right; forks to the left. My grandfather sat at the head of the table and said the blessing before every meal. Conversation was lively, kind, and inclusive. Everyone was heard.

Even how we dress is inherited.

My sense of presentation came from my grandmother. I remember her preparing to go to town. We might have been working in the yard all morning, but before leaving we changed clothes, rinsed off, brushed our hair. She put on her makeup carefully. Red lipstick was always the final touch. I do not remember a single trip to town when she did not apply lipstick before walking out the door—gloves and purse in hand.

Then, just months before I turned nine, everything changed.

My family moved away from the place that had grounded me. The town was different. The church my mother joined was unfamiliar—nothing like what I had known. I was sent to a church school with multiple grades in one room. My mother was unwell and unable to care for her five children, so my maternal grandparents came to live with us.

What had been stable vanished.

Meals were no longer shared around a table. The rhythms of daily life fractured. Poverty, illegitimacy, Depression-era survival, and limited life experience became the new norm. My youngest sister, born seven years after me, did not grow up with the same influences or exposures. As a result, each of us carries a very different understanding of our family history. My siblings missed the firsthand experiences that shaped me so deeply.

Bone and Blood centers on my grandmother’s Irish lineage.

She taught through storytelling and through the written word. She taught civic duty, truth-telling—even when truth is uncomfortable or unpopular. These principles were not inventions; they were inheritances, passed down from ancestor to ancestor.

Before she died, she entrusted me with the family histories she had collected. I promised her I would pass the stories on—to my children and my grandchildren.

I think of this commitment as a promise—one I made long before I understood how to name it.

I call it the Promise of Fact and Essence.

Where facts exist, they are preserved as factual truth. Where they do not, the story carries the essence shaped by time, place, and lived experience.

This story is for them.

It is written to honor the lives that came before us and to preserve their stories for those yet to come. It is about passing forward the strength, courage, imagination, and resilience carried in our bone and blood.