The candles flame grew long as the night advanced. Her eyes peered through her readers, trying to find a hint to her purpose, her reasoning, her place in this world.

She had looked to others and worked and studied, but nothing could fill the void. She searched her own life for steps taken, wrong decisions, something that would point her in the right direction. Nothing was resolved. Maybe it could be found looking beyond herself.

They say history repeats itself until we learn and move by it. But what history should she investigate? she pondered. She never liked the history texts of school, boring facts and figures with little association to the whys, impact, and lessons to prevent it again. Perhaps she needed to look closer to home, within her own family.

She flipped through the text of old, ratted pages in the binder her mother provided long ago. It wasn’t a wonderous adventure to finding out she was the great-great whatever of some great historic figure. Farmers, laborers, coal miners, and such filled that line going back to England. Hmph…, she always thought she was Irish and Scottish, but now, English too? Humphries, the real family name. Turns out the Irish name was an adoptive father a few generations back. And to add to that, in her veins ran the blood of a noted “Indian-Killer”. Glorious, she rolled her tired eyes. Embarrassing was more like it.

She spied some side notes sketched onto the margin, indicating a connection to Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Interesting, but still, not too revealing. However, she was tired, and her bed was more welcoming at this late hour. She would need to track that down another night. She shut the book and blew out the candle.

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Any similarities to real events or people are purely for story-telling purposes and should not be considered historical facts in any way.