The Perks of Petrovice

As a history lover I've always wished I had a more tangible heritage. For some reason I've always felt a weird sort of identity gap. I've always felt that I perhaps lacked something that might separate me or grant a unique distinction in my life.

When my grandfather first began researching our genealogy I latched on to the famous "relatives" as if they were a feather to stick in my cap. But it all felt so very removed from reality--too distant. And with the immigration coming so long ago and in my mind from a "generic" place like the British Isles, it lacked luster to my young eyes. It all seemed too normal.

Identity had to be found in other places instead. Growing up in Arkansas it seems that I latched onto the affiliations that wuold separate instead of include. I rooted for the Cubs in the land of Cardinal fans, the Longhorns in the land of Razorbacks. Most avidly though, I clutched onto my maternal roots as a Texan. It is hard to conjure an apt metaphor to illustrate the....uncouthness of this particular stance as an Arkansan. Texas and Texans it seems are always hated or loved. There is no middle ground. Arkansas seemingly suffered in the shadow of Texas much like a little brother might (for most I think this was largely a result of many years of Southwest Conference football games).

This path of separation continued into my years living in Texas as I began to trumpet my Arkansan roots. Though never a hater, it was as a resident of Texas that I first realized how to appreciate the land I called home. I suppose I was wishing so badly to have an identity--wishing I came from somewhere--that I never realized I had always had one.

My own desire for an identity led me to be jealous of those I knew that had, as I saw it, tangible roots. So it was with some excitement that I found out for the first time that my grandfather knew the exact town, even the exact street address of the house in which my great great grandfather lived in Petrovice, a small town in the southwestern corner of the Czech Republic (though my Czech is nonexistent, I'm fairly certain that, irony of ironies, Petrovice is translated as "Peter Ville"). For the first time in my life I felt an attachment to a place, that those "tangible roots" were for the first time indeed tangible.

Though the world is vast, though there are many things I want to see, and though there are many places left to explore, for the time being they must take a back seat to my pilgrimage to Petrovice. It is perhaps premature to speak of this since it will be many months before this idea blooms into reality. The actual difference this discovery makes in my overall personality is most likely negligible, it is within the scope of possibilities that the biggest difference is made. I'm still the person who somewhat inexplicably roots for the Cubs and Longhorns but I've been granted an additional genealogical anchor that paradoxically opens up the world a little bit wider for me. And that, in my eyes clouded with the love of place and history, is a wonderfully uplifting gift.