The Ancestors in my Brain - Maddy Whitby

Police Crime and Sentencing Bill Protests, Photo by Maddy Whitby, 2019

I heard the stories of stories at the fireplace from my mum. She remembers what was remembered before her, an understanding of the world passed on with importance sewn into the tone. She must mimic her father, because sometimes I didn’t recognise my mother within her voice.

She told me about my great grandmother many times, how she said she’d ‘take the children and go’ if my great grandfather wouldn’t look outside. He opened the curtains and saw the mayor (his neighbour) being dragged through the town by his own constituents. My family fled days after. 

I heard about the internment of my great grandfather on the Isle of Man upon his arrival to the UK. He was classed as an alien, while my great grandmother (with her strong German accent) was left to seek employment alone in 1940’s Britain.

It is powerful for me to know these words, to know the experiences of my family, when so many wished them gone and erased from the pages of the world. 

Maybe that’s wrong of me - maybe I should feel angry about the need for the existence of stories like these - but more than angry, I am grateful that they survived. That they had the time to tell my mother about their lives. Power, after all, is the ability to influence others. I only realise it now; I told almost nobody I am Jewish until I was seventeen.

My grandfather was the youngest, but unfortunately, I was never able to meet him. He died when my mum was young. She always thought we would have got on, and I agree. He once floated the gate to Trinity College, Cambridge down the river as a drunken prank. And I’ve read his report cards from age 12 to 14 - like me, he wasn’t fond of applying himself sometimes. I think of him when I am at my desk, desperately seeking inspiration and feverishly sweating out loosely connected paragraphs. I think of what he might say - or, I suppose - what my Mum would say if I asked her opinion on the matter.

I think of my grandfather when I am protesting against the police, crime and sentencing bill outside Sheffield town hall. He was a lawyer - would he understand? Surely he would agree that it hands the police too much power, too little culpability. I think of him again when I go to pride. Would he still love me if he knew I was queer? His opinion matters, even though I can’t know what it is, but my mum thinks he wouldn’t have given a toss. 

Trinity College, Cambridge, Photo by Maddy Whitby, 2019

“It is powerful for me to know these words, to know the experiences of my family, when so many wished them gone and erased from the pages of the world.”

But I think of all my lineage I see the UK slide further and further into an intolerant descent. Where the birthplace of one’s grandparents may determine your right to live in your own country. I sometimes wonder what they would think of Brexit, for G-d’s sake. Would they be thinking of making an escape, fearful of the government, just as they did when the mayor was killed in 1938? 

I lie with my laptop balanced on my chest at 02:41 AM, and google ‘working holiday visa Canada’. The ancestors that live in my brain laugh at me. We would already have gone, they say.