I’m the One They Call the Seventh Son

If, as they say in most every mystic tradition, being the seventh son of a seventh son is a big deal, then what is there to say about me? I am the only daughter of an only daughter of an only daughter. Our line ends here. Is there nothing mystically inherent in that?


One of my cousins asked me...well, actually, she asked me many questions and among them were these: Why are we still in communication with each other when there is enough of an age difference that we don't know each other very well? She was grown and out of the house by the time I was aware of her, but I adored her mother, who was my great-aunt. My mother adored both of them. So why wouldn't I want to be in touch with her? She is a link in a very tiny chain. Which brought the next question: Why am I so obsessed with finding Lillian Rube and the rest of my long-lost family?


That I cannot answer. I can only say that I am called to her. Or she calls to me. I have her face. I took care of her child, my mother, at the end of her life when she was little more than the infant Lillian left behind ninety-odd years before. I have a piece of her handwork, an embroidered sampler which reads "The Last Rose of Summer." It was unfinished at the time of her death and is unfinished still, almost 100 years later. I can't finish it. I have considered framing it, but who would care about it after I am gone?


My mother was the only daughter of her mother, indeed, the only child. Her mother was the only child (I think) of her father, but one of many sisters born to the same mother. So there I am: the only daughter of the only daughter of the only daughter. Who were these women? Are they the reason I work with my hands? Are they why I cook? Do I have their hands, their hips, their impossibly curly hair? Who were their mothers? Why is it so hard to trace the matrilineal line in genealogy?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/29 at 07:29 PM in Maudlin Crap


(1) Comments
#1. Posted by Jane Irons on January 19, 2016

Lynnie, Finish the sampler Lillian didn’t finish. Somehow indicate her name and the year AND your name and the year you finish it for her. You know you love that sampler with the haunting yet quaint phrase. It describes all 3 of you. It describes all of us, really. Yet you are the only child woman who can leave this legacy. What an honor.
The frosted glasses with whimsical horses of a merry-go-round you and I gleefully drank from together as children you kindly, generously gave to me. That is my honor of the Auerbach and Kanerak Families. My honor to you and to our friendship of decades. My honor to you who is my beloved, stupendously intelligent, crazy creative, beautiful and capable , accomplished Jewish woman. My friend, Lynne.
I’ll close by saying, my father was an only child of an only child and I have one child, my son, Austin Irons Coupe. I have spent my life studying principles and personalities, acquiring valuable art in all its forms, precious gems and jewelry mostly custom made for me and designed by me, antiques of the classical periods, fine automobiles, nice home in a gorgeous place and more. Then I remember I will die and everything will go to some skank from Lakeland or some such who Austin marries. All my manuscripts will go unread and those cherished items of mine—how could they know the value? To the dump they will go. Except my jewels. Who ever knew me? It won’t matter. I’ll be dead. Unconscious. Won’t care. So, guess what, I have figured out how to pre-empt my death. In life I don’t care.

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