Carbon Dating

Fall is in the air—and in my knees. The mornings are cooler, the maple leaves are turning, and the first of them have begun to carpet the trails.

It has been a busy few weeks. I flew to Calgary for a family reunion in Carbon, Alberta. Carbon was once a one-horse town populated by more than three hundred of my Baptist relatives. Even the horse has left. One restaurant and a small grocery store remain; most of the other businesses are boarded up. Meanwhile, the malls on the outskirts of Calgary creep ever closer across the prairie.

The Trump supporters who were plentiful three years ago have mostly faded into the background. Only one or two older men still cling openly to the patriarchy and the belief that men are the heads of their households. They pontificate until their wives tell them what to do, at which point they obey promptly.

Time moves on. There is beer at these events now.

Faces still turn when I enter—the family lesbian—but there is more interest than condemnation in their expressions these days. After seventy years, I have gone from scandal to curiosity. Another generation or two and I may become completely unremarkable.

My aunt is there, ninety-six years old, her intelligence and curiosity undimmed. She needs a walker because of her knees, but no one would describe her as frail. She is twenty-four years older than I am, and I find it unsettling to imagine living another twenty-four years. Not because her life seems diminished. Quite the opposite. It is simply difficult to imagine carrying on in this increasingly troubled world for another quarter century.

The cousins I adore are there too—the ones who grew up outside the Carbon bubble and were spared the Prairie Bible Institute during their teenage years.

My relationship with the family tree is complicated. Yet here we are, seven generations gathered in one place, ranging in age from six months to ninety-six years.

Our story reaches back to German farmers who came to Russia following Catherine the Great’s invitation in 1763. Later generations settled near Odessa. They were pacifists who had been promised exemption from military service. When that promise was revoked in the 1870s, thousands left. In 1884, two brothers from our family joined them, seeking a better life for their children.

A fierce fidelity to family and community helped them survive and thrive. That fidelity also demanded conformity. I can feel both inheritances in the room: loyalty and exclusion—and now, slowly, change.

I watch the younger generations parent. The children help with setting up and cleaning up. They are brought onto the stage for games and included in the life of the gathering. They are not treated as interruptions or decorations but as part of the continuing story.

People speak about the responsibility carried within that history: the obligation to leave a better life—and a better planet—for the generations that follow.

I can disagree with many of my relatives about religion and politics and still see their love for their children and their determination to leave them a better world.

The reunion reminds me that change is possible—not quick, inevitable, or ever complete. Seventy years have brought my family to a place where I am no longer shunned. People can loosen their grip on old certainties. Family trees can grow in directions their roots never imagined.

As the midterm election draws closer, I feel the familiar tightness gathering in my stomach. Across the room, the youngest child is six months old. I look from the baby to my ninety-six-year-old aunt and wonder what another ninety-five years will hold.

Those same seventy years have brought all of us to a climate crisis capable of undoing the future we say we want for these children. So much depends upon what we choose now, at the ballot box and beyond it.

Hope is not enough. Love for our families and communities must become action—through our choices, our votes, and the old beliefs we are willing to surrender—so that the six-month-old at this reunion might one day reach ninety-six, her intelligence and curiosity undimmed, in a world that has kept faith with her.

Kim