I sometimes wonder if my grandparents - the off the boat (literally) immigrant ones - would write notes to themselves in their native language or in Americanized English.

I have furniture my grandfather built including a bedside stand with three drawers and there is pencil scrawl which I can’t discern to be English.

They must’ve thought it strange how completely assimilated - not merely imitative - my life was to what was to them an adopted country. One traveled to by choice, but also foreign.

Maybe aging is waking to the idea of being a descendant and potentially having descendants, a series of events long before and long after this pulse of consciousness winked into and out of being.