HEART BEAT: Happy Mother’s Millennia

By FELICIA MITCHELL/Columnist

My friend Susan told me about the National Geographic Genographic Project, an effort to track human migration patterns over a long period of time.  I thought that participating in the project would help me in my own efforts to understand my relationship with my mother, so I swabbed my mouth for a sample of mitochondrial DNA.
Mitochondrial DNA is used to trace female ancestry for hundreds of generations.  I can’t say that I understand the concept all that much, though, only enough to know that my mtDNA is pretty much the same as my mother’s, and her mother’s, and so on.  All the way back practically to the beginning of time.
When the result arrived, though, I was a little disappointed.  My genetic type, or haplogroup, is H, just plain H, with no variation from the Cambridge Reference Sequence.  That means that my mother and I pretty much match the woman from Cambridge whose mtDNA established the prototype for a type of European ancestry.
What was I hoping for?  Something more exotic, I guess, some surprise.  Then I realized that everything my mother had always told me about her ancestry, at least on her mother’s side, and so on down that line, was simply true.  Word of mouth is probably as factual as a swabbed mouth, when you come right down to it.
Even so, I guess it was worth a little something to learn a little more about this genetic bond I share with my mother.  What does it mean, though, for the matrilineal lineage to stop with me?  Because that’s what’s going to happen.  I have no daughters.  My first cousin has no daughters.  We both have sons.  What will we teach them? 
First, a family tree involves so much more than DNA.  It includes bits of old lace, broken china, oddly matched sterling, and photographs of people who lived a long time ago.  It includes the names of towns, medical histories, and rearranged dreams.  That’s what I can share with my son at the same time I hope for grandchildren (not just yet) I can pass my mother’s stories on to. 
In the meantime, I am tending my garden.  In some fashion, or place, it will be here long after my mother and I are both gone from this earth.  This weekend, I walked around the yard, locating plants and flowers that started out in my mother’s yard in South Carolina more than twenty years ago and then found their way into mine.
Some pink phlox and red bee balm, along with the liriope, remind me most of my mother’s yard.  The phlox and bee balm fit right into this habitat.  Liriope, or lilyturf, which originated in East Asia, is far from home in Meadowview, Virginia. 
But if I look at the map that National Geographic sent me, with my mother’s ancestral path moving from Africa through the Middle East over to what would become known as Great Britain, the liriope doesn’t seem so out of place.
Dr. Felicia Mitchell teaches English at Emory & Henry College.