My name is actually William Douglas (not William Willems, fortunately), but my mom’s name is Emily Willems, and the ancestor that I’m writing about now was named Dirk Willems. My mom has told me about this before, but I didn’t actually know the whole story until I researched it just now. Basically, all my family members on my mom’s side of the family, going back hundreds of years, were Mennonites, which are Protestants called Anabaptists. Anabaptists believed that only people who knew what they were doing should get baptized, as opposed to other Protestants who believed that everybody should be baptized at birth. In the Netherlands in the 1500s (specifically around 1569), the government stance was to support that of non-Anabaptists, and Anabaptists were extremely persecuted. Dirk was, of course, an Anabaptist and was imprisoned for his beliefs. He eventually managed to escape the prison (which used to be a palace) using a rope made of knotted rags.

Family history can tell a lot about a person and where they come from. It can tell where they got their mannerisms. My great great great grandfather was named Edgar Jennings. He was born and raised in Auburn, New York. He was a General in the New York State 27th Infantry. He fought in World War 1 and the Spanish American War. He was also a Commissioner of the Auburn Prison. He worked there for many years before a riot broke out. The first time he was caught in a riot he was hurt but nothing more then that. The next time it happened December 15th, 1929, he was taken captive and held as a hostage for 24 hours. During those twenty-four hours he was hung and tortured. He survived and went off the grid after that. We know that he went through and saw a lot of things in his lifetime. In the end it made him a stronger person and that strength has carried out through my entire family.

(brief disclaimer: Margulius is my last name)

Margulius.

It tumbles and somersaults
and lands with a splat!
on the tongue of the teacher
taking attendance.

As I introduce myself,
It twists into a goofy
smoke bomb poof
of spazzing colors.

And I can see the
bright blue bubbling
question marks pop up
over their heads.

It's Romanian, I say.

But that hardly explains anything.
It doesn't cover how
my last name came to be mine,
a 15-year-old girl in Vermont.
And it doesn't cover
the infinitely deep well beneath the
somersaulting syllables.

Margulius is Romanian.

But that's not the whole story.

Not even a fraction of it, actually.

I only know a part of it myself,
as follows:

Margulius is
a mother hanging
on to her ten-year-old son.
Each other and the old house

Death and despair
is not one's choice to wear,
but forced upon,
so cold so subtle;
NO NO NO there
shall not be a rebuttal.
This is final, this is forever, 
however we can dissever this death, this despair, 
yet still to leave us with one question.

Was it fair?