Journal+6

3. Family Consider:
 * Family stories/legends
 * How people in your family met (or parted)
 * Characters in your family
 * Special family occasions
 * Family rituals/traditions
 * Roles and responsibilities in your family

Through gnarled lips and hushed whispers the legends of my ancestors have never died. Not all tales glow with the same intensity though, there are those legends that exist much more vibrantly than others. It was a calm summer day in mid-August; I had chosen to spend the final weeks of my summer break visiting my grandparents who resided in Sichuan, China. As I rode silently on the train that was headed to Mt.Ohm, my grandmother raised her head from the Chinese newspaper that she had been intensely scrutinizing and muttered a few syllables to me in the native Sichuan dialect. She was wondering if I wanted to hear the legend of my great……………great grandfather. Seeing that there was nothing better to do I said yes. Within seconds my grandmother proved just how great a raconteur she was.

The tale began in ancient China, a time when China was still divided into three main sub-countries. As a young teenager my ancestor had become very close friends with a man who was destined to be the next emperor. They spent much time playing and studying together, as well they shared many of their most personal secrets with each other. But as time passed, as did the prime of their friendship. They spent less and less time with each other, mainly due to the fact that the emperor had to devote more and more time to learning how to rule an entire country. Soon their paths split completely as my ancestor also went on to lead his own life in a different part of China. One day, after years had gone by since the last time my ancestor had seen his childhood best friend, the sight of a beautiful peacock instantly casted a wave of nostalgia across my ancestor's mind. He reminisced of all the gifts his friend had given him when they were younger and he thought to himself, "what better a gift than this heavenly bird to give to the emperor." Surreptitiously, my ancestor went to grab the peacock but he was a step too late, ending up with but a handful of feathers. Despite this, he still went on, making his way across miles and miles of forests, rivers, valleys, and plateau's to deliver the few feathers to an old friend. Finally, upon presenting the feathers to the emperor, my ancestor recounted the unfortunate incident with the peacock, and then apologized before handing over the gift. The emperor then responded by saying, "Dear friend there is no need to apologize, for this is one of the best gifts I've ever received."

"What do you mean?" asked my ancestor, "each day you are presented with hundreds of gifts worth fortunes from complete strangers, yet this is all I have to show for after years of friendship with you.

"It is true that your gift doesn't come close in monetary value to some of the other ones, but its value to me easily outweighs any of the other gifts you were referring to because I know that it was with a sincere intention that I was able to receive it."