My great-great-great grandmother was born in France...supposedly.

My mother was born in 1963. She was an affair baby. I don't know much about my family besides the necessary information. "Your grandfather was seeing my mother in secret," momma would tell me. "His wife never knew. And here we are."

It's a strange thing not knowing who your family is. They don't want to see us (mostly because the matriarch doesn't have a clue). So we've had to search for everything ourselves. Therefore, I've been learning French.

Here's why.

I'm technically considered a third-generation American (dad's grandfather was born in Canada). I take great pride in it. My French ancestors shine through me in everything I do. I switch between foods on my plate. (Example: I must eat my eggs, then my hash-browns, then my eggs...) I'm not ashamed of sexuality (why should I?).

One of the biggest challenges I've ever faced was learning French. It's been three years since I began and the language is still very broken to me. I can say the necessitates: "Bonjour! Comment allez vous?" or "Bonsoir! A plus tard!" and, occasionally, "La poisson - combien? Je veux que le saumon." But, my God, French is the hardest tongue to learn - I'm convinced.

Since my mother never knew her great-grandfather (a man who worked on the railroads and spoke fluent French) the language is now dead in my family. Extinct. Nada. I wish so badly that I could have met him, but I believe he died before I was even born. And, even if he hadn't, he would have never known about me. Affairs do that.

I decided that I would pass on the language to my children when I was about seventeen years old. I said to myself one day, "Dear God, Mikaela. Your last name is Dault - get it together." I've always been self-educated (I received a GED because of some health issues as a teenager and couldn't finish high school - a burden I will carry into the end of my life) so I figured the task wouldn't be very hard. I catch onto things rather quickly and, according to my MBTI, INFPs learn languages very easily.

But it's not just the French language I've been trying to comprehend. It's also the culture and history. Some of it is almost weaved into my DNA and I'm a strong believer in genetic memories. (Here, have a look.)

Momma finally met her grandmother when I was around four years of age (which was probably in 1999. My God, I'm getting terribly old). Adrienne Lewis (maternal name: Revard) was a frail woman who was probably in her early eighties at the time. But the most surprising thing about great-grandmother Lewis is that she was a writer and a Roman Catholic - two things that my family really hadn't been very familiar with until I reached a respectable age.

There's a lot of her in me. For example, I write and have a strong gravitation towards the Catholic faith. Momma does not. But in other ways, the two of them were very connected. After all, this was her long lost grandma. But great-grandmother Lewis welcomed her with open arms, despite being the product of her son's (possible) greatest sin. And the rosary around her neck proved that her religious conflictions weren't powerful enough to stop the goodness in her heart.

Unfortunately, great-grandmother Lewis died along with her husband (and my great-grandfather) who was an English man. I never got to ask her great questions like, "Who exactly was your father?"

I practice French because my children deserve to know the history of their family. Whoever this great-great grandfather of mine was, he spoke his mother-tongue on the railroads. I'm assuming that he also ate his plate a certain way (well, hoping anyway). God willing, I'll marry a man who appreciates the culture like I do and, if he is German I'll have them learn that language as well.