Irony seldom disappoints me. Often, it delights me.
I'm just back from a recent trip to see my daughter Brenda, her husband Idal, granddaughter Lela, 6, and our grandson Gabriel, who is closing in on his first year on this planet.
Our grandson's full name seems a perfect segue for this post: Gabriel Idal Mims Tchoundjo.
-- "Gabriel," in Hebrew, translates to "God is my strength," or alternatively "man of God." As an archangel, he appears whenever something big, indeed history-making, is about to occur: Daniel's prophecies of the future, including the End Times; announcing John the Baptist's unexpected coming, and then Mary's coming role as mother of the Messiah; he also is to trumpet in the End of Days, according to St. John's Revelation.
-- "Idal" reflects the given name of our grandson's father. It is a name that appears, in various forms, throughout both African and European cultures, often meaning "noble."
-- "Mims." That was a blessing from my son-in-law and daughter, a way for our family name to live on in the next generational bloodline. The family name goes back to the the Middle Ages, perhaps starting with a folks operating a ferry over the then-significant Mims River in the vicinity of modern-day Wales (Mymms), though DNA and genealogical records show more instances of the name in Ireland, as well as Middlesex, England (Mimms). In America, the name embraced lineages of the Cherokee, too.
-- "Tchoundjo." The family name of my son-in-law, whose origins go back to west-central Africa and the Republic of Cameroon. The history of his people is hundreds if not thousands of years older than the United States, and today they are united by their shared French and Bamileke languages.
West-central Africa generally was the origin point for the slave trade, though most of America's African slaves came from the Ghana-Senegal regions. Still, in the 1700s, some coastal peoples in Cameroon were abducted, by other tribes or white-led raiders, and sold to slavers headed to the Deep South. In other words, it is possible that some of my southern forebearers may have worked their plantations and farms with African labor bought on the auction blocks of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia.
Most Mimses fought for the South, but there are about 30 who donned blue uniforms -- a few of them whites from the Northern states, but more than two dozen of them African slaves who had escaped, or in rare instances been freed by their "masters." Recruited by the U.S. Colored Troops Divisions, they shed their blood for freedom under the only surname they had ever known, Mims.
The circle has closed with a union of love and bloodlines that stretches across continents, time and space, in the smiling, laughing form of a child named Gabriel.
One day during our trip, our rainbow family visited Harpers Ferry, where in 1859 abolitionist John Brown and his band tried to seize the armory with the goal of arming a slave rebellion. He failed, his followers either slain or imprisoned, and he was hung. But his act arguably accelerated the ultimate break between North and South, eventually leading to the end of slavery in America -- and the beginning of the long, tortuous path toward racial equality.
Somehow, it seemed very right to share that visit with my son-in-law, especially. A young man I have become so proud of in the short time I have known him. He is a brilliant medical professional, a newly sworn-in 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserves, a man of integrity and faith, patience and compassion. All those things, and more -- a loving husband and gentle, yet firm father.
We are Family.
