by Barbara Koska Timm

Be wise as you choose
The mate of your youth,
Don't leave this decision to fate,
Or your partner may change
And grow horribly strange,
And your feelings of love turn to hate!

You may beg and coerce
As your marriage grows worse,
You may plead and cajole all in vain.
As your marriage collapses
Into nightmare mishapses,
You hope he gets hit by a train.

At the end of the road
You shrug off the load.
And, signing the papers, you're free.
Then you find out the truth,
When you search out your "Roots"
He's still there on your family tree!

I went searching for an ancestor,
I cannot find him still.
He moved around from place to place
and did not leave a will.
He married where a courthouse burned.
He mended all his fences,
and avoided any man who came
to take the U.S. Census.

He always kept his luggage packed,
this man who had no fame,
And every 20 years or so,
this rascal changed his name.
His parents came from Europe.
They should be on some list
of passengers to the U.S.A.,
but somehow they got missed.

And no one else in this whole world
is searching for this man.
So, I play geneasolitaire
to find him if I can.
I'm told he's buried in a plot,
with tombstone he was blessed;
but weather took engraving,
and some vandals took the rest.

He died before the county clerk
decided to keep records.
No Family Bible has emerged,
in spite of all my efforts,
To top it off, this ancestor,
who caused me many groans,
just to give me one more pain
betrothed a girl named Jones.

found on Sandy's Genealogy Site

Many, many years ago
When I was twenty-three,
I was married to a widow
Who was pretty as could be.

This widow had a grownup daughter
Who had hair of red,
My father fell in love with her
And soon they, too, were wed.

This made my dad my son-in-law
And changed my very life.
My daughter was my mother,
For she was my father's wife.

To complicate the matters worse,
Although it brought me joy,
I soon became the father
Of a bouncing baby boy.

My little baby then became
A brother-in-law to dad.
And so became my uncle,
Though it made me very sad.

For if he was my uncle,
Then that also made him brother
To the widow's grown-up daughter
Who, of course, was my step-mother.

My father's wife then had a son
Who kept them on the run.
And he became my grandchild
For he was my daughter's son.

My wife is now my mother's mother
And it makes me blue ~
Because, although she is my wife,
She is my grandma, too.

If my wife is my grandmother,
Then I am her grandchild.
And every time I think of it,
It simply drives me wild.

For now I have become
The strangest case you ever saw.
As the husband of my grandmother,
I am my own grandpa.