I'm grading PLE (Personal Learning Environment) maps and analyses, which help a person to map out their professional/academic/leisure learning environments, in order to understand their knowledge/experience strengths and weaknesses.  One assignment triggered a very specific memory in response, about which I probably hadn't thought in many years. 

I remember in my undergrad, 25 years ago (!), when I still thought I would be an anthropologist, I was tasked with creating a kinship chart--sort of like a family tree, but with symbols that represent people, altered to reflect deceased or ostracized members.  My chart was large, but almost every person who should have been intimately close in a traditional extended family, was shaded, meaning they were dead or estranged.  Of course, knowing most of my family was deceased, on both sides, was not news, but seeing it laid bare before me was deeply uncomfortable.  I stared at it a long time, uncertain of how I felt.  A friend walked into my room and asked what I was doing.  After the explanation, she too stared at it for a while, before bursting into laughter.  She kept apologising for laughing at something that was so sad, but it was funny, in a tragic way.  I, too, began to laugh, until we were both crying.  We hugged and I thanked her. 

At the time, I couldn't tell you (or her) why I was thanking her, but today I can pinpoint that moment as one that was foundational to my desire to help create connections between people and my interest in community bonds and identity.

 

Legend of typical kinship relations, scraped from Google.