At the turn of the twentieth century, on a dusty North Carolina farm far removed from her family’s Swiss homeland, fifteen-year-old Emma G’schwind found herself in a family way. Whether she arrived at this state from a moment of passion or from some kind of coercion is unknown. Either seems plausible. She was neither beautiful enough to attract much trouble nor so lacking in affection from her family to go looking for it elsewhere; nevertheless, she was an unwed pregnant teenager in the deeply religious South, and her condition was a problem.

A year after she gave birth to a boy she named Alvin, Emma’s father married her off to a man nearly 30 years her senior, a German immigrant named George Laubscher, who lived on a neighboring farm. George gave Emma’s young son his surname, sparing the boy the shame of his bastard roots, and the couple would go on to have seven other children together, all of whom would grow to be upright citizens and fine representatives of their family name. Even Emma’s illegitimate firstborn would become a highly regarded town servant and Chief of Police for many years.

By all accounts, it appeared that this union had made a respectable woman of young Emma, and the couple lived out their days in the sleepy town of Vass, good God-fearing Methodists until the end.

If Emma believed she had been absolved of her youthful indiscretion through her marriage to George, however, she was mistaken. Her son Alvin would still pay a price for his absent father’s sin, just as the lines in Exodus had forewarned.

Of the six children Alvin and his wife Margaret raised together, three would die in alcohol related incidents. One would run off when she became a teenage mother, prompting her mother to disown her. Another—my grandfather John—would settle into family life only to later abandon his wife and three boys. Of those three boys, two would eventually take their own lives.

I am the final generation to pay the debt of this forefather’s sin.  

When the author of Exodus penned those lines, he knew nothing of genetics, of course, only that certain families seemed plagued by various demons, which could only be attributed to some moral failure of a long-dead ancestor. The lines were meant to serve as a warning against depravity, a caution to move through the world in a considered way. Who among them would be willing to condemn four generations with their actions? Perhaps this idea gave some people pause, but human nature tends to privilege the known present and the urgency of sins of the flesh. Everything else is mere fantasy.

I often wonder about the progenitor of this particular family line, the one who tipped the dominoes that have fallen one by one with each generation. And while the biblical warning is meaningless to me—I don't believe my family has been literally cursed for four generations—I do wonder what genetic legacy he has left to us. Alvin’s boys did not fare well, nor did their sons.

I know from DNA testing that Alvin's father was a Scotsman with roots in the ancient clan Campbell, but apart from that, I can never know anything more. I can only observe what his genes might have brought forth in each successive generation: the brown eyes and red hair. A blood clotting disorder. Tendencies toward addiction and mental illness. And while nature’s influence is obvious, nurture’s has been as well. In leaving, he provided an example of how easy it is to abandon one’s obligations.

I can’t help but wonder—which side holds the curse?

Are we cast in a mold, fully formed, or are we tossed into the fire and forged into the shapes we take?