Do You Have Kin

Did you ever read The Education of Little Tree?  Originally written by Asa Earl Carter in 1976, it’s been around for a long time. I’ve talked about the book before so I won’t go into it much but to say that I loved it and was, sadly, disappointed to find it was written by a man who had some Cherokee background but was also a KKK member and leader  

All that being said, it was a lovely little book. The reason I am writing about it again is a simple little sentence keeps calling me. 

Little Tree recalled that when, late at night, he heard his grandpa tell his grandma, “I kin ye, Bonnie Bee,” he knew that he was saying, “I love ye” – because of the feeling in the words.

“And when they would be talking,” Little Tree recollected, “and Grandma would say ‘Do ye kin me, Wales?’ and he would answer, ‘I kin ye,’ it meant, ‘I understand ye.’

To them, love and understanding was the same thing. Granma said you couldn’t love something you didn’t understand….Granpa and Granma had an understanding, and so they had a love….And they called it ‘kin.’”

Little Tree’s grandpa told him that “before his time ‘kinfolks’ meant any folks that you understood and had an understanding with, so it meant ‘loved folks.’ But people got selfish, and brought it down to mean just blood relatives; but that actually it was never meant to mean that.”

“Kin” is a small but powerful word that brings together two beautiful actions that are inseparable: love and understanding. When we feel understood, we feel loved. And when we feel loved, we trust that we will be understood.   ~John Paul Carter (no relationship to the author)

The idea of being both loved and understood.  What more could a person ask?

I kin ya💜