Take a night off from the television sports and the sitcom reruns. Buy a simple family tree chart at the drug store and start to work on filling in the blanks. The first two or three tiers, the most recent generations, are usually pretty easy because they are filled with people you have known all of your life.

Chances are that your partner has never met many of your relatives and vice versa. Take time to describe your family characters to each other. Every family has their oddballs and their black sheep. Enjoy their exploits, knowing that each of us is, at least partially, formed by our own personal histories.

As you move back in time to generations you never knew, it can be fun to figure out how to get accurate information. Is there a grandmother or a great aunt somewhere who can help you fill in the holes in your chart? Plan a visit or a telephone call. They will be delighted to forage into their past, often more vividly remembered than the dull years of their aging lives

When you have exhausted your living resources, look outside the family. There are Internet sites on genealogy, search agencies, public record repositories and, of course, the extensive resources of the Mormon Church.

Each discovery you make expands you as a person and, when it is a joint task, it also expands and depends the mutual understanding at the heart of your relationship.

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