I said I was back to Wednesday blog posts: and I meant it!
–But something happened.
There have been so many changes, that I couldn’t stay caught up. There was a big meeting that had to come first, and all the prep for that, kept me from focusing on this. I’ve many other excuses, some are good, but I’ve never liked excuses, so I’ll have to find another forum for them.
As I began to make just one change in preparation for all of the rest of the changes, I realized that the changes had to come first! So, what you are getting is just the blog post and no changes . . . this week, anyway.
This website is really old, and never has reached its full potential; it’s in desperate need of updating. So here’s what’s up:
New site theme
New organization
Logo, letterhead, and other visual updates
About us focusing less on beginnings and more on readers (If you’re reading this,
A new non-profit organization in the conceptual stages (Garden of Hope people needn’t worry, I’m not talking about Immanuel Inc.)
Cousin updates
New profiles for cousin connections, beginning with a man named Morris Coers.
Not really a change, but MANY new stories from the past.
A new page dedicated to stories from the Garden of Hope in Covington, KY
You will see changes every week, and I’ll be sure to keep you updated. Reverend Coers and Garden of Hope Pages will come first, but regular STFP posts will not resume until January.
Truth is often stranger than fiction. Maybe that’s why I like historical fiction. Even though the story line isn’t true, the background of the story is truthful and accurate. This is the case with most novel ideas that have come to me. In this case, the truth is that I developed a close relationship with a man fourteen years younger than myself. Josh had become my best friend. I warned him that I was falling in love with him, but he ignored my warning and the warnings of others until it was too late. Just over a year after we first met, Josh finally admitted that it wouldn’t be possible to marry me. He blamed the age difference, but I was angry with his mom for standing in our way. Although I knew that I should have blamed Josh, I was just sad, because he couldn’t stand up to her.
I learned so much about love with Josh. I was convinced that I had found my soulmate. I was hurt that he couldn’t see it. I am confident that this will make an excellent story, but I needed Josh’s permission to write it. Heaven forbid it should appear in print without his consent. Josh, being the understanding spirit that he is, read the story based on one of my journal entries as it appears in this multi-genre work, and gave me his blessing. It’s no wonder that I love him.
Any Man of Mine
Shania Twain
Any man of mine better be proud of me Even when I’m ugly, he still better love me And I can be late for a date that’s fine But he better be on time
Any man of mine’ll say it fits just right When last year’s dress is just a little too tight And anything I do or say better be okay When I have a bad hair day
Well any man of mine better disagree When I say another woman’s lookin’ better than me And when I cook him dinner and I burn it black He better say, mmmm, I like it like that.
And if I change my mind A million times I wanna hear him say Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, I like it that way.
Any man of mine better walk the line Better show me a teasin’ squeezin’ pleasin’ kinda time I need a man who knows, how the story goes He’s gotta be a heartbeatin’ fine treatin’ Breathtakin’ earthquakin’ kind
Any man of mine.
First
Impressions
I had been married. Got divorced. After a controlled marriage, I had to be the one in control.
I went back to school. Something I wasn’t allowed to do– When I was married.
I liked my freedom. I liked being in control. I didn’t like men.
The absolute truth? I could trust no man with my heart.
Summer term, Students raved about the new math tutor– Said his name was Josh And he could do math in his sleep.
This man looked nothing like the typical 21 year-old Utah boy. He certainly looked like a math tutor, though.
“Are you tutoring, or can I sit here?”
“Please sit.”
“So Josh, how was your weekend?”
“… Marianne, just what is it that you’re after?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What are you after?”
“Um… I don’t know, Josh, what am I supposed to be after?
“My mom says that women like you are only after one thing, so what is it?”
“Maybe you should ask your mom, cuz I have no clue. Apparently you find this more amusing than I do; and how do you raise just one eyebrow at a time like that? Are you going to tell me?”
“Don’t be offended, but I really do think it’s funny. When I came home on Friday I was raving about you. When Jim came over on Saturday, I was still going on about you, and my mom finally asked, ‘So Josh, just who is this Marianne?’ So I told her about you.”
“And what exactly did you tell her?”
“Everything.”
“What did she say?”
“She didn’t say anything for a minute, and then she got mad. The next thing I knew, she was the one raving. By Sunday, my dad was trying to calm her down.”
“So she thinks I’m after something.”
“Yep. She told me I should stay away from you.”
“So what are you doing here with me, Josh?”
“You approached me, remember? Should I stay away from you?”
“I don’t know, should you? Tell your mom I’m after your body and your money.”
“I’m not staying away from you, Marianne.”
“You’re a glutton for punishment.”
“It’s all good.”
March 16, 2001
Dear Peppi,
I’m so confused. Josh knows that I’m falling for him, and he says that we’ll always be friends, but I think I want more than that. I have no clue what he wants, but everything he does points straight to eternity.
I tried to hide in a corner study room with my headphones and CDs today, but Josh found me. He walked in, closed the door, sat down next to me and raised one eyebrow. I burst into tears, and he pulled me to him. I wanted so much more than just a hug, but I didn’t do anything but lay my head on his shoulder. He let me go, and asked what was wrong. I shook my head and didn’t say anything for a minute. He just sat there with his hand on my knee and watched and waited. Josh is so patient.
I know how his mom feels about us, and it frustrates me that she gets so upset when she knows we’re together. It bugs me, because Josh and I really do spend a lot of time together, but most of the time we’re with other people, and we’ve never done anything that either one of us would ever be ashamed of. I’ve never even kissed him.
I finally told him that I was frustrated because he is going to be such an awesome husband. It hurts to know that I spent thirteen years in an abusive marriage, and now that I’m free, and have found the perfect man for me, the age difference seems insurmountable. It doesn’t matter who Josh marries, he is going to treat that woman the same way that he’s treated me and every other woman I’ve seen him interact with. I so want to be that woman, and I can’t see it happening.
Josh did nothing more than pat my knee and say, “I know.” Why can’t he just say Marianne, will you marry me? I would say yes. He says his mother’s opinion doesn’t mean anything, because she just doesn’t know me, but I know that if he wasn’t so worried about disappointing his mom, that we could get past the age difference. I know that if his mom knew me like Josh knows me, she wouldn’t be having this problem. She’s never even met me!
I left my CDs with Josh while I went to class. He likes my music, and I never mind sharing. When I came back, Josh had returned to the corner room. I walked in, and he pointed to the headphones on his ears and said “John.” He meant John Denver. I grabbed the headphones and said “Mine.” He grabbed them back and said, “Can’t you share?” I know that Josh understood I was teasing, but I was still hurting, and all I really wanted to do was sit with my CDs and feel sorry for myself. I gave up, and just sank into my seat. Josh put the headphones on my head and said, “Let’s take turns.”
I listened to a couple of songs, then passed them back. Josh loves digging through my CDs and listens to a variety of stuff. Sometimes he brings his own music and we share that too. Once he brought Michael Boulton, and I was thinking about How am I Supposed to Live Without You? It’s one of Josh’s favorites. I wanted to stick the music in, and make him listen to it, but he didn’t have it with him today. Why doesn’t he get it?
We studied, passing the headphones back and forth, for more than an hour. Maybe I should say that we tried to study, but most of the time we spent talking about music and comparing homework. Josh is taking a Shakespeare class, and he loves to tell me about it. I didn’t get much done, and now, I’ve spent the last hour writing in my journal. I hope I don’t fall behind.
I was actually relieved when he glanced at his watch and said, “Uh Oh, I’m supposed to be tutoring!” I thought I might finally get some homework done, but Josh grabbed the headphones off my head, took Shania Twain out, put the headphones back on his head, and stuck John Denver back in the CD player. He did it all so fast that I didn’t even have time to ask what are you doing? He started pushing buttons madly, then slowed down, listened for a second, took the headphones off and put them back on my head, pushed a couple more buttons and then ran out of the room.
There’s no way I could do any more homework today, anyway. When Josh left the room and the music started playing, the message came loud and clear; “Lady, are you crying, do the tears belong to me?” Obviously, Josh understands more than I think he does. Now I’m more confused and frustrated than before. Why would he want to send that message to me?
Josh knew that I had to leave during his tutoring session so I could get home to my kids. I couldn’t ask him what he meant. This is so not fair!!!
My Sweet Lady
John Denver
Lady, are you crying? Do the tears belong to me? Did you think our time together was all gone? Lady, you’ve been dreaming, I’m as close as I can be. I swear to you our time has just begun.
Close your eyes and rest your weary mind. I promise I will stay right here beside you. Today our lives were joined, became entwined; I wish you could know how much I love you.
Lady, are you happy, do you feel the way I do? Are there meanings that you’ve never seen before? Lady, my sweet lady, I just can’t believe it’s true And it’s like I’ve never ever loved before.
Close your eyes and rest your weary mind. I promise I will stay right here beside you. Today our lives were joined, became entwined. I wish you could know how much I love you.
Lady, are you crying, do the tears belong to me. Did you think our time together was all gone. Lady, my sweet lady, I’m as close as I can be. I swear to you our time has just begun.
How do You Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways
Apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning
You look at me and one raise one eyebrow.
You sing loudly and off-key in while assembling my new computer desk.
You play with my hair from the seat behind me in our Book of Mormon class.
You whisper John Denver lyrics in my ear as I catnap in the student union building.
You lead me by the hand to your secret hideaway to calm my nerves after I locked my keys in the car.
You try to hold my hand from the back seat of Sandra’s car while I ride shotgun. It’s awkward, but we make it work.
You ask a question that only my heart can answer while gazing into my eyes and replying with your own.
You lay your head on my shoulder until my tears slow.
You fold my laundry as you wait for me to get ready for a Michael McLean concert.
You bring me a miniscule piggy bank with my name printed in tiny letters from your weekend trip to California.
You interrupt a study session to drag me down the hallway to a “found” penny for my new piggy bank.
You present a downy duck feather to me halfway through one of our many walks around the duck pond.
You brag to our co-workers that you can outrun my ex-husband.
If outrunning him doesn’t work, you say you will hide under a table because he is six inches taller than you and won’t fit.
You sit quietly next to me without saying a word.
You nurse my injured foot on a broken-down pier while everyone else is splashing and playing in the lake.
You throw your arms around me saying “I missed my Marianne” when I come back from a month in Europe.
You say, “I’m right here.” in a voice so low only I can hear through the encroaching crowd.
You eat cherries with me and spit the pits in the bushes as we discuss more serious matters.
You lay next to me on the grass and watch the stars for 45 minutes after the post-fireworks traffic has cleared.
You play with my children as if I weren’t even there.
You hug a tree to show me you’re on my side because my family thinks I’m a crazy tree-hugger.
You stay with me as I wait for the last bus of the day, then hop on your bike for a seven-mile ride into an oncoming storm.
You call to tell me you’ve made it home safely.
When You Say Nothing at All
Ronan Keating
It’s amazing how you can speak right to my heart. Without saying a word, you can light up the dark. Try as I may, I could never explain What I hear when you don’t say a thing.
All day long I can hear people talking out loud, But when you hold me near, you drown out the crowd. Old Mr. Webster could never define What’s being said between your heart and mine.
The smile on your face lets me know that you need me. There’s a truth in your eyes saying you’ll never leave me. The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me if ever I fall. You say it best when you say nothing at all.
A Broken Pipe
It was Josh’s silence that caused so much trouble that summer. Josh was always willing, even eager, to listen to anything and everything that Marianne had to say, but when it came to revealing himself to her, he was disturbingly silent.
It took a discussion about a broken pipe in his uncle’s lawn to get Josh to open up. The pair sat at the top of a man-made waterfall on a large stone. Marianne’s children were spending the weekend with their father, so she had invited Josh to visit Utah State University with her. She had made it sound so innocent, but she desperately needed to talk.
Josh was going on about his uncle who wouldn’t fix a broken water pipe in his lawn. Marianne seized the moment, “I have a broken pipe.”
Curiosity piqued, “Is it a big pipe or a little pipe?” Josh asked.
Marianne swallowed. “It’s a big pipe.”
“That’s a real problem.” She could tell that Josh was thinking about a broken water pipe, and she continued to let him think that. She needed him to understand the enormity of her problem.
“You should get it fixed as soon as possible.” he said.
“That’s what I’m trying to do.”
“Is it inside or outside?”
Marianne was tempted keep the charade going and tell him that it was inside. Instead, she swallowed again, “It’s an emotional pipe.”
“Oh, I see.” Josh grew quiet. He could see where she was going with the conversation. “Do you need some help fixing it?”
“Josh,” Marianne choked, “I can’t fix it without your help.”
Another significant silence. She didn’t dare look at him; her vision was clouded by brimming tears.
“Did I break the pipe?” Josh asked.
It takes two to play in the game of love, and Marianne knew that she was not an innocent bystander, “You helped.” It still wasn’t easy to tell him, even though it was clear to both of them that he already knew the answer. She decided to get straight to the point by explaining that she needed to communicate, and he didn’t see the need. She reminded him of similar talks that they’d had in the past, and of the age difference.
“If I were fourteen years younger . . .”
“There’d be no question.”
Marianne was cut to the very core of her soul. “None whatsoever?”
“I’d marry you in a heartbeat.”
Ouch. That hurt. That was it. She had to tell him, but it was still so hard. Marianne was so sure that he already knew. “Josh, I thought that I had made my feelings for you very clear when we talked before.”
“You made them very clear.”
“Very clear?” From Josh’s recent behavior, she wasn’t sure she’d been clear enough.
“Very clear.”
“Well, I need to be sure, so I have to make them perfectly clear, okay?”
Josh smiled and sat back. “Go ahead.”
Go ahead. Just like that. She decided she was a glutton for punishment; “This is so difficult. . . “
“Marianne, just say it.”
She gulped. The tears were running down her cheeks, and she so desperately wanted to think clearly. She couldn’t. “Josh, I love you more than I have ever loved any man in my life.”
The truth of the matter was that she hadn’t even known what true love was until now. Why did it have to be this way?
Silence. Except for a few muffled hiccoughs.
“Was that perfectly clear?” She had her glasses in her hand, and she couldn’t see him through her watery eyes, but she looked at him anyway.
“Perfectly.” His reply was quiet as he wrapped an arm around her and laid his head upon her shoulder. The tears continued to flow as she laid her head on his.
“Josh, this has been the most difficult summer of my life.” It was the happiest, hardest, saddest time of her life.
“It’s because of me, isn’t it?”
“I tried to warn you…”
“But I wasn’t listening.”
“Is it possible that I was saying something you didn’t want to hear?”
“No, but it is possible that I just can’t figure out how to fast forward or reverse time.” They talked about time, eternity, and the age difference.
“Josh, you don’t see time the way I do. I don’t separate eternal time from worldly time.”
“I don’t see how you can live in this world without separating it from God’s time.”
“You think like a mathematician.” Thirty-six, minus twenty-two, equals fourteen. . .
“It’s not going to work, is it?”
“I don’t see how it can.”
Marianne was completely devastated. How was she supposed to live without him? Even though She had already learned that she could get along just fine without a man, she just didn’t want to get along without the companionship of her best friend. He wasn’t even gone but she was already missing him. For a while she just sat, snuggled in his arms until the tears slowed.
“Josh, you’re going to go on with your life. You’ll get married, be a fantastic husband, make some lucky girl incredibly happy, and I’m going to remain single for the rest of my life.”
“How can you say that? You’ll get married again.”
“Josh, you can’t really believe that.”
“What do you mean? You’re an awesome lady; someone will want to marry you.”
“That’s not the point, Josh. I could easily find a man, but I don’t want just any man, I want the right man, and it’s taken thirty-six years to find him. I don’t want to spend another thirty-six years looking.”
“Marianne, you’ll find someone.”
“Yeah, when Hell freezes over.”
“I hear they’ve been having a cold snap…”
She laughed a funny little hiccuppy laugh spawned by a breaking heart. Then sighed, and said flatly, “Josh, you just go on with your life. I’ll be right here waiting.” She placed her palm over her heart.
“Right here?” He looked down at the rock and patted it. “This isn’t the most comfortable place in the world. Where will you sleep at night? It might rain or snow. You’ll get cold. You’re gonna want an umbrella and a jacket.”
“Oh Josh, you know what I mean. “For the next few days, the tears fell freely until Marianne had to admit to herself that the emotions she was experiencing felt too similar to the pain of divorcing Bob. Because she had loved Josh so much more deeply than she had loved Bob, her immediate fear was that the deep emotional pain would last a lifetime.
It was useless; that pipe was never getting fixed.
Right Here Waiting For You
Richard Marx
Oceans apart day after day And I slowly go insane I hear your voice on the line But it doesn’t stop the pain.
Wherever you go, Whatever you do, I will be right here waiting for you. Whatever it takes, Or how my heart breaks, I will be right here waiting for you.
I took for granted, all the times That I thought would last somehow. I hear the laughter, I taste the tears, But I can’t get near you now.
Wherever you go, Whatever you do, I will be right here waiting for you. Whatever it takes, Or how my heart breaks, I will be right here waiting for you.
I wonder how we can survive This romance. But in the end if I’m with you, I’ll take the chance.
Wherever you go, Whatever you do, I will be right here waiting for you. Whatever it takes, Or how my heart breaks, I will be right here waiting for you.
Profound Loss
Josh and I were introduced by one of the students he was tutoring. In fact, I would have to say that Jenni went on and on about Josh just about the same as he would soon be going on and on about me. Like me, Jenni was a single mom, and just a year older than me. And like me, she found him to be a good friend. Unlike me, her friendship with Josh never changed. Because I was also a tutor, I knew I would soon know him as well, so I asked her to describe him to me. From Jenni’s nondescript description, I really couldn’t figure who he was. But I ran into her a few days later on her way to her appointment with Josh while I was on my way to work, so I asked her to show him to me. The poem, “First Impressions,” appears exactly how I saw him, and yes, even though it’s a stock photo, the cover photo is pretty true to my first impression of Josh.
That was Summer Term 2000, and the “What are You After?” conversation occurred at the beginning of Fall Semester after I’d set him up on a lunch date with the hottest girl in the room. We had a strong bond, and soon found ourselves doing nearly everything together during our school hours. During winter break, we even went on a double date. I was with another tutor closer to my age, and I’d fixed him up with a younger friend of mine from the bus we rode. It was a weird date because by the end of the night, Josh and I somehow ended up together deep in conversation while our dates sat awkwardly at either end of the room. It was Josh that got the goodbye hug while I don’t think my date even got a handshake.
I don’t recall when my physical attraction to him changed, but I do know it was after I found myself falling in love with him sometime in midwinter of 2001. I remember when the sudden realization hit me. Josh and I were on our way back to campus after attending an LDS temple session together. We’d already been talking about the age difference because I knew his mom flew into a rage every time my name came up or she found out we’d been spending time together. We were stopped at a traffic light, and it hit me like a punch in the gut. That was the first time the tears fell, and even though I didn’t actually say the words, it was at that moment we both realized I was falling in love with him. It was also when I began to feel the pain from the well-found fear of losing him.
That summer I spent a month in Europe immersing myself in the German language. I’m sure I was driving the students in my group a bit nuts over the fact that I couldn’t help myself from bringing him up in nearly every conversation. Either that or talking about my kids. Although we’d gone together on the same plane, a large portion of the students extended their stay to visit other countries, while I was more than happy to get home to my kids. I was homesick nearly the whole trip.
I remember quite vividly my flight over New York City on the way into Newark. It was my first time seeing the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, and the Twin Towers. I’d never in my life been that far East, let alone to Europe, so I was more than happy to have seen them up close even though it was from the air.
When I came back on campus, I was pleasantly surprised at Josh’s welcome home hug. It was the first time he’d ever called me My Marianne.
I so wanted to be his.
But there was something in the air that day, telling me it was the beginning of the end. There were two new women in the room, both with their eyes on Josh. Sandra had been hanging out with Josh while I was away, and she had set her sights on him. Yes, she’s the same Sandra driving the car while Josh held my hand from the back seat. She was none the wiser. The other, I might describe as mousy but not in a derogatory way. She was quiet and I don’t know if I’d say shy, but there was nothing more than ordinary about her. Looking back, she was the kind of woman who deserved a man like Josh.
At the end of that summer, I found myself sitting on the rock talking about a broken pipe. It was my last attempt to make him put up or shut up. He did neither. I’d say the Broken Pipe story was the day we broke up, but Josh didn’t see it like that. For me, it was that day that I knew for a certainty it was over.
Fall semester of my senior year came a week later. I found myself weeping from a broken heart whenever I was alone. But I also found myself looking for hiding places where I could study alone. It was so tough for me because Josh seemed to know where to look and I had to get more creative as time went on, and the more I needed to be left alone. I still loved being with him, but it was torture for me to feel that tiny glimmer of hope all the while knowing it was hopeless.
Just three or four weeks later, I remember crying a bit in the early morning hours while the kids were still asleep. Wiping my tears, I headed down the stairs to start my morning routine of switching the TV on to the morning news, more as background noise than anything else, while I woke the kids up for school. Dressed and nearly ready to go, I started back down the stairs to find the TV screen filled with the image of the North Tower with a gaping hole and black smoke billowing into the beautiful blue September sky. The complete irony of that day was not lost on me. It is the only day I remember where the skies were blue, and the weather was perfect from coast to coast.
My daughter seemed completely nonplussed when I pointed out the billowing tower on the screen, so I didn’t bother to bring it up to her five year-old brother. I shooed them into the car, turned the TV off, and headed out the door where my next-door neighbor informed me that the second tower had been hit. By that time, it was obvious to everyone that it was a terrorist attack. I didn’t know what to do, so I dropped the kids off at school and decided not to take the bus in that day. I wasn’t sure if I’d want to turn back around and go home. Despite those blue skies and temperate weather, a gray pall hung in the atmosphere and there was absolutely nothing normal about the traffic.
Regardless of the complete lack of accidents, road work, or emergency vehicles, traffic was going at a crawl and no one, including myself, seemed to care; we were all transfixed by the narrative replacing the music on every radio station. The first tower fell about halfway through my commute, and I suddenly found myself in a quandary: Do I go home to my children who were already at school, or do I keep going even though I was already an hour late for work? I was sure the kids didn’t care one way or another (they didn’t), so I kept going. From the parking lot, I called the tutoring center to tell them I would not come in that day, and was told that everyone was cancelling, both students and tutors, so it really didn’t matter anyway.
On campus, TVs had been brought out from everywhere, and every screen, including the theatres, displayed the same scene. Passageways, though filled with students, were eerily quiet except for the commentary from the screens. Some teachers canceled classes, but most kept their schedules in case students needed to talk. It didn’t matter whether or not I’d done my homework; it was irrelevant that day. I decided I didn’t want to be alone, so I headed to our favorite haunt– the nontraditional student center. Josh’s age and marital status may have made him a traditional student, but there was nothing traditional about him. He was there waiting for me. He took me by the hand and led me to the theater next door where we sat with my head on his shoulder crying and watching the horrific aftermath unfold. I still feel the irony of that day with the two of us snuggled in the theater like lovebirds at the movies. I cried and cried that day as I felt the double loss over and over again.
After that day, I marveled at the fact that my first time flying over New York came so close to the day when the towers fell. I wondered about other students doing study abroad who suddenly found their way home blocked by closed airways. I’m so glad it wasn’t me. I was so glad to be home with my kids when it happened, and even happier to know that I had gotten my chance to see the towers in person, even if it was from the air.
By the end of Fall Semester Josh was dating that sweet quiet girl, and I was looking even harder for better places to hide. I didn’t bother to deny the fact that I was hiding from him when he confronted me, and I was glad that to have finally found one place where he never looked in the Art building.
At the end of Spring semester, 2002, Josh and I went our separate ways. Josh married that girl the next year and they moved to Logan to finish school at Utah State. I did the graduation walk, with one incomplete class and took a two-year break while trying to focus on family issues. It was a disaster, and I fell into a deep depression. When I came back to Weber State, I completed that class, entered the teaching program, resumed work as a tutor, and tried to get used to the old familiar places without the old familiar face. I was grateful that I no longer thought of him on a daily basis, but the familiar places and faces often brought back raw hurt.
Loving Josh was sweet, beautiful, and painful. I fought that depression for another three years, but finally found my way out when I moved to Chicago for grad school and met and married Tony. Tony read this story before I married him, and said he’d love to meet Josh someday. That was when I knew I’d found a great guy. I haven’t shed any tears over Josh for more than fifteen years, except when one of those songs catches me unaware. Even then, I think I’m finally truly done with the tears.
Why They Call it Falling
Lee Ann Womack
It’s like jumpin’ It’s like leapin’ It’s like walkin on the ceiling It’s like floatin’ It’s like flying through the air It’s like soarin’ It’s like glidin’ It’s a rocket ship you’re ridin’ It’s a feeling that can take you anywhere
So why they call it fallin’ Why they call it fallin’ Why they call it fallin’ I don’t know
There was passion There was laughter The first mornin’ after I just couldn’t get my feet to touch the ground Every time we were together We talked about forever I was certain it was Heaven we had found
So why they call it fallin’ Why they call it fallin’ Why they call it fallin’ I don’t know
But you can’t live your life Walkin’ in the clouds Sooner or later You have to come down
It’s like a knife Through the heart When it all comes apart It’s like someone takes a pin to your balloon
It’s a hole It’s a cave It’s kinda like a grave When he tells you that he’s found somebody new
So why they call it fallin’ Why they call it fallin’ Why they call it fallin’ Now I know.
Ooh, why they call it fallin’ Why they call it fallin’ Now I know.
How to track family documents when different people share the same name.
Each occurrence of the Jones surname is indicated by a red dot. Image by Barry Griffin at http://www.celticfamilymaps.com (2016)
I’ve been helping a friend work on her own family’s history. My friend’s maiden name is Jones, which is problematic simply because it is the most common surname in Wales. If you live in Wales, or even Southern England, you know exactly what I mean. The name is everywhere. My friend’s problem is tripled by the fact that each successive head of household bears the same first and last name (no middle) for four generations.
Welsh surnames are the results of an anglicized family tracking system called patronymics, meaning that all children, male and female took their father’s given name as their own surname for the duration of their lives. The surnames of following generations took the form of the family patriarch’s first name. For example, if your father’s name was David, you would take the surname ap Dafydd, Davis, Davies, or some other form of David. If David’s father was Daniel, he would be known by David ap Daniel, or David Daniels.
The patronymic system is not limited to Great Britain, though. Take a look at this example from my Dutch ancestry:
I haven’t figured out where the van Beveren name came from, but each surname changes by generation, based on the name of the father. It would be safe to assume that the senior Willem’s father was named Daniel.
It’s pretty easy to organize electronic files by surname. When I have enough documents under the same surname, I simply create a file with that surname, and organize each file by year of occurrence, for example a birth certificate for John Davies, born in 1820, would be included in the Davies, or Davis, file. The record would be labeled 1820 DAVIES John, but a census record for John Davies would be labeled. That way, all records for John Davies would essentially end up together in the Davies file between the years of his birth and death. Any immediately family members would have records before or after him according to their year of occurrence.
KNIGHT file. Documents are organized by year, month, day, SURNAME, given name, and middle name or initial. Other relevant information follows date and name.
My friend is older, though, and prefers to keep each family’s file in a binder, which works too. I use both systems when I am dealing with primary sources (such as photographs and original documents like birth, marriage, and death certificates). It’s always good to have digital back-up. Her problem, she explained, was that she could not keep track of four individuals in her family tree named Benjamin Jones: Her great-great grandfather, her great grandfather, her grandfather, and her uncle. Using my system, I explained how to use birth years of each individual to organize them and to put documents for the most recent Benjamin Jones first. Instead of including creating a fourth file for her uncle, his documents were included with the rest of his siblings in her grandfather’s family group, so she only needed three new tabs.
documents ordered by birth year and given name, then surname. If each ancestor had the same given and surnames, I would have easily been able to distinguish between ancestors by looking at the birth year.
Tabbed inserts don’t work in binders where documents are kept in protective sleeves; they are too narrow to easily distinguish between family sections. I fold a 2×2 post-it note in half and tape it to both sides of a protective sleeve instead of tabbed pages for file sections. My friend chose to purchase adhesive tabs made expressly for that purpose. Either way, an attached tab works best anytime you are working with protective sleeves. All you need to write on each tab is the birth year and first name of the head of household and work backwards chronologically. It didn’t take long, and now my friend can see at a glance which Benjamin Jones is which.
I made some cosmetic changes to StoriesFromThePast last year. I changed my background, and experimented with new designs, but as readership increased and I began making new connections, the potential of this project became clear. I was connected with readers in unexpected ways, and by the end of the year, StoriesFromthePast had taken on a life of its own. This is exactly what I had hoped would happen, but it’s too much and too little all at the same time.
As StoriesFromThePast moved full-steam ahead, life applied the brakes. I can see that I need more time to apply to this project, but instead of having more time as an empty-nester, I now have a little grandchild to take care of on a nearly-full-time basis. Not a problem, I thought, I’m a morning person anyway, so I could research, write stories, and revamp the blog while my granddaughter sleeps. Nope. The website isn’t making money yet, and our family can’t afford to wait, so I’ve had to take on a morning job teaching ESL online. Curses. Foiled again.
I’m not giving up though. StoriesFromthePast has become the avenue for realizing my lifelong dream of becoming a published author. Well, technically that’s already happened, but I’m talking full-length biographies. Getting that first biography out takes time, and day-to-day living takes money. Not only that, but I have decided to get some professional consultation to make this work well into retirement. It looks like 2018 is the year for some major changes.
While I’m preparing for this major overhaul, I am applying a few immediate changes. I’m planning some new additions and streamlining to make it easier for both me and my readers while I am learning and implementing some new tricks of the trade.
Since there are, on average, four weeks to each month (and occasionally five), I have decided to organize information I present by weeks. My current goal to publish one new article each week. It should look something like this:
Week 1: Stories and/or chapters from the lives of people who are no longer alive to speak for themselves.
Week 2: Cousin Connections
Week 3: Cousin landing pages
Week 4: A chapter from my own life: This is the part of genealogy I dread the most. You would think a writer would love writing about herself. For me, his is true only to the extent that I like sharing my thoughts and feelings about things I find interesting. However, I think we all share the responsibility for preserving our own past for the sake of our progeny, so I’m beginning this task publicly.
Week 5: Genealogy tips and tricks
I don’t know if anyone else will be interested, but it is helpful for me to get my plans out in a visible way. I have not received a paycheck from my new job (I’m in training and haven’t officially started yet), so it will be at least two months before I begin workshops to learn the business end of blogging. You’ll be seeing changes beginning next week, but I don’t expect the biggest changes to come for a few months at least. In the meantime, thanks so much for following and reading, and please don’t give up! You never know whose ancestor’s name is going to pop up next!
Aloha, Olean Kwiatkowskis! This marks the last of the Kwiatkowski Cousin Connections for a while. Time to focus on other branches of the family tree, especially Rothsprack; I’m completely stumped on that one. But first, let me introduce you to my Hawaiian cousins. I’ve got plenty of them, thanks to a cousin named Leo (or Leon, as he told it).
While Cousins in New York experienced a typically white Christmas snuggled warmly at home away from outside temperatures well below freezing, cousins in Hawaii had temperatures right around 80 degrees fahrenheit. A great day for some Christmas hula. And since the temperature won’t be changing much this weekend, I’m betting plenty more hula is planned for the New Year as well, even if the Hawaii Kwiatkowskis don’t plan to attend.
Michael Thaddeus “Tod” Kwiatkowski, and Philibert Francis “Ski” Kwiatkowski are respectively the oldest and youngest of five children born to Leo Michael Kwiatkowski and his wife Catherine Ku’uleilani Guerreiro in Honolulu. Although they are in my father’s social generation, the three men have never met in person. All five of Catherine and Leo’s children were born in Hawaii, and Dad had moved from Olean before the cousins from HI visited in 1952.
My first question to both Tod and Ski, was “How did this group of Kwiatkowskis end up in Hawaii?” The answer is pretty simple, really: the U.S. Army. As Tod tells it,
My father joined the Army and was shipped to Honolulu, sometime in 1935, or so. There, he met my mother, Catherine Ku’uleilani Guerreiro of Waialua, Territory of Hawaii. They were married in 1937, I think, and he mustered out of the Army in Honolulu, rather than mustering out in New York.”
Catherine Ku’uleilani Guerreiro and Leon Kwiatkowski as they must have looked when they first met.
All five of Leo and Catherine’s children were born on the “Big Island” (Honolulu), except for a very short stint in 1952 after Catherine died. She was just 43 years old. It was a very rough time for the family. Tod explains,
Circa 1950 or 1951. L-R: Bernadette, Phil (“Ski”), Tod, Noel, and Larry.
We saw our first snowfall in Olean, on October 12, 1952. Because of the burden five children placed on my grandmother and my Aunt Jenny, we all returned to Hawaii sometime in October or November of 1952. That was a tragic and confusing time for five children, ages 14 to 5, and a single Father with no job, and no income. That episode will fill a book.
Because he was so young at the time. Ski has a more colorful memory of his short time in New York:
Family connections to the mainland U.S. Kwiatkowskis that lived in Olean, N.Y. are very sketchy for me. . . I was 5 at the time and remember meeting many cousins, uncles and aunts, but most of them faded from memory aside from photographs that we would get from time to time. I remember “Bu” quite well and my dad’s sister, Aunt Jenny. My dad’s brother, John and his other sister Helen I also remember. I remember Olean as a very typical foothill town of East New York state, not a large town, but a quaint one with all the trappings of a 1950’s town. I remember going down to the “crick” near the railroad trestle to skip stones in the water and things like that, but for the most part, faded memories.
We stayed about 3 months on that trip as we were planning to live in Olean. Many obstacles came up, one of which was racial and the others I was too young to remember. My experiences in St. Augustine Elementary were different than Michael as I was sent home for punching a ninny of a nun because she wanted to whack my hands. I was having none of that, so I punched her in the stomach. That was the beginning of a few lickings.
I got a kick out of that last part. My father’s stories of his childhood in Olean are very similar. The family was staunchly Catholic, but that didn’t stop kids from being kids and nuns from doing what nuns did at the time. I went to public school myself, but my father and husband were both raised Catholic, along with several of my friends. All of their stories have a very similar ring to them. One of these days I’ll have to tell the story of the time my husband and his schoolmates spiked the holy water with red Kool-Aid.
A ukulele in the making. By Ski Kwiatkowski
Now that I know the reasons for the Hawaii cousins remaining in Hawaii, it makes sense. By their Hawaiian heritage bestowed by their mother, these Kwiatkowskis are firmly Hawaiian. Hawaii was the last state to join the Union in 1959, long after the children’s return from their last family trip to the mainland. Ski, who is the youngest, has been making traditional Hawaiian woodwork for many years. He even makes ukuleles.
As a mainlander who’s never been to Hawaii, I can only base my knowledge of Hawaiians on what I’ve learned through school and the media. Which isn’t much. Aside from my new-found cousins, Pearl Harbor is always the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of Hawaii, and since their father came to the islands with the U.S. Army, I had to ask.
Ski was very obliging with details.
My dad told it to me that he was home when the attack on Pearl Harbor began. He was a policeman and we did not have a phone yet so the police department called the neighbor (the contact number) neighbor told him about the attack and to go immediately to the police headquarters. When he got there, he and one other officer were given a shotgun each and a box of shells and told to report to the area somewhere near an area called Iwilei. Up the street from them was the OR & L train depot and roundhouse, but they were told to go to the pier and supposedly hold off any Japanese invasion of the harbor with a shotgun apiece, a box of shells and their .38 caliber service revolvers. Once at the pier my dad recalled a Zero coming in on them and strafing the pier with bullets. He said that it was close enough that splinters from the wood were hitting them. It was at that time that he and his partner decided they would be better protected by staging at the OR&L depot, which they did. There were several more strafing runs in that area and my dad said that he emptied his revolver on one Zero, but knew that it was like shooting spitballs at a tank.
At least he got to shoot at them, which is more than others did.
Tod provided another interesting Hawaiian link to the Olean Kwiatkowskis. It turns out that my cousin Bernie’s uncle, Bernie, was brother not only to Bernie’s mother, but Leo as well, which makes their Cousin Connection chart nearly identical to Bernie’s. Not only that, but it seems that Leo’s brother spent some time in the island as a sergeant in the Army Air Corps while Leo was on the Honolulu police force.
Leo M. Kwiatkowski and his younger brother, Bernard Kwiatkowski c. 1940-1941.
So now I have even more questions for Bernie, Tod, and Ski. I definitely want to ask about “Uncle Bernie’s” Pearl Harbor experience, so I’ll have to plan a new post for next Dec. 7.
Even more curious for me, though, is that all three cousins claim that their grandmother’s maiden name (“Babci Mary“), Conkle, actually derives from the surname Krysztofiak. Conkle is a Germanic surname, but Krysztofiak is definitely Slavic. So which is it, Conkle or Krystofiak? The geographical boundaries are blurred in Poland and Germany by the rise and fall of the Prussian empire, and I think there may be some answers in the geography. This is going to take a bit of digging, but I’ve got eleven months to do it. It will be fun to see what I come up with.
In the meantime, Happy New Year, and STAY WARM! (Hawaii Cousins can ignore that last part.)
Shalom and Hanukkah Sameach! Hanukkah 2017 begins this evening. And because I do identify as Jewish by virtue of my ancestral birthright, we find no problem with fitting it in among our celebrations of the season.
Being Jewish has everything to do with my passion for Family History. I grew up knowing that my grandmother was a Jew, but I did not feel its impact until I was required to read The Diary of Anne Frank in junior high school. The connections I made between my grandmother, Anne, and the Holocaust suddenly became very real to me, and I longed to know more about my own family’s experiences during those dark days, but it would be several decades before the truths of those times would come to light.
I know that my personal commitment to religious, cultural, and racial tolerance had its beginnings in those early literature and history lessons. I was solidly struck by the fact that I would have been targeted for death camps had I lived in Europe during those rough times, simply because my grandmother was born into Judaism. I could not wrap my mind around the fact that my whole family could have been slaughtered based on the identity of one grandparent. I still can’t.
Those early lessons in prejudice and religious/racial tension led me to want to know more. As I learned, the desire to understand that extreme commitment to birthright and religious heritage led me to make connections between my parents’ chosen religion and the tenets of faith espoused by my third great grandfather, Rabbi Heinrich Abeles.
For the longest time, the only things I knew about my Jewish predecessors were related to what I could learn through my history classes at school and church. Unfortunately, those lessons were limited to the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, and the older-than-dirt-and-twice-as-dusty Old Testament, the latter of which I found beyond boring. In the intervening years between high school and the advent of the internet, I was able to glean a few more insights into Judaism, but really only enough to help me to understand the basic differences between Christmas and Hanukkah, along with the fact that all of those “potato pancakes” I’d been eating over the years as a side dish to Mom’s Christmas Saurbraten, were really Latkes, the traditional food of Hanukkah.
This photo was taken from our 2016 celebration. Tonight, Jews all over the world will light the first candle to begin their festivities.
Thanks to the internet though, I have been able to bring to life the Jewish commitment to God and tradition, and to intertwine them with my past and present. It was during those early days of inquiry that led me to understand myself as a Messianic Jew. I think there is an actual established religion out there that identifies as such, but for me, Messianic Jew is simply a way to identify my personal faith in Jesus Christ as the god of the Old Testament (“Yahweh”—whose name is too sacred to be spoken aloud). Since then, I have not only learned how to make Hanukkah an annual tradition in my home, but I have learned how music, prayer, and practice come together to make religion an integral part of daily life as a Jew. I have even been able to participate in, and appreciate, the deeply spiritual Passover Seder. Those early days of inquiry and discovery brought that dusty Old Testament back to life for me.
But doing Jewish genealogy has not been so easy. This has a lot to do with the Holocaust and the intersection of German, Hebrew, and Yiddish languages, upon none of which anyone in my family has much of a grasp. We have struggled to make connections between my grandmother’s verbal history and the truth of her past as a European Jew with not much to go on. Were it not for a handful of trinkets, photographs, and letters in a handwritten language we have yet to decipher, that past would have been nothing more than rumor.
All of that changed exactly one month ago when I received an email from a woman I’ve never met by the name of Ruth Contreras. Ruth’s letter asked about the family of Rudolf and Charlotte Abeles. She implored, “If there is the possibility to get into contact with someone of the descendants of the Abeles Family you may give them my e-mail address . . . so they can decide if they want to contact me.” Ruth not only provided the names of my great-great grandparents, but the name of my great grandmother along with the name and birthdate of my grandmother, all of whom had lived in Pitten, Austria at one point or another. This was information we already had on record, but her letter indicated that she could provide even more that we did not have. I was so overcome with excitement I had to read the email three times before I could actually believe what I was reading. The first thing I did was call my mother, after which I swiftly replied, “We are very pleased to report that you have made direct contact with descendants of the Abeles family in the United States.”
Ruth Contreras, the lovely woman who would not give up her search until we were found. (Photo Courtesy of Ruth Contreras).
After a series of back and forth emails in which we both asked and answered questions, I asked Ruth for a candid interview regarding her background and interest in finding my family. To my delight she was completely forthcoming in her answers. Ruth’s family had been next door neighbors to my family before all of the residents in the Jewish sector of Pitten were displaced or murdered in the dark days of the Holocaust. As I told her, “We must not let the world forget.” Ruth agreed, and the interview proceeded as follows:
Q: Would you prefer to be called just Ruth, or may I also share your surname?
A: You may do as you like and feel better.
Q: I have noticed that your official title is “Mag. Dr.” Does the Mag. stand for magistrate? Is the Dr. a Doctrate of Philosophy or some other kind of doctor? If magistrate, are you a magistrate for the town of Pitten?
A: My titles are „Master of science“ (I studied biology and have been teaching for some year in Vienna at a highschool.) and Dr. phil. Yes, indeed when I studied in spite of studying a branch of natural sciences the degree was Dr. phil. I have been working as an entomologist at the Natural History Museum in Vienna since 1972. From 1995 to 2003 (my retirement) I was the Head of the Department of Entomology at the Natural History Museum. After my retirement I did some terms of Jewish Studies at the University in Vienna.
A more detailed biography of Ruth Contreras along with a photograph of her family’s home in Pitten.
Q: I can see that you have a personal vestment in this project, but do you also have a more official role in the Jews of Bucklige Welt project? What is your role?
A: One of my interests is the history of Jews in Austria before the Shoah. I am working since several years on a project about the Jews that lived in the 10th district of Vienna and so I learned first about Rosa Rebecca Abeles who was deported from Alxingergasse 97 to Theresienstadt.
Some years ago I was interviewed for a book on the history of our family and the house where we are living: Johann Hagenhofer, Gert Dressel (editors) (2014) „Eine Bucklige Welt – Krieg und Verfolgung im Land der Tausend Hügel.“ ISBN: 978-3200037342 . Publisher:Alois Mayrhofer.
Q: What is the official name of the project, and how did it come about?
A: Last year I was invited by Dr. Hagenhofer to participate in the team that is doing research for a project „Die jüdische Bevölkerung der Region Bucklige Welt – Wechselland“
(English translation:The Jewish Population of the Bucklige Welt Region – Wechselland. Bucklige Welt covers more than 23 villages with approximately 39,000 inhabitants. Wechselland is a region of mountains and valleys in Lower Austria, South of Vienna. )
Q: Will there be a museum? A book? A website?
A: This project is part of the preparation for a regional Jewish Museum in Bad Erlach, which will be inaugurated in on occasion of the Lower Austrian Provincial Exhibition 2019 and yes, there are also plans for a book.
Q: How many towns in the region does the project cover?
A: We are 17 working on this project on about 25 villages and their former Jewish fellow citizens.As I am living in Pitten and had already some information, I was invited to participate in this project.
Q: How did you know to look for the Abeles family, and what was important about Rudolf, Lotti, and their children?
A: The history of the Jaul- Family in Pitten was known as well as the history of our house. In order to get more information I started with the permission of the Mayor of Pitten to check old registries at the school in Pitten where I found the information on Josefine Daniel and Heinrich Abeles. The other children of Rudolf have been added with the help of the archive of the Jewish Community in Vienna and by using the Austrian genealogical website https://www.genteam.at/.
The other important source where the registration forms where I found Rosa Rebecca repeatedly also hosting people at her home and this last document when she had to leave Pitten..
From the registration forms at the municipal archive in Wr. Neustadt I learned that Jakob Abeles had changed his name into Aldor.
The next step was to go to the Jewish Cemetery in Neunkirchen where I found the gravestone of Franziska Daniel. There is also a grave stone of a Ruben Abeles. The letters are in Hebrew, do you know the Hebrew name of your great great grandfather?
(The only name we have for my great-great grandfather is Rudolph)
Q: What was the surname of your family living next door to the Abeles family?
A: My grandparents who bought the house in 1917 were Rosa and Fritz Weiss. My parents were Elfi Lichtenberg (maiden name Weiss) and Franz Lichtenberg.
Q: Do you have any details of comradery or community between the families that can be shared?
A. I have no information if there was any contact between the families. As I told you, my mother did not talk much about this. My grandmother was born in 1880 (she was two years younger than the youngest son of Rudolf Abeles who was born in 1878) Maybe he did not even live there anymore. My mother was born in 1904 and my dad was born in 1907 so I think there was too much difference in the ages of them.
Q: How difficult was it to find us, and what led you to my website?
A: As Rosa Rebecca was the third person directly deported from Pitten I considered it important to find more information about this family. And yes, it was not easy at all to find your blog. After having contacted several groups of 2nd generation of survivors of the Shoah without success it was really by incident that I tried by using Google to look if I could find something about Josephine Daniel Wimpassing and came to your article A Renewed Tribute to Tante Rosa – Stories From the Past .
(Rosa Rebecca was a previously unidentified daughter of Rudolph Abeles. She was my great-great aunt)
One of the most fun parts of the Hanukkah celebration is the dreidel game. The dreidel is a four-sided spinner with the Hebrew letters nun, gimmel, hey, shin; one letter appears on each side. My children have very fond memories of that game which we played as a family. The letters stand for the Hebrew words, nes gadol haya sham, meaning “a great miracle happenedthere.” For my family,connecting with Ruth is a great miracle, and we are so very thankful to welcome her as a new part of our continued quest to discover the truth of our Judaistic past.
Most of my followers read my blog for just one reason: to find information regarding their own family history. This post is simply to update you on my situation and when you can expect to hear more about the family history interests that brought you to me in the first place.
Since my post regarding Grave’s disease a couple of years ago, I have undergone radiation therapy to shut down my thyroid. Living without a thyroid requires daily synthetic replacement. In the past couple of months I have suffered from hypothyroid symptoms that severely affect my general mental alertness. It is difficult to focus, stay awake, and remain pain and symptom free if I sit at the computer for more than just a few minutes. Hence my recent post regarding tennis elbow (just one symptom of the larger disorder). To make my long story short, I have been back to the doctor and am having my medication adjusted. In the meantime, my blog has suffered.
Please accept my sincere apologies. Many of the posts I had planned for the past few weeks just haven’t happened. I do expect my blog to return to normal function as my body responds accordingly. So here is what you can expect over the next few weeks and into the new year:
An introduction to my new friend from Austria, Ruth Contreras. She was just as anxious to find me as I have been anxious to find family members in Austria. We are both very grateful to have found each other. Ruth’s project, a recovery of pre-holocaust Jewish families from the Bucklige Welt region in Austria is a very exciting development.
Another Cousin Connection to Kwiatkowski brothers living in Hawaii, along with their holiday traditions.
My very first ancestor landing page featuring my great-great grandfather, Rudolf Abeles from Austria. My grandmother was very close to him, and even lived with him in Pitten during his later years where she attended primary school and helped him with daily tasks. We believe he lived to be 99 years old!
An exploration of Sephardic Jews in Europe, and how one particular Sephardic family ended up in Austtria. (My mother always said she would take a hard look into the mirror looking for evidence of her Spanish heritage).
My second ancestor landing page featuring Aucke Wykoff. He was a Colonel in the American Revolution, and was credited with saving the life of a fellow POW in the infamous New York Sugar House Prison. The man he saved was more than just a friend, he was a member of the family.
An exploration of life in the Sugar House prison and how Aucke Wykoff was related to Toby Polhemus.
In the next year, I’ll be updating and revisiting the life of Mary Davis Skeen, the woman who started my journey to learn more about Plain
Just one example of Kentucky’s historical stone fences.
City Utah’s Pioneer History, and the inspiration for this website.
A deeper look into the people and events that make up this place that is my new home. I’ll begin with a close look at the historical “Slave Fences” of Kentucky and the efforts to preserve them. I see evidence of this Irish stonecraft everywhere around here.
In the meantime, I have discovered some exciting information about Family History in Kentucky. I was able to visit the public library for the first time yesterday, and found some amazing help for family historians. There is tons of information available through their resources, and I want to showcase their upcoming Tuesday afternoon online events from 3-4 pm Eastern Standard Time:
P.S. You don’t need to have a library card or even live in Kentucky for these online events. To view online, tune into @KentonLibrary on Periscope (available on your smartphone or tablet), or at periscope.tv/kentonlibrary. Dec. 5 and 12 events look like they’d be interesting for people everywhere, especially those with German and/or Christian backgrounds.
In honor of Mexico’s Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), which officially begins at midnight, November’s Cousin Connection comes one day early. Coinciding with the the Catholic All Saints Day, and incorporating garish costumes resembling skeletons, Dia de los Muertos is not Mexican Halloween, but a much more elaborate version of Memorial Day in the U.S.
In Mexico, this year’s commemoration began a few days ago with a large parade including a salute to rescue workers who worked tirelessly to save family, friends, and fellow countrymen from the rubble of recent earthquakes.
When Pete, a Mexican friend from college, entered a Facebook post celebrating his recent connection to cousins he never knew he had, I decided that this week’s holiday is the perfect time to include it.
Pete’s mother abt. 4 years old
Gonzales grandparents
Pete at 15
Pete tells his own story:
I have become obsessed with making a family tree. It did not just happen out of nowhere. It started when I submitted my son’s DNA to Ancestry.com. I wanted to show him his multi-ethnic background. We were not disappointed. He is from all over the world–every continent except Antarctica and Australia.
Ancestry told us that he is mostly Native American from the area of Zacatecas and Aguacalientes. His ethnicity estimate is also 24% Great Britain with Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, Scandinavia, Ireland, Finland, European Jewish, Polynesia, the Middle East, Senegal, and Africa North all vying for a slice of the genetic pie.
But this smorgasbord of the world is not what compelled me to create a family tree. It was a feature of Ancestry that I did not expect. Our DNA was matched with other people who submitted their DNA with Ancestry.
There was a small group of people who were listed as close relatives. Some of these were easy to figure out. They were: a sister of my wife, a first cousin of my wife and his daughter, and a first cousin of my son. Then, there was a man and a woman who had a majority of Native American ethnicity in their report. They had to be related to my side.
But how?
My father was the only member of his family who came to this country. That was in 1948. How could he have close relatives in this country? My mother was raised as an only child. I was the only Mexican in the world who did not have a cousin, an uncle, or an aunt. We held our family reunions inside a closet. But, on the bright side, there were more tamales for us during the holidays. We did not have to share them with relatives.
But who are these people that Ancestry claims are closely related to my family?
Did my father stray, and now the evidence is coming back Maury Povich style to say that “The DNA evidence is in, you are the father?” Did my mother’s parents have a secret child? Did I have a close relative from Mexico who came unannounced to Chicago in the 1930s?
I did some research and found that these two people listed on Ancestry are from Chicago. One was 73 years old. The other was in her 20s.
The older man eliminated my father. My father was not here 73 years ago. He was still in Mexico.
Was my mother’s lingering doubt that her parents are not her biological parents more than a doubt? Could she be related to this 73 year-old man?
I found records for the younger woman. She had been arrested a couple of times in her early 20s. We have to be related and share the arrested development gene. My line has proven that this gene exists. It lingered in me into my twenties.
She lives in a northern suburb of Chicago. The older man lived in an adjacent suburb. They lived near each other.
I went to Facebook. I found a connection between the two people. I began to develop a hypothesis. These were the biological relatives of my mother, who was adopted in 1934. Now, I need to apply science to prove my hypothesis. I need evidence.
I sent messages via Ancestry to both people. I did not receive a response. I tried again. I received the same result-no reply.
I began to create my tree. I spent about 200 hours in September researching for my tree. September is our month off for home school. I needed to make progress and uncover these connections in one month before I started in October with Geometry, U.S. Government, Spanish, and Language Arts for my 13-year-old son. He takes three other classes in the regular school system.
I was obsessed. I searched every clue. I looked under every rock. Researching my family is not an easy thing. My name is not Gonzalez. Anyone researching my family will come to an instant dead end.
Our real family name may go back only a few generations. It may not be our real family name. Family legend has it that someone in the family line helped a gang rob a Zacatecas silver mine payroll. He then disappeared into another Mexican state with a new name and a richer, new life. I found nothing to prove or disprove that legend.
I did hit a dead end with the family lineage in the mid 19th century.
If my mother was adopted then there is another instant dead end. Could these two people be the key to answering the question about my mother’s biological parents?
Maybe my mother was not adopted although I have always believed in that theory. My grandparents resemble no one in my family. None of them look like any of the ensuing offspring. I look like my dad. My son, Pete, looks like me.
Did I really want to go down this road?
In my mind, my grandparents will always be my grandparents no matter what I find out. My grandmother, in her late-60s, would take her rug muffin [sic] grandchildren to the movies and to the 12th Street beach. She had a folding chair, and she would sit and wait with us at the Roosevelt Street bus stop. She did a lot for us.
I loved swimming in the 12th Street Beach. I never would have had that experience if not for my grandmother. She cared about us.
I loved the movies except for a horror movie that was in Spanish. I was afraid for about a week after watching it. I was about six years old.
She fed us when we visited her apartment down the street on Peoria. She fed me my first jalapeno when I was about five. She and her husband laughed about it. It was a rite of passage, and one of my dearest memories of them. She was performing an important ritual. I cannot live without jalapenos and spicy foods.
I searched census forms from the 1930s, line by line, of every residence in the Taylor Street area. I looked at immigration records, marriage records, death records, and I sent out a few smoke signals and gave offerings of fried bread and jalapenos to the family tree gods.
I made flowcharts comparing the DNA evidence and the relationship between these two people and me. I developed a hypothesis that the older man had to be either the first cousin of my mother or her brother.
I hit dead ends in my search for more information. I felt hesitant to call to contact the man. What does one say?
“I think that your mother or your aunt gave up your older sister/cousin for adoption. I have no evidence, it is just a hunch.”
I do not think so.
There was one other person who was listed as a close relative. She had a family tree with about 3,000 people listed on it, but it was private. I contacted her and asked for permission to look at her extensive family tree. I explained that we probably shared a common ancestor from one hundred years ago. I was hoping that her family tree would provide some vital clues to help me determine how we are related. She granted me permission, but she added that she doubted if we were related. She said that she had no Gonzalez in her tree.
Neither did I.
Looking at her tree was an eye opener. I immediately found a link between her and the two people who are closely related to me. I asked her about the two. One was the granddaughter of her aunt. The other, the 73 year-old man, was her first cousin.
Let’s call her aunt Aunt Zuzu.
If he was my mother’s first cousin, then this woman with the family tree was also my mother’s first cousin. I was on the right track.
She said that all her family lived in the Taylor Street area. She was not sure if we were related.
Her grandparents had one daughter who possibly could have been the mother of my mother. All the DNA evidence would fit if she was. There were two daughters who possibly could be the biological mother of my mother. One was pregnant with another child when my mother was born. It could not be her. The other would have been 14 when she was pregnant with my mother. I think it was this teen who gave birth to my mother.
I asked my mother if she knew this Aunt Zuzu. My mother’s voice picked up with excitement when she heard Zuzu’s name. She said that Zuzu was her cousin.
Cousin? But she had no relatives in Chicago. How could she be related? She said that my grandmother wanted her to address Zuzu as her cousin Zuzu and to call Zuzu’s mother dia Maria.
I asked her the name of Zuzu’s mother. She answered. It was the exact name of the mother of the person who I hypothesized was the biological mother of my mother. Dia Maria most likely was my mother’s grandmother.
It was a tangled web.
Zuzu’s mother was a close friend of my grandmother. Who else would you trust with your grandchild but your good, trusted friend?
It made sense. Was Aunt Zuzu my mother’s biological aunt? Was her sister the teen who gave up her daughter, my mother, for adoption? It was during the Great Depression. She came from a large family. She was only 14 when she became pregnant.
Was I solving this puzzle that I thought was unsolvable? I had thought that anyone who would know the truth about my mother was long deceased. But here I am, on the cusp of putting in the last few pieces of this puzzle.
Her mother was right there all the time. It was the older sister of her friend, Zuzu.
The owner of the huge family tree confirmed that her aunt had given up her child for adoption. She had heard that family story.
My mother is 83.
Her parents will always be her parents.
She finally found out the truth and received the answer to her doubt. It all fell into place like it was preordained. We were meant to know the truth while she was still alive.
In her last response. the woman with the huge family tree addressed the message to cousin Pete. I smiled when I read it.
I finally have a cousin. I am no longer the only Mexican in the world sin primos.
You can scan and send your registration form to Shirlene or Karin at the corresponding email address in the image directly above and on the left. See you there!
need more time to apply to this project, but instead of having more time as an empty-nester, I now have a little grandchild to take care of on a nearly-full-time basis. Not a problem, I thought, I’m a morning person anyway, so I could research, write stories, and revamp the blog while my granddaughter sleeps. Nope. The website isn’t making money yet, and our family can’t afford to wait, so I’ve had to take on a morning job teaching ESL online. Curses. Foiled again.
StoriesFromthePast.com 