More Writing Prompted by.... Someone Else? or Not...

Yes.
This is yet another post that was prompted by...


You guessed it... The Writer's Workshop at Mama Kat's Losin It


I have a ton of topics that I want to write about... 
That I thought up on my own, but...


I just can't seem to get motivated...
to do anything...
at. all.


So... here is a little something based on prompt number...3? for this week...
Enjoy!


3.) Tell us something you learned about a grandparent that surprised you.


So, this is the part where you would expect me to say that I was surprised to learn that my grandmother was a flapper in a speakeasy...
But she wasn't.


Or that my grand dad was a fighter pilot in the war... 
But he wasn't.


I cannot recall when I learned this little tidbit about Grams, but I do remember thinking...
Wowsers!


Apparently, Grams and Granpa got married when Grams was very young. I think I always knew this, but I didn't really KNOW it...
Know what I mean?


Just like I knew that growing up in the hills of Ohio in the 1920's was hard... 
no, it was REALLY hard.


But just how hard I didn't understand.


The story goes that Grams met Granpa at a barn dance. 
They liked one another.
They dated? ( or stepped out or courted, whatever they called it back then...)


Grams and Granpa were married on August 23rd. 
It was Granpa's birthday... his 21st to precise.
Grams' birthday was August 16th.
She was a young girl... he was an older man... guy... boy... 
whatever...



But this is where the story gets ...
let's just say odd, or fuzzy.

Grams was one of many children... My mom would be able to say how many and name them in correct order in a hearbeat... I, alas, am not that good... I have to cheat and look at the family genealogy she wrote to get it right.


So, there were a bunch of kids and Grams was one of the younger ones. Her dad was off working somewhere else... like in another state or a different town because, well, that's where the work was. 
Probably a coal mine or steel mill.


Anyway...and here is the fuzzy part....
the kids were farmed out to families in the area... relatives or not it seems...
because there were too many mouths to feed? 


Apparently this was not an uncommon occurrence back in the day...


And then there was a flood.
And some of the little ones got washed away?
And then there was a fire. 
And some of the little ones perished?


And somehow, someway, someone got Grams mixed up with one of her older sisters?


She grew up believing her birth year was 1920... 
so she got married in 1937... when she was 17... right?


Wrong... evidently when she applied for a Social Security number...
as an adult... 
Mom of 3...
because she needed one for a job...


She was informed that she was born on August 16, 1923...


And if you do the math correctly...
and Granpa REALLY was celebrating his 21st birthday the day they got married...
and Grams REALLY was born in 1923... instead of 1920...


Then they got married 7 days after she turned 14...
Yeah... 
The reason, I was told when I questioned that no one knew she was 3 YEARS YOUNGER!!!, 
is this...


She was always big for her age so she easily passed for one of the older kids who had drowned or perished in the fire or whatever...

although how anyone could have mistaken a 3 year old for a 6 year old...
I don't care how big for her age she was...seriously?


It seems that there is yet another twist to this story...
and again it is, we'll say, fuzzy...


She knew her name was Kathryn Nancy... 
I mean you know your name, right?



But she was wrong! 


Yep, her name was REALLY Nancy Kathryn... 


you know, the one born 3 years later...


but they lost the family bible with the kid's names and birth dates in it...
I don't know, in the fire or the flood or ... whatever... so anyone could have been anyone at that point... 


Is it any wonder that tracking down the family tree is so time consuming???
confusing?
convoluted?


And don't even get me started on the side of the family whose family tree is really a wreath!


I know, right?

Re -Thinking Who You Are

I like that show...

My Grandmother- Erma Nichelson -
From a good Pennsylvania German Family
Her family had names like Noah and Phoebe

The one where the celebrities search for their ancestors...


Who Do You Think You Are?


No. Not You, silly.


That's the name of the show I like. 


It comes on Friday's at 8pm.
Actually, I think this week is the final episode.
It's got Ashley Judd, which pretty much means we'll find out the history of all the Judd women.


This season has had Lionel Richie and his amazingly forward thinking emancipated ancestor...


Rosie O'Donnell and her Irish Immigrant ( yeah like that was a shocker) ancestors who game to the US via French Canadian territory...


Gweneth Paltrow  ( was Paltrowicz  in Poland... maybe we're related?) whose family was filled with dark secrets and half truths, and people that came from Barbados so she HAD to go there to do research just when a terrible snow storm hit here...

And Kim Cattrall who searched out and found out about the man who had left her mother's mother to care for 3 small girls in the midst of poverty and economic depression in England...


Yes, they have to be rich and famous to be able to pick up and fly to Canada, Ireland, Barbados and Europe.


But the stories they have found, the secrets they have uncovered...

My Grandfather- Raymond Suchocki- Yes, he is Polish
and was a first generation Polish-American born her.
His family had names like Katarzyna and Jadwiga

They are not only theirs.


They are the stories of many families over many generations from many places around the globe.








Tales of poverty and famine, of work houses and concentration camps, of abandonment -both  freely chosen and at the untimely and often very painful hand of the angel of death...




These, and so many more, are the tales that tell the story...


Not of individuals...


But of THE Individuals who built a Nation...


this GREAT NATION we Americans call...


HOME.

Six Degrees of Separation...

No, not the movie with Will Smith that I have never actually seen.

The idea is that every person on earth is only 6 people away from a famous person, or infamous as the case may be... or from someone who knows someone who knows you... confused yet?
I was.

So I go to thinking and...

There's the girl I grew up with who worked with The Greaseman... and then Howard Stern, whose neighbor and  matron of honor in her wedding was Michele Phillips, the famous actress and singer in The Mama and Papas... you know Chyna and Mackenzie Phillips mom.

Then there's Haddaway... the successful singer songwriter in Europe who was my friend and fellow band member in high school.

Montel Williams, who graduated from my kid's high school, the same year as some of my friends in my neighborhood, although he doesn't claim our town as his and he never comes to the reunions.

There are more.. the guy I dated for a minute but stayed friends with from high school who works for a big music company... his title has the word President  or CEO or both in it, whatever...

Then there are the really weird connections like that my ex- mother-in-law used to babysit my current father-in-law's little brother, Johnny... the little brother HeMan Hubby is named for... the one that was killed in a motorcycle accident and taken to the hospital, the very same one my ex-mother-in-law was in that day giving birth to her 3rd child... the one who grew up to become my ex-husband. There was a ceramic Easter egg dish that my ex- mom-in-law set out each year she told me Johnny's mom had made for her as a wedding gift...the signature on the back is HeMan Hubby's grandmother.

And if that's not weird enough... HeMan Hubby's family came to America at the same time and in the same place and were members of the same church and worked together to combat the Indians and the French and the British and then... moved to the state we now live in, to the same place and same time and moved in the same circles for several hundred years!

My kids always say they hate going places with me because I always seem to run into someone I know... and they think I know everyone... and maybe for good reason..

Like BratChild's boyfriend, JM, whose cousin is a friend of mine from high school.

And BratChild's elementary school friend whose mother's cousin is a guy I graduated with and sat next to in almost every class from 7th thru 12th grade and yeah we were in band together.

The  retired Navy guy I met when his boys joined DeMolay only to find out he had moonlighted as a floor guard at the skating rink GoodMom worked at... and she was his boss!

SIX's 3rd grade teacher, who at back to school night I realized was a girl who had been GoodMom's friend in elementary and middle school.

Or SIX's 1st grade teacher, who it turns out was my brother's next door neighbor!

How the owner of the skating rink GoodMom worked at graduated a year ahead of  me in school and we have more than a friend or 2 in common.

That kid I went to elementary school with and had a crush on... only to find out thru FaceBook of all places, that he knows some of the girls I went to nursing school with because he ended up going to their high school and graduated with them- oh and a very good guy friend of mine since middle school who had to spend second half of senior year at that same school.

The Army Major who was a very good friend of mine in high school, who ended up some Big Wig in Iraq who ended up being the person in charge of keeping my sister safe while she was there... and who it turns out is very good friends with a guy I went to elementary school with, the guy who had a crush on my best friend when we were 8, because they ended up at college together and then ended up going thru the ranks in the Army together.

My brother in law's boss who is actually the guy who was ManBoy's school PTA President, the one who got me the discount tickets to Disney World for our family trip for GoodMom's 18th birthday.

I don't really know every one. I mean, there's just no way I could know every one, right?

But I guess it seems they do have a point.

Name, Name every body has one...

My sister-in-law had a baby in September. 
Their second.
Now they have a girl, and a boy.
He is a junior.
But they call him by his middle name, so it's not confusing.


Why?


With all the names in the world... I mean,  I had a baby name book with OVER 10,000 names in it... why give your kid your name?


Or name your kids Michael and Michelle? 
Eric and Erica? 
Steven and Stephanie? 


These are all basically the same name... 
Think how confusing it must be for the poor kid, never really sure which one you are calling and afraid NOT to come, just in case it was him and will be in trouble for not coming when called...?


My other nephew, from HeMan Hubby's other brother, is also a junior. They too, have two.
A boy, then a girl.


Thankfully, MY sister did not name her son after his father, nor did MY brother name either of his sons after himself.


But he did name them after the grandfathers.
Which is cool only because neither was named Horace or Floyd or Eugene... mercifully, those names are all a few more branches back on the family tree.


About the same level on the family tree as the name my sister chose for her son... 
Luckily, it was a name that's not awful... and has actually seen an increase in popularity over the last few years. 


Having the most kids in either of our families, it was a chore at times to pick a name that we liked for our last child, but wasn't too close to any of our nieces or nephews names.


AND still be unusual and interesting, without being geeky.


So HeMan Hubby devised a plan.


He 'tried out' the names we had picked. 


When he called the kids to dinner he added the try-on names. 


When he called the kids in from playing he added the try-on names. 


When he scolded the kids he added the try-on names. 


And it worked.


We figured out which name went with our other 5 kid's names --- when you're calling 6 kids you want them all to know their name was called-- without sounding too much like another name or getting lost in the roll call.


We like it and it's a little different. 


He's 12 now and LOVES his name.


But he says SIX would have been the best name ever.


Maybe I shouldn't have talked HeMan Hubby out of that one?

What's In A Name?.... Apparently Everything!

My family has finally read some of my posts.

I have no idea if they like what I write or not, but I do know they DO NOT like the names I have given them.

So from this day forward GirlChild will be SmartGirl... she is a college graduate after all, and TeenGirl will be known as BratChild, which IS what I call her here at home most days anyway.

So, my family now consists of HeMan Hubby, GoodMom and her daughter FancyPants, SmartGirl, ManBoy, TeenBoy, BratChild and TweenBoy, who I should probably find a better name for since he will soon be a teen too... I am sure one will find it's way to him naturally in the near future anyway.

Names, those titles and descriptive adjectives that are given to us as children, will follow throughout our lives. Somehow this just doesn't seem fair.
How do our parents, or those giving the names, know what we will be like when we grow up.

Maybe a girl named Blanche will grow up to have dark hair and eyes and be a really grumpy person... Blanche- meaning white or fair of hair and face- would just not fit at all.

A lawyer named Honey? A doctor named Windy? Or grown people with names like Moon and Six and Apple? Who would take these people seriously, other than the Hollywood crowd?

HeMan Hubby wanted me to seriously consider naming TweenBoy, Six.
Why? you may ask. Because he is the 6th child. I vetoed this from the start only to find that NOW TweenBoy thinks that would be a cool name!
But then, he is only 11, so what does he know of the world of grownups with strange names?

My name is one I have strongly disliked my whole life. But, when compared to the other choice my parent's had on the table, I'll keep the one I got, Thank You Very Much!

My children's given names were something I put a lot of thought into. They had to have good or positive meanings, they had to be names that sounded professional, on the off chance one of my kids became a doctor or lawyer or college professor, and they had to fit with the heritage of our families.

Owing to all that my children have somewhat unusual names, but not made up or farfetched. They have names that are found throughout history and in the bible. They have names that represent the various countries of origin found on our Family Tree- or in some cases Family Wreath, but that's the West Virginia side, mostly.

As children, some of them did not like their names, but as they have gotten older, they do.

Of this I am glad, as it took a very long time to come up with them in the first place, and because in every one of my children the positive qualities of the meanings of their names is actually present in them.

Did the name influence the child, or was the child destined to be what he or she is all along?

I have no idea, but the tradition of finding the right name with just the right meaning continued in our family with the naming of FancyPants.
Her parents struggled with finding just the right combination of sounds, syllables and meanings to give their firstborn child.

In the end, the name is perfect, as is the little girl.

What's in a name?

Apparently, everything!

(Just ask my sister!)

Can your Brain get full? Is there a limit to how much you can learn? Ever seen some of the people at Wal-Mart.. You know, I think the answer's YES!

( I must insert a disclamier here... do not YELL at me for making my observation above... I too have a branch or two on the family tree from West Va... actually their tree looks more like a wreath...Remember this is AMERICA and we still have freedom of speech, for now at least)

I have never tried counting the books I have read in a year.
If I did a quick mental calculation I would haveto say I have read well over 200... I read 8 books in the last 10 days alone!
I do go weeks without reading anything, then will read, like a book a day, for several months.

The other night I actually, suddenly, came to a point where I could not read another word. I was in the middle of a sentence and I just could not read any more! No emails, no blogs, no magazines... nothing. It was like my brain was full and my eyes were too tired... weird, right?

I think my brain just got too full... that must have been it... right?
Or I have a brain tumor, or alzheimer's or some terrible unknown illness... worse than the one I already have?

Oh Yay Me!
SO... if you don't see a post from me for a few days it's probably because the aneurism killed me, or because I just could not process any more thoughts due to the alzheimer's... or because I do have a life and sometimes I have to actually do stuff in that life!

Probably that last one, but hey, never hurts to be prepared now, does it?

Just ask all those Boy Scouts out there... it IS their Motto after all.