My Mother Was A Genealogist"
or
"Why We Live In Dustballs"

Submitted by: Alicia Koski Marshall
alicia@chartermi.net

 

When I was growing up, all the other kids moms went shopping, baked cookies and went on long walks. The only place my mom walked to was the cemetery! She spent more time with dead people than she did the living. Maybe she liked em' cuz they didn't talk back...

Other moms scrubbed thier floors, my mom scrubbed tombstones to get a better reading! Armed with huge sheets of paper, chalk and crayons she did not draw art but did trace names from those old stones. She dragged me along for a couple years until I got old enough to refuse to go along on her quest for another unrecorded cemetery. My biggest fear was stepping on an old mound and my foot sinking in! I had nightmares for years about zombies chasing me through old cemeteries!

My old Grandma Winkvist told us that you should NOT be afraid of the dead but of the living. Bologna! I rather be chased by a living person than a dead one anyday! Meanwhile back at the ranch, Mom had boxes and boxes of papers. Books, reference material and records on CD's by the dozens. We had hardwood floors throughout our house and dust balls took up residence with us for years. We should have charged them rent! Every couple of weeks my Mom would halfheartedly do a "fire alarm" cleaning. Usually when we had company coming over. She would run around, dusting, spraying, and scrubbing and the next day the house would return to normal till the next time.

Dad bought us a new roll top computer desk one Christmas, and we never saw the top of it again. Mom had it covered in stuff, webcam, scanner, printer, palmpilot, a penscanner and digital camera. Plus an assortment of books in Finnish. It did not matter if she could not read Finnish, she bought them anyway. She had email friends all over the country, Finland, Norway and Denmark mostly. She was always trying to get me to pronounce Finnish words. How can you pronounce a word that has 12 vowels in it? The best I could do was maito which was milk.What is a hyvästijättöpuheita anyway, I still don't know. I almost bit my tongue off trying to say it...

Moms ultimate quest was to find out where her great great grandfather originally came from and his parents names. She has chased him for three years and still hadn't caught up to him. Now she finds out that he was something called Kveeni! The absolute delight on her face was comparable to the rapture.Groan.Not another quest for her to embark on. How many nationalities can one Scandinavian be? Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Lapland and now Kveeni!Her genes were like a bowl of mixed vegetables. Through it all my Dad smilingly indulged her hobby.Ebay was one of her favorite places to buy old books. Almost weekly she would get this "secret" look on her face and be up till all hours waiting till the last minute to bid on some moldering book from the Finnish church. Gleefully she awaited these packages to come in the mail . I thought she was having a convulsion when she actually won the bid on a book about the History of the Finns in Wisconsin! Geeze oh Pete! I thought the computer blew up on her, judging her reaction!

Mom came down with pneumonia around Christmas and had to go to the hospital for IV antibiotics daily. A normal person would take a regular book to read, not my Mom. She had a purse the size of a small suitcase with 3 or 4 Finnish and Norwegian church books in it. I never knew how popular the name Ole was until mom told me. Next I will be having nightmares about someone named Ole Olson chasing me! My mom has so many ancestors named Johan I have lost count. I toldher that her ancestors had no imagination when it came to names. She gave me this "fisheye" look and told me that if Dad had not insisted on naming me Stephen, she would have called me Johan...Thanks, Dad!

Now my Mom is bugging my Dad for a trip to the old country. Some of her ancestors came from some dinky town in Finland called Kestilä.She says I have to get used to eating stuff called some kind of fish or another. I told her to pack me a case of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and I would be happy. Now I need to find out where all the fast food places are before Mom turns us into grain heads. Her white bread has suddenly turned into whole grain, oatmeal, rye and wheat. I feel like a pet cow at the feedbag. She eats this weird looking cheese called Juustoa.It looks like a piece of white/brown sponge. It has the texture of a sponge and tastes like it too. I put my foot down when she tried to get me to eat some lutefish stuff. I thought the smell would never leave our house! It cleared up my Dads sinuses and we had all the stray cats hanging around it for a week straight. Dad forbid mom to ever bring it into the house again as the fumigator was so expensive.

This is a warning to all kids, don't let your Dad buy your Mom a computer. You can never use it anyway. This is her third computer in three years. If I asked for a new bike every year I would be pushing my luck.How come Moms get indulged? I thought we kids were supposed to!

Son of a genealogist!

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