My core family was small to begin with: two sisters, a set of parents, one maternal grandmother and two great aunts. My parents were only children, which means there were no aunts or uncles. Simple, right? But my parents are tough. I can't find my dad's mom, Eva D. Marquette. I can't find my mom's dad, Emil V. Johnson. (You try finding a Johnson in Chisholm, Minnesota.) My dad's dad had died long ago and he didn't talk about him much. But my mom's mom was right there with us. She either lived with us, or we lived with her, or she and I worked side-by-side in her restaurant, which was attached to my parents' business. This meant she and I spent a lot of time together. I was her favorite grandchild, and she was like a second mother to me. I adored that woman.
Her name was Gram Florence. Well, we called her Gram. Everyone else called her Florence. Florence Thompson, from Marengo, WI (AKA a wide place in the road up by Lake Superior). Her parents immigrated from Finland, bought a farm and had 12 kids. Twelve! (Gram said there were 15, but I've only found 12.) Either way, can you imagine? Well maybe some of you can, but I sure couldn't. That was like having all your classmates from school living in your house! Or at least it seemed that way to a pipsqueak with two siblings. Gram used to tell me stories about her brothers and sisters, her parents and life on the farm in general. This usually occurred while she was cooking (she was always cooking) (and if she wasn't cooking, she was cleaning, knitting, crocheting or volunteering). I was fascinated by the idea of all those siblings. I was entranced by the idea of a huge farm, out in the middle of nowhere, and with animals! I peppered her with questions like, "how on earth did you manage with seven sisters and only one bathroom?" "You really had to help your mom make breakfast, lunch and dinner every day for all those people?" "How could you bake bread in an oven that had no thermostat? How could you tell it was at 350 degrees?" "Your mother didn't speak English? How could she talk to anybody?" "What do you mean you butchered your own meat? EW."
She'd answer my questions and off I'd go, into a corner and write stories about Millie, Bertha, Irene, Hilma, the twins John and Jalmer, her mother Sophie, her father Matt. I'd illustrate 'em too. The girls were always princesses with tall cone hats and veils swirling everywhere; the boys were invariably riding prancing ponies that had enormous hooves. Everybody had arching eyebrows and buck teeth. I had a thing about arched eyebrows (this is called too much TV) and being obsessed with drawing every single tooth in a person's head, along with all the lines and shadows of hooves. It was important for some reason and all that attention to detail made them larger. (The word 'perspective' wouldn't arrive in my vocabulary until later.) It also never occurred to me that veils would be a hindrance while kneading dough, scrubbing floors and killing chickens. It didn't register that her brothers would have a hard time baling hay or milking cows if they never got off their trusty steeds. But Gram never said anything. I read her all the stories, showed her my drawings and she'd smile and laugh and tell me how great it all was. Grandmothers are wonderful, aren't they? I still have some of those stories tucked away in a box.
But I still didn't ask enough questions. Or at least not the right ones. I never asked, for example, what is your mother's full name? Or, where ARE all these brothers and sisters? I only knew two siblings. One sister was funny and adventurous, unmarried, no kids and lived far far away in California. The other was married, had four kids, lived five miles down the road and was a regular Miss Fussbudget. She didn't approve of me because I climbed trees, got dirty and sat on the floor in a dress, cross-legged. I should've been sitting properly, with my ankles together and doing 'girl things', not playing with live ants and plastic army men. Her sister, the fun one, would've just laughed, tossed her shoes into the weeds and climbed the tree with me. In a dress. And then laugh like a loon when Gram, holding her sides trying to keep her own merriment in, would whisper-shout "Girls girls, I can see your undies!"
They're all gone now; Mom, Dad, Gram, both great-aunts. There's no one left to ask. But I know there has to be more of us Finlander Thompsons out there. So I'm going to try again. Only this time, I'm going to start by tracking down living relatives. I've run into a wall tracking down the dead ones.
With age comes wisdom.
