In coming up, we were not allowed to even mention that the two younger girls had a different dad then the two older. I got to the point where I'd say "My dad is first-generation Russian-American," but that was the man who my mom married when I was four, adopted me in 5th grade, and molested me in 6th.
MY dad is first-generation Finish-American. He was the youngest of nine. He served in Korea. He is coming alive through the words and pictures of my cousins.
My mom is adopted, and I only recently found this, my dad's family. My mom has a brother, also adopted, and he has two kids. So I never knew what it was like to see my own eyes in my cousin's face, or look over at my sister and our cousin - and see the same nose!! Lol!
The farmhouse is gone. It was too old and rickety, and it got torn down. The old outhouse suffered the same fate, and the new outhouse has a working toilet! But somebody hauls pails of water to a water barrel, and then there is a pot to pour the water into the back of the toilet, to flush.
The sauna is gone. The cabin my cousin Doug built when he was 17 is still standing.
I love these people. My sister and I really did not even know they existed, yet they never stopped looking for us. And the night I found them, they lit up the phones from Alaska to the east coast and all over Minnesota announcing that they found "Al's girls."
