During Prohibition (1920-1933), when my mother was about 8 or 9 (1930 or 31), one day she and my grandmother went uptown to visit friends.

Grandpa was making home-brewed beer back then. Grandma wasn't thrilled about the idea, since it was illegal at the time, but she put up with it...He was even known to sell a bottle now and then to someone. Grandma herself, after a hard day's work, would drink a bottle against the heat. However, that day, Grandpa crossed a line...

Walking up the road to the house, we came upon an unbelievable scene: Men, women, sitting around, having a good time...drinking Grandpa's beer! It was a regular outdoor honkytonk. Well, if you only knew my Grandma, you could imagine what happened next: She was not amused. People knew my Grandma well enough that just her arrival meant they had better clear off. As they did, she proceeded to grab the remaining bottles of beer within her reach and smash them against the side of the shed.*

[NOTE: My Mom told me this story a few other times in my life when circumstances brought it up. On evening last June, she brought it up again when talking about her sister, my Aunt Pat. How Aunt Pat is scared about her health, and very lonely. She talks about coming up here to be near Mom. We hope she does. Mom said Aunt Pat likes her bottle or two of beer every day...and it went from there...]

* This scene evokes a connection in my mind to the story of Jesus clearing the moneylenders from the temple, for some reason!

In the northern-most section of Iraq are where the Kurds live. My son-in-law Meran and his family came from from this area. They lived in a small village named Bigdowdi. Several of Meran's uncles were Peshmergas, or guerilla resistance soldiers against Saddam's regime.

In March 1988 Saddam began campaigns against Iraqi citizens specifically the Anfal campain targeting the Kurds; it began with Halabja...later in August, they gassed Bigdowi.

Meran's mother and father were with his family when they first left for the mountains for safety. However, they realized that in the rush to escape, they had left important papers. Despite the risk, they felt they needed to go back and retrieve them. A relative went with them to assist. They never made it back.

Later, after the family felt it would be safe, they went back to try and find them. They eventually did, but it was sad news. The gas had overcome them; they had safely retrieved the documents, and were on their way back, but couldn't quite make it. The family had to bury them there, and continue on their way.

During the next 4 years, they lived as refugees in Turkey. My daughter told me their camp was near Mardin, Turkey. They were fortunate enough to be sponsored by Lutheran Social Services to come to the United States in 1992. It was here in Fargo, ND that my daughter met Meran...

Awhile back, I was in contact with Kevin Slator, the grandson of the man who killed my cousins in a drunk driving accident. It was rather surreal at first to be contacted by him out of the blue. He had seen some of my family history I had posted online somewhere, and was hoping to collaborate with me to find out more about the story. In the end, I could only give him some oral history about how it affected our family, which he greatly appreciated. However, I received in return a rich background on who Jack Slator, his grandfather, was. By all accounts he was a decent man, hardworking, liked by all, who did a very foolish thing of drinking and then getting behind a wheel. But for the grace of God could go all of us...

...and, ironically, he was a native-born Irishman...

Family history tells the story like this: One day my cousin was walking home from church with some other kids just having attended Catechism. A drunk driver coming from Pembina came down main street St. Vincent and ran into one group, then crossed the road and hit another group. The driver kept going.

In the end, two children were dead, including my cousin.

The deaths hit the community hard. My Uncle John and Aunt Lena were devastated. Later the same year, he and my other two cousins - the remaining children of the family - all died in a freak drowning at the family farm. There were no witnesses, and only assumptions and speculations to this day as to what really happened. Some said that John in his deep grief either purposely took his own life and his daughters, or took an opportunity that presented itself to do so. Others were more charitable and assumed he was attempting a rescue of the girls and it went horribly wrong. Either way, my Aunt Lena was overwhelmed, and ended up having a nervous breakdown in her attempts to cope with her grief.

For years, the man who did this to my family was just a faceless monster. Now I know he was much more than that, and that life is never that simple...

My grandfather, Sheldon Albert Fitzpatrick, was an extraordinary man. He kept bees and made his own honey. He ran a farm, and did the family's cobbling. Much to my grandmother's chagrin, he made homemade beer. A man of letters, he loved literature, passing that love down to my mother and thus to me. He cared about his community, and was Treasurer, Mayor, and keeper of the cemetery books and grounds at various times for our little village. Most of all, he was remembered as a warm man with a wonderful sense of humour, well-loved by all who knew him. I was only 5 years old when he died, so my memories of him are limited. I remember an old tall man who wore a hat, took naps on the porch, let me sit on his lap where I would give him sloppy kisses and in retaliation he would give me whisker rubs (I would squeal with laughter and love every minute of it)...and oh yes, the pink peppermints, the peppermints he would share with me that he loved so much...

I sat with my grandfather sometimes during his last days on this earth, when he was laying in his bed at home. When I would come to him and talk to him, he would call me his little girl, and my mother would weep saying I was the only one now that he seemed to recognize. I didn't fully understand that then, but cherish that memory now. It reminds me of when my own father said his last words to Mom and I, Mom saying "No more Hawkeye and Chingascook"...an allusion to other memories of a time when I shared special moments with my father as a little girl...

When I was a little girl in the 1960's, I was far away from the hippies, anti-war demonstrators, the ecology/pollution protestors, riots, etc., but at the same time, I was riveted to them through television. Television was coming of age then, and I was a child of that age. If I had been a bit older, as I look back on it, I'm pretty sure I would have been like the older sister in THE WONDER YEARS - i.e., I would have packed up and went to join the revolution. As it was, I read, I watched, I'd have little philosophical self-talks; I'd discuss topics as they came up with my parents, discovering that while they had strong beliefs, they also surprised me with their intelligence and open-mindedness. It was a great example to me of how to exercise my mind, how to think, and not being afraid of standing up for what I believe yet allowing for flexibility and always desiring to understand more...

Family Skeletons

Mom has shared many, many stories of her family down through the years. Some are a bit rough around their edges since I didn't put them on paper right away. I do my best here to relate them, and in this case, to relate some that were buried from public knowledge for the most part...

Like the one about my Mom's sister Irene, who went to work for a couple in Canada, ended up getting treated like a real-life Cinderella, returning home worse for the wear and expecting a child. The baby ended up not only my Mom's nephew, but a playmate of hers as she was growing up. Irene ended up marrying a wonderful guy who loved her so much that he took the child under his name.

Like the one about my Mom's sister Alberta, who when attending nurse's training in the big city became entranced with a college football player, became pregnant and had to make the hard choice of placing that child for adoption. And yes, she did wonder at times whatever happened to that child...

What a difference time can make. I found myself in the same position, expecting a child without marriage many years after my Aunts, never even knowing they had faced the same situation. In my case, I didn't have to marry anyone, but chose to. As it ended up, it wasn't for the best. But in the end, I am still glad I had all the experiences that came out of those difficult times, as well as my two kids, Eva and Daniel. Whatever we do, whatever we choose, it is what makes us who we are...

Tonight I was cleaning out a closet of mine, and as often happens, I digress from one task to another. At one point, I'm at my desk rearranging and clearing out to make room for this and that (it's a long sad tale), and I come across a slip of paper taped to a cubbyhole in the desk. Document "Uncle Henry" and "Aunt Daisy" in family history it says. For a moment, I wondered what in the world, then a split second later I smiled, remembering Mom telling me last year, in the midst of her first flush of grief and confusion. "I want to tell you before I forget..."

"Uncle Henry" and "Aunt Daisy" were Mom and Dad's code phrases in their early love letters to each other, especially during the war when they were quite aware that many letters were read by the Army censors, for their genitalia. When they would write to one another that "Uncle Henry misses Aunt Daisy", they knew exactly what the other meant without being crude or letting anything slip to the censors.

Mom has kicked herself more than once for having Dad take out the bundle of their love letters and burn them. She can't for the life of her remember why they did it, either. What she does remember is Grandpa Fitzpatrick, her father, joking that "...that's the hottest fire ever seen around here..."

The evidence of our existences are fragile at best. All too easily it disappears and no one knows we were ever here...