Ancestor dreams

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This is an old post (2008!) from my old blog, Blue Wren, but the dreams haven’t changed. If anything, they’ve grown more insistent …

Blue Wren

I’m a quarter Finnish. My maternal great-grandparents emigrated from Finland to Saskatchewan, Canada, where they lived surrounded by vast, rustling fields of yellow wheat. My great-grandfather, I’m told, was murdered there, shot dead by another man. The remaining members of the family no longer know his story, so I have no idea why or how it happened. Even great-grandfather’s name is gone.

My great-grandmother remarried after a time, and it was her second, non-Finnish married name I knew her by. She remained in Saskatchewan, outliving her second husband by decades, and went on to live independently well into her 90s. She died only a few years after she was finally forced by great age to live with relatives.

My mother remembers her as a tiny powerhouse, a tyrannical woman who swept into her childhood Idaho home like a scolding whirlwind. She didn’t come to coo over or cuddle her young…

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3 thoughts on “Ancestor dreams”

  1. I said it when you first wrote this and I say it again: We are so going to do this.

    I’ve always wanted to go, since I first learned that’s where we’re from. But now that I’m doing my own research for my ghost story, I really, REALLY want to go there. I’d love to find out where great-great-grandma was from, and look up some relatives. But one stop I must insist on is Posio. It’s the town in my book, and after reading the lyrics for the town’s “Lapland Rap,” I am utterly charmed. It sounds like Home. I want to retire there, if I can’t move there before then.

    Let’s make it happen. Between the two of us, I’m sure we can come up with travel agendas and scope out some decent flight and hotel prices. Then it’s just a matter of saving up. But that’s not so scary once we’ve got some solid numbers to work toward 🙂

    And let’s take grandma, too.

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  2. Wren, I hope you get to make this trip soon. This photo of Helsinki puts me in a trance, I could only imagine seeing it first hand. My family traces back to Ireland. My wife and I would love to go there some day but I doubt we will make it now.

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    • I understand completely, Terry. Overseas travel has always been expensive, but these days it seems insurmountable for us little folk. But, never say never. There are deals to be had. My daughter wants VERY much to make this trip with me and is full of encouragement, so maybe we’ll be able to do it one of these days. In the meantime, it’s a pleasant daydream.

      Wishing you the best, m’friend. 😉

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