“Remoted” Workday 216 / Day 326 (Friday)

All through my life, there were many stories from Mummu about Finland, the country from which her parents relocated in 1893. She proudly told the story of the Finns dressed in white, skiing down the snowy hills with rifles and fighting off the much larger Russian Army. Her passion with the story had me thinking she had witnessed this firsthand, but she was born in America and never traveled to the land of her parents except through their stories. Mummu told of “Sisu,” the tenacious spirit that courses through Finnish veins. Her mother was from a farming family in Finland and became an American citizen in her 70s. 

Flag of Finland

Mom’s father, my Grandpa Ray, was born in Finland and came to America as a young child. I learned from Mummu that Mom was mostly Finnish and a bit of Swedish that came from Grandpa Ray, and that made me us kids half Finnish with a smidge of Swedish.

Dad’s ancestral roots are in England and France. His mother died when I was four, and I have no memories of my Grandma Olive. She was an exotic looking dark-haired beauty in a portrait in the photo album. After her death, Dad, Mom, my brother, infant sister and I moved to the family home. We lived upstairs and Grandpa Simonds and one of my cousins lived downstairs. Despite living upstairs from Grandpa for about five years, I have few memories of him. He was tall. He liked flipping his dentures around in his mouth to horrify us kids. Mostly, he stayed downstairs and we stayed upstairs. He fished. Mom bought him flannel shirts for Christmas.

There were no stories of England or France or Canada or Simonds family pride at our nightly dinner table. There were occasional references to the family rumor of alleged but undocumented Mi'kmaq roots. I only recently learned my paternal grandma Olive was born in Nova Scotia.

When I was in high school, my aunt shared what she had learned about the family tree and our connections to Johnny Appleseed and Count Rumford. It was exciting and the first time ever hearing anything about the family history.

Finnish lion flag (1917-18).

A relative asked recently about my connection to Finnish ancestry and the absence of recognition of the paternal side of my background. I’ve been thinking about the question ever since. The answer is actually pretty simple. I grew up hearing about the Finnish side of my lineage from Mummu. She shared her pride in where her parents came from, and the enthusiasm made it easy to connect with being "half Finnish." That’s the background I know. I learned very little about Dad's family background.

Stories of Dad’s family and his youth were scarce. They usually involved attending parochial school under the tutelage of “the Crows at Saint Joe’s.” He had rheumatic fever as a kid, spent time at Children’s Hospital in Boston, and as a result, his mother wouldn’t let him swim. These few nuggets didn’t give us much to grasp on to. There were no funny sibling stories like Mummu’s favorite about the time her sister Julia accidentally stepped in the pies that were cooling on the pantry floor. The Simonds siblings as adults were people we sometimes visited. As children growing up, they are a complete mystery, and it was almost as if Dad had been an only child. I still don’t know any stories about his life growing up as one of six kids that include any of his siblings. It’s hard to feel a connection to something you know next to nothing about. There is still time.