I actually don’t know a lot of things about where I’m from, like how my parents met or actually managed to fall in love enough to get married (my mom and dad are VERY different people), but here’s what I do know, and I’ll try to keep it at least a little interesting.

My mom was the reason my grandparents got married, she was born about seven months after the honeymoon. My grandpa had been married before in Pennsylvania to a woman I can’t remember ever having met (though my mother says I have), with whom he had three sons: Lenny, Mark and Jay.

They divorced and my grandpa moved to Kendell, which is not so much a town as the name given to the land containing several dozen farms. He met, impregnated and married my grandmother, and with her eventually had four daughters: Brenda Rae (my mom), Jennie Lynn, Sandra Jean and Heidi Sue. Please pity their pathetically southern sounding names.

I know that my grandfather grew up in Pennsylvania, that his parent’s were Pennsylvania Dutch but were the last generation of us to speak German for two reasons: 1) So they could talk in front of the kids without being understood 2) So my grandpa and his siblings would be more “American”.

My grandfather has a twin sister (something I didn’t know until two or three years ago) and is one of ten children.

I don’t know much about my mom’s childhood except that for a long time my Grandpa was very sick and they didn’t have much money to spare, and they almost entirely lived off the garden my grandpa still keeps (this is why my mom won’t touch zuccini or eggplant to this day).

 At some point I’ll go into a little more depth on everyone, but for now this is it.

Happy Mother’s Day all.

      I can’t tell you what strange force possessed me to actually start this, but I can tell you what inspired the ball to consider rolling. I was going through some old files on my computer and found some IM conversations from high school (not so long ago, 3 years now) and I started thinking about all the things, all the nurture factors that have built up to make the me I am now.

       The process of building a person is so complicated and so fragile. We wonder at the miracle of life from conception to birth but not at all the growth thereafter. Sure, we have mile stones, learning to talk, learning to drive, but we don’t measure the mile stones in our personality. The first time we stood up for something we believed in, the first time we succumbed to peer pressure. All the things we exalt and abhor in our pasts. I started this to write about those.

      It wont be in any particular order. The ages at which things happened will be guessed at. My memories will be tainted by everything I know now. But I will tell you the truth as I know it to be, the pride and the shame, my triumphs and failures. I’ll build you me.