My Family Mystery

“Kocham cię” I heard this phrase a lot growing up in my great-grandparents home. It means ‘I love you’ in Polish. Most of my family died before I was born and when my grandmother was young. As it so happens, I do not know much about my family’s history, or of anything they have done. I hardly know what my ethnic background contains. What I know about my ancestors is solely based on my grandmother’s perception.
As far as my grandmother Adrienne knows, my great-grandparents were the first in their family’s generation to be born in America. My great-grandfather’s parents came from Poland and my great-grandmother’s were from Lithuania. This is on my mother’s side. On my father’s side, the only thing I know for sure is that my grandfather was from Norway and died when my father was eight years old. My grandfather on my mother’s side is a mystery. I do not know much about him, besides the fact that he served in the Vietnam War and died when he was fifty years old from a brain tumor. I do not know his ethnic background. As far as I know, I have Polish, Lithuanian, and Norwegian blood running through my veins. My great-grandfather served in WWll. This made my grandmother Adrienne part of the 1940-50’s Baby Boom. I can prove that my grandfather and great-grandfather served in the wars from photos and their army jackets. I have a lot of old photos I found in my great-grandparents belongings after their deaths but they are of people I have never met or heard of.
As you can see, I have very limited knowledge of my family history. My grandmother isn’t sure of the exact year my great-great-grandparents moved to America. I also do not know when my grandfather moved here from Norway. I have a lot of questions that will always remain unanswered because my relatives died when I was little. I don’t think it has a huge role on my identity, besides not being sure of the remainder of my ethnicity or of any medical issues or achievements of my ancestors. I wish I had a clearer idea of who I am as far as my family history goes, but the small amount of memory my grandmother has left of them is sufficient.

Ashley L.