...it's a Love Thing!

On September 24, 1956 in Sioux Falls, SD a new bond and love started which would last a lifetime. On March 10, 2011 a special person was found because of this relationship and a new bond and love has formed which will also last a lifetime.

On that day in 1956 my mom, Joyce Langdon Engel went into labor with her first child – me. When it was time to go to the hospital my parents had a flat tire. Fortunately, my mom’s Uncle Louie lived two doors down from us on Kiwanis St. He was thrilled to take my parents to the hospital. He was also thrilled to be the first relative to greet the newest member of the family.

All my life Uncle Louie held a special spot in my heart. And I had a special spot in his heart. Louie loved family as I love family. He always told my Grandpa Herb he was my REAL grandfather because he was there when I was born. This always made Herb fighting mad.

Uncle Louie had one child. A daughter named Marlene. Marlene was my mom’s cousin. They were close when they were growing up and loved each other very much. Marlene married and moved to Montana. Marlene had a daughter. I remember her family visiting Uncle Louie when I was younger. Marlene’s daughter was a little younger than me. The thing I remember the most about her was she was Uncle Louie’s REAL granddaughter and I wasn’t.

Growing up, Louie’s granddaughter and I never really knew each other. Her family lived in Montana and my family moved from Sioux Falls when I was 8 years old. To be honest when I started my search I couldn’t remember her name. I like to blame old age for that memory lapse.

Uncle Louie died in 1976 and four years later my mom died. Louie’s family was “lost” to me. Without my mom there was no one to keep us connected.
In the past few weeks my mom has been on my mind a lot. I’ve been remembering so many funny things about her. Not things that made me sad, just good memories. Somewhere along the way I started thinking about what happened to Uncle Louie’s family. Where was his daughter? Where was his granddaughter? I pushed the thoughts out of my mind, not sure where these thoughts were coming from and not sure what I should do.

Finally, I contacted one of my mom’s sisters to see what she knew of Uncle Louie’s family. All she knew was Uncle Louie’s daughter’s first name was Marlene. She didn’t know what her married name. I put this information aside for a couple of days. But on Thursday, March 10th I decided I would try to do some digging and see what I came up with.

A little before 10PM, I sat at my laptop and opened Google. All I had was a first name of Marlene and a maiden name of Langdon. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t find anything searching for a Marlene Langdon. But that’s where I started. This was the dead end I figured it would be. Where do I go next? Maybe I could find Uncle Louie’s obituary which would show Marlene’s married name along with where she lived at the time of his death 35 years ago? An obituary for Uncle Louie wasn’t found but something fun was found. There is a Langdon family website which is actually MY family tree and history. What a find. This has opened all kinds of doors to even more family. But it didn’t help me find the family members I was currently searching for.

How was I going to find Marlene and her family? Finally, I decided to search for Uncle Louie’s wife and Marlene’s mother – Erma. I searched for her obituary and there she was. I clicked on the website that contained Erma’s name. But, it wasn’t the obituary I had expected. It was Marlene’s obituary. She had died in 1995. It said she was “born to Louie and Erma Langdon…”

Well, I had found Marlene. When I saw her obituary I vaguely remembered hearing that she had died. Again, without my mom around, news of the Langdon family didn’t always reach us. Her obit also stated “She is survived by…” and there was the name I was looking for. Her name is Kaye and she is my second cousin.

Now armed with a first name and a married name which may or may not be her current name, I headed to Facebook. I typed in the name I had and 4 matches came up. The first one was for a teenager. Obviously, not who I was looking for. The second one was for a Kaye with a maiden name and the same last name I had found. Seeing the maiden name for FB Kaye #2 I remembered what her mom’s married name HAD been when MY Kaye had been born. It was the same as FB Kaye #2. I sent her a message telling her I thought we were related, telling her who my mom was, etc. This message was sent less than 30 minutes after I started my search.

Shortly after I sent my message to Kaye I shut down my computer and headed to bed. But sleep was not going to happen. I was so excited because I was 99.9% sure this was MY Kaye. Finally, after wandering in and out of our bedroom for over two hours I booted up my computer, signed into Facebook and found a message from Kaye. And yes she was my Uncle Louie’s granddaughter.

In the past few days, we have gotten to know each other. We have so many things in common. Our moms’ birthdays were 1 year, 1 month and 3 days different. Kaye and I have birthdays that are 1 year, 1 month and 3 days different. We both have 4 children, which are all similar in age. Both our mother’s died of breast cancer - way too young. And we both own black cowboy hats. This alone makes us very special people. ha! There are many other similarities, too many to go into here.

Needless to say this has been an emotional few days. Tears, laughter and more tears and more laughter.

So, what made me decide to start looking for this “lost” family member? Part of it has to do with my need to be the “family keeper together” person. And my need to stay connected to people who “belong” to me. I know my self-imposed title isn’t a REAL phrase but I kind of like it anyway. But why did I decide to start looking this particular week? Only God has the answer to that question.

We both believe that God always has a plan for everything that happens to us. His hand in this discovery cannot be ignored. We also believe our moms had a slight hand in this. Time will only tell why we have been brought together.

Another thing-LOVE IS FOREVER! We both loved her grandfather Louie which is the bond and love that brought us together and will connect us to each other for the rest of our lives. Family bonds and love are so very powerful.

Kaye, I hope I’ve done our story justice. But know I love you already. I probably always have. And I am so grateful we have found each other.

THE BOXERS

This blog entry has been inspired by something I remembered from my childhood while driving back from St. Cloud earlier this week. I was thinking about things that have happened to me as a child that could be retold in my blog with the hope of squeezing some kind of life lesson from it. We’ll see if I come up with one by the end of this story.

Okay, so I have this cousin David (I’m HIS favorite cousin). He is about 7 months OLDER than me. We probably have loved each other since the moment we met. I’m sure if I had been older and wiser than the newborn that I was, I would have known better and done something to chase him away saving myself from a life of torture.

My dear David pretty much filled the shoes of the older brother I never had. As those of you who do have older brothers know, this can be a blessing as well as a curse.

When together we were in constant trouble. Two great minds that really didn’t need the others help to get into trouble. If our grandfather Herb were alive I’m sure he could tell some great stories about the two of us at the Langdon farm near Burr, MN. I’m sure he could tell stories about ALL of his grandchildren. We were quite the bunch when together at the farm.

When David and I were about 5 or 6 years old my family was visiting his family (our mom’s are sisters). For some unknown reason they had two pairs of boxing gloves and for an even bigger unknown reason we decided to put them on to do a little boxing. The whole time we are putting on our gloves he’s telling me all I need to do is keep my hands up.

Here I am this tiny, sweet, innocent, little thing attempting to box this big mean, oafish bully. What on earth was I thinking? I’m pretty sure he promised me that I wouldn’t get hurt and of course I believed everything he said. And it wasn’t like he’d EVER done anything in the past to hurt me. Right! And just because I was a girl it didn’t mean I couldn’t do EVERYTHING the boys did.

So here I am struggling to get these big, heavy boxing gloves on when WHAM! he punches me right in the face and knocks me down. I didn’t even have my gloves on yet! What kind of cheat does something like that? I screamed bloody murder. The screaming was more of a reaction to the shock of getting hit than the actual pain. Even though I was screaming my head off he wanted me to get back up and finish getting my gloves on so we could really box. But my screams had brought the adults running and that was the end of the boxing match. It was lucky for David that the parents came running because I had only one thing in mind and that was to pummel the snot out of him for blindsiding me!

This is one of the most vivid memories of my childhood. No wonder I’m such a messed up adult.

If David does happen to read this (which I will make sure he does) I’m sure his version of this story will be slightly different than mine. I would welcome his version of the story to be told in the comment section below. None of it will be true but his version of the story makes me laugh even harder than my version of the story.

Okay, now I need a moral to this story: “When getting ready to box someone, make sure you keep one eye on them at all times.” There really isn’t much of a moral to this story. It’s just a funny story I wanted to share.

PS I’m also kind of thinking this may be the reason one of the things on my “bucket list” is to do some boxing?

Hippies Grown Old!

This past weekend my daughters and I went to Rosedale Mall to shop for a prom dress for my youngest daughter. There are "guidelines" attached to who and what I can write about in my blog, so needless to say this story will not be about prom dress shopping.

On this day the mall was filled with hockey parents and girl hockey players and all of the various family and friends that follow their loved ones to state hockey tournaments. All of which were wearing there team colors and those pins with their child's picture. Jerseys, jackets, hoodies, t-shirts, sweatpants and slippers were the apparel of the day.

As we walked through the mall I noticed this "older" man sitting on a bench. He stood out for many reasons. Mostly, he wasn't a hockey dad. At least not an obvious one. His appearance made me chuckle to myself. His hair was shoulder length, gray where it had once been dark. He had a neat beard and moustache also gray but not as gray as his hair. He was wearing a worn pair of jean with a few holes here or there and a long sleeve button up shirt of some soft looking pale blue fabric. And he had on a pair of "earth shoe" type shoes. A hippie grown older.

He made me chuckle because I thought he looked so out of place in the mall with all of the obvious hockey dads. And hippies from the 70's who are still hippies today make me smile. That's what I wanted to be when I grew up. Sometimes I think I've made it but I'm not always so sure.

Awhile later, I saw that he was walking towards me in the mall. He was busy talking to this woman walking with him. This was probably who he was waiting for when I first saw him sitting on the bench. She looked younger than him but only because her hair was still dark.

As I watched him (okay, he was kind of good looking, give me a break)I realized what I had labeled as an "older" man was in reality in his mid 50's! That realization really made me laugh. Being in our 50's does NOT make us older! Especially to someone our own age. Another realization was that maybe he wasn't a hippie grown old(but I'm pretty sure he was) but just someone who wasn't afraid to show who he was. Someone growing old that was still young at heart.

The older I get the more I know that I need to be me. Expressing what I am inside may show outwardly by how I dress, how I act or even by the things I do. Love the person you are inside and that person will shine through. Does it really matter what anyone else thinks about you?

The moral of the story is: "Don't judge a book by its cover. Just because the cover is old and worn, faded and broken it doesn't mean the story inside isn't still exciting and alive, shiny and whole." or "Let your light shine and to hell with what the rest of the world thinks."