All Family-ed Out

Busy weekend and I'm all family-ed out! Saturday we traveled to my old childhood stomping grounds for my father's oldest brother's birthday. Uncle cowboy Ken has reached the age of 80! The party was at my cousin Nikki's house right up the road on Swan Hill where I lived until I was 12. It's always so melancholy to visit the grounds and woods I used to roam so freely. My Aunt Loretta and Uncle Ken and Uncle Bill for the

last two years have been pouring over the old slides that my grandfather had taken over the years. What a photographer gramps was! Luckily when the house burned down the box of slides were the only thing salvaged. So I now have a DVD of hundreds of shots from my Swan family! Priceless! Sunday was the reunion on Lake Lorraine at the cozy yellow cottage my Aunt Ro owns. Not the best turn out but great food and the people I love the most were there. I learned that my mother's father, my grandfather Nick, helped my Uncle Milton in the construction of the camp and then died soon after and never really got the chance to enjoy it. Aunt Ro had a few great stories about my Oma. When ever Oma came to the cottage and turned in on the road that surrounds the lake, she would beep the horn on her tan volkswagon three times informing Aunt Ro she was here and to put tea water on! Once on a return trip to her home on Ridge Street in Honesdale, Oma was cruising along and kept seeing full cans of beer on the side of the road. A beer truck had lost several cases off the back of his truck and Oma and her little dog Pepi, picked up every can. By the time they got back to Honesdale, the back seat of her car was filled with beer cans! Oh Oma! She was something! Aunt Ro said as long as she had a vase of flowers on the table and a pork chop and a cup of tea. She was happy. My last memory of Oma was of her sitting at the kitchen table in the house on Foote Hill Road. I was about sixteen at the time and taking an interest in family history. Grandpa Nick died when I was like two so I never knew him but have a strange memory of the day he died as we were there. I guess I kept running through the hedgerow into the neighbors yard and he kept running over to retrieve me. He died of a heart attack in front of the kitchen stove. My mother would sometimes tell me that her mother and father didn't always get along that great. Oma had a hard life. She was the oldest of many siblings. I'm not sure how many, and worked on the boat her father worked on saving money to be able to get the rest of the family over to America as the nazi's were doing some pretty horrible stuff. Oma got all her family over safely then married Jacob and had a baby. Sadly both the baby and Jacob died and she ended up with Jacob's brother, Nicholas. And I think I have problems! So I'm quizzing my Oma at the kitchen table wanting to know more about Nick and she answered in a soft and quiet voice in english and as she went on about him her voice got louder and louder cursing out Nick in full blown Dutch! It was pretty funny actually. I wish I had more time with Oma. She was an incredibly strong willed woman as both my grandmothers were and both extremely beautiful! I wish I learned to speak Dutch. I remember when I was a little girl I was alway saying a word that sounded like this. Ha-Tee-Wa over and over and my mother never knew what I was saying. Years later it dawned on me seeping myself a teabag. I was saying Hot Tea Water. As my Oma was always putting on the water for tea.