Story time.
It starts with my grandfather's family.
By all accounts my grandfather 'Greg' was a surly, curt alcoholic. He was the only son of a fantastically lucky polish farmer who had turned his surviving farm into a grocery business after the war. Greg had a happy enough childhood, considering the upheaval of the annexation and subsequent seizure of assets in Poland, until the death of his mother.
His father, brokenhearted, left with no one to care for his son and being a gentleman of the forties, remarried soon after to a woman who had been widowed with four children.
This could have been a happy ending.
Could have.
If not for those four, war-sick, ragged children suddenly given all the care and wealth they could imagine.
The new wife, asked what her children would inherit and Greg, being a young man of sound mind and able body, was given the choice of emigrating with a small purse, or nothing.
It broke him.
In his middle age, after having emigrated with no english to Canada, Greg became a present, but less than ideal husband and father, taking a local commodities job to keep his family afloat. He learned the trade, a new way of life, and a foreign language from the ground up. By all accounts they were cared for, even comfortable, but Greg could not let go.
He drilled lessons of frugality, honesty, and above all, respect for the family name. The very unusual and difficult to spell family name.
Through a series of almost unbelievable coincidences, Greg's youngest son 'Evan' met and married my mother, had a few children, and moved around.
What has all of this to do with me?
Upon graduating from highschool, I was given an opportunity to take a trip to a city of my choosing.
I chose one for culture and interest, but mostly for its history in my mother's family.
Upon researching the city, I tuned in to a documentary about the old parts of the city.
It was talking about a grocery chain that had been opened there some years after the war, and was named for a city in the old country.
odd I thought.
It was named in such a way because when the sign painter came, he could not spell the grocer's name.
My very unusual and difficult to spell family name.