Once when I was about 12 years old, we were at my Grandma Vlach’s house. Everyone was teasing me with the normal “The milkman’s your real father” “Maybe it was the mailman.” And it wasn’t just the kids, sister and cousins, the adults were doing it too. When my Grandma came into the room and heard them she got really mad. Over reaction mad. She started yelling at everyone for making fun of me. She yelled, “She is Not the milkman’s kid, she looks just like my sister Hazel!”
It never actually bothered me to be teased, so I thought that Grandma was going a bit overboard because she yelled at everyone for a couple of minutes. Then my uncle Larry agreed that I looked like Hazel and not only that but took after her personality wise too. Then he told me that in our family back in Wisconsin, every family has at least one red-head in every generation. Well, my Grandma was the oldest of 11 kids, and my Grandpa was the middle of 12 kids, so my Dad and his brothers have 106 first cousins. In contrast, my Mom is an only child and my Dad has two brothers and one sister, I have 5 cousins. I know all of my cousins. My Dad does not know most of his.
So, last weekend my uncle Larry turned 60 along with 2 of his cousins who have also moved out west. So there was a birthday party. The only people that I knew at the party were my Dad and sister, my uncle Larry and aunt Karen. All of the rest were complete strangers to me and all of them looked EXACTLY like me! (Well, except for the ones who had married into the family, there were a few of those.) It was so bizarre! A whole room full of people with red hair and brown eyes. Not only that but my nose and cheeks too! And I finally met my great-aunt Hazel; she’s 85 years old. I was talking to her and she said, “You kind of remind me of myself.” I said,
“I’ve heard that before!”Here's Hazel, Me, my kids Rachael & Rebecca, my sister Gwen, and her daughter Sydney.
