Family

 I’m sitting on the screened porch at the family cabin, built in 1902 on the shores of Lake Osakis by my grandmother’s family (and now, in current building codes, could not be this close to the lake). It’s a place, and a view, that has been a seminal part of my life — as has the cabin itself. The design of the cottage is a single, log cabin room, originally surrounded on 3 sides by screen porch (now a kitchen, front porch, side bedroom). It’s neither a fancy lodge nor a rustic woodland retreat, but a basic, unpretentious retreat. Perhaps its most distinguishing factor is that exterior is clad in pink cement board, which my grandmother chose years ago so you could “see it from the lake.”

In many ways, this cabin is a metaphor for my family. On my mother’s side, my grandmother’s parents both came here in the late 1800s as Norwegian immigrants (though scandalously, her first marriage was to a Swede!). My grandfather’s family comes from so far south in Illinois it barely counts as over the Mason-Dixon line, and though he was both German and Irish the very basic genealogy I’ve done focuses on the Irish side. On my dad’s side, his ancestors came over far earlier (it appears my first relatives here were Cotton Mather’s family), but were also less immediately successful in the New World and it is unclear to me exactly how they got to Minnesota (though I believe both my paternal grandparents lost their parents at an early age.) Patrick’s family comes from a more complicated tapestry of slaves and people who came over as freemen, where even his family name demonstrates these relationships; it was usual, upon emancipation, for slaves to take the names of the family they had been with, but his family chose the surname “Rhone” because that family had been “better” owners to them.)

 

But that’s history, and my family today demonstrates equal complexity. My aunt and uncle, who have tried hard to ramp up their presence with us (and especially to Beatrix) since my mom died — and my extraordinary cousins, one in Norway with his beautiful family and one here in Minnesota in the preservation field, who I get to discuss issues with. Patrick’s dad, who drove halfway to us late last night when we realized we had forgotten the cabin key. His family in New Orleans.

 

And most of all, our extraordinary children. I hung a Pride flag up outside the cabin door here today in honor of Zani. Miles keeps breaking bones, but also finding his way. I’m consistently amazed and proud of the young woman Beatrix is becoming, a girl asleep in the next room after she and her BFF Hazel stayed up to watch the sunrise. And our bonus daughter Ximena, with all her passion and purpose.

 

We are an incredible mix of identities and ethnicities — of dreams and successes and failures. I can’t help but think that this extraordinary combination is exactly the dream of America.