Your Family - Share your heritage

[Fate Flyer]

You can learn a lot about a person from their family, and more than just their nationality. I thought it would be entertaining for us to talk about our families and to perhaps share pictures of them.




My real grandmother, the one that gave birth to my mom, lived in Germany. My grandfather met her when he was there for the war. I don't know the specifics, but they fell in love and started dating. They and his army buddies and their German girlfriends all would hang out and party and basically just enjoy life together. When it came time for my mom's dad to return to the States, he took his German girlfriend with him, and they married. As time went on, his wife began to wonder why they weren't doing the fun things they used to do before they were married. My grandpa tried to explain that they had other things to do and worry about now. She didn't even want to own a car, just rent one. They lived together in California, since she wanted to move out there for her modeling career. The two of them had a lot of differences in opinions. However, they had a child, my mother. When my mother was only 4 years old, her parents got a divorce. My grandpa moved back to Illinois, where he was from, while she and my mom stayed.

Though my mom never said that my grandma was bad to her, she wasn't a very good mother either. She didn't really spend time with my mom, and she was always late to pick her up and such. She just didn't care as much as she should. Eventually, my grandpa offered to take my mom from her, and my grandma agreed. My grandma, who was modeling now in California, got heavily involved in alcohol and became an alcoholic. My mom saw her again when she was 8 years old, since her mom sent her a ticket to fly out there, but they never saw one another again after that. My grandma might have gotten involved in drugs as well. She would, at times throughout the many years, call my mother while she was drunk, but mainly, my mom never knew her mom real well. When my mom was in her twenties, she got a call from a doctor in Costa Rica, saying that her mom had died. No one ever knew why my grandma went to Costa Rica, but she died from a brain tumor.

Towards the end of her life, my grandma got very sick. She was thin and frail and skeletal-looking. She went back to Germany once to visit her parents there, and they were concerned for her. (I met her parents when I was 6 years old, and our family traveled to Germany.) My grandma though was so desperate for alcohol, that she drank everything that had alcohol in it in her parents' house, including perfume bottles. After that, her parents said they never wanted to see her again.

Meanwhile, her ex-husband, my mom's dad, had remarried, and my mom grew up with them. My grandpa and the woman she married had a son together, my mom's half-brother and my half-uncle. I've never looked at my grandma or my uncle like they weren't my real grandma or uncle though. They are all I've ever known, and they are my family.


My dad also lived in Germany as a child. His dad was German, but he had the most exciting life I've ever heard of. I can't even remember all the detail's of my grandpa's life on my father's side, but he truly was a hero. He fought in WWII too, and he was the only man in his tank to survive a bombing. He lost part of his hearing in an ear though because of it, but he was knighted in Europe for serving and helping to save lives. So, his official name became Sir Woodson Ely. My grandpa also raced cars professionally in Germany. He met his wife in Germany too. They had my dad and moved to New York and gave birth to my dad there. They then lived in Illinois, but my grandma died of cancer when I was just a baby. I don't know anything about her and her family. My grandpa's parents though were very well-off people and lived in a castle-like mansion somewhere in Germany. My grandpa died when I was in my late teens. He had a long, drawn-out death, and his life was downhill for a few too many years. I loved my grandpa.

My mom and dad met through a dating service, which my father was the head of (funnily enough). My dad is 13 years older than my mom, so needless to say, my mom had to put up with a lot of comments about that while she was dating him. My parents moved into a modest house together in a small town in Illinois and had me. Two years later, they gave birth to my younger brother, Jay.

Here is a picture of my dad, my brother, myself, and my mom from Christmas in 2007:


Here's a picture also from 2007 at my high school for my brother's graduation. The first guy is my uncle (the son of my grandpa and the woman he married after the divorce from my mom's real mom, the model). The larger woman is the one my mom's dad married after his divorce. Then there's my brother, myself, and my fiancé, Tony.


Those are the only pictures I have on my computer, sadly.

[Mur]

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Family?
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Rough spot for me, but, I simply will ignore my father's side of the family for that fact. ^_^
Great idea by the way, Fate.
ANYHOW! Let us begin with the Van Den Akker family, shall we? (I wish that was my last name...But, then again, I also wish Murdoch Rouge was not just a pseudonym for my real crappish name. Ugh. A zombie can dream...)

First though, I want you all to see my pride and joy. His name's Pluto! ^_^


ANYHOW, it all started with my great grandmother Joanne, who was born and raised in Indonesia. She stayed there for years along with her children and husband, who even I don't know the name of. We always just called him Opa, which means, I think, father or grandfather in Dutch. Joanne was taken into a concentration camp at a young age, but found a way to lead a normal life. Her husband died early on, but not before seeing all three of his children:
Francis (my great aunt), Anita (My other great aunt), and Roy (my Pops!).

Yes, I do believe Opa was Dutch, and Oma (grandmother or mother in Dutch) was Indonesian, but had to learn to speak the Dutch language or something like that. Sorry if I'm a bit shaky on the details, I was dreadfully afraid of my Oma when I was young, so I never got to listen to the stories the same way my mom did. Well, my grandfather, Roy, left Indonesia at the age of sixteen and came to America as an immigrant with his two sisters, one older, and one younger. Anita, I think, came along a bit later than those two did. She brought Oma with her.

Well, after learning some basic English, Pops (Roy) attended high school at the same place as my maternal grandmother, Naomi. She had two sisters two, one of which attended her school. Her name was Linda, if anyone cares to know. They were married at a very young age, and had both my mother and my uncle before divorcing. I have three other aunts, who are children from my grandfather's other partners, though they remain close to our family more than their mothers. These children were, in order of birth:
Tanya (me mother unit), Robert (me uncle), Ayana (me aunt), Nikki (me other aunt), and Mana (me other, other aunt. She's only nineteen.)

Tanya, my mother, had gotten pregnant at a young age (seventeen, actually.) and had my older brother, David. Twas a struggle, but she loved him just as she does her other children. She was married once before my father (who will remain nameless because he deserves nothing of the sort.) to a man she describes as "Scrawny, and always a little bit afraid of me.". It didn't work out, needless to say. Then she met Nameless the terrible, who was a model at the time. They had quite a bit in common, seeing as how my mother had been in a few old make-up commercials herself. They were married and had two children. One of which was myself. The other, who is still very young, is CJ. I will not tell you what those letters stand for, simply because they involve Nameless, and I do not want to go there at all. I'd be starting a rant if you'd asked me to go there, believe me. Ugh. Terrible, terrible man, he is.

Anyhow, they were divorced very soon after my brother's second birthday, and it was...not quite as conventional or proper as some would think. Leaving this subject now, since this is about my family, not me. That leads me to where I stand now, slightly tweaked from some...memories, and experiences, and a bit of a hermit who somehow has friends all over the world. We now live in Nameless town, with my mom, brothers, Pluto, and I. It's kind of a rural country area, and we basically have a huge field and creek in our backyard. Just a hop of the fence and you've entered nature!

My grandmother and grandfather are still alive and well, my Pops being sixty-two, and my Grandma being fifty six, I think. One of my favorite family members are my great aunts Linda and Anita, since they both are a bit like me. Linda is a psychic (If you choose to believe such things. I find myself mostly open minded, to be true. ) and Anita went clinically insane after her husband left her, so she is watched carefully by her daughter Gail, and grandson, also uniquely named David. (A few paragraphs up, I mentioned my brother's name was also David) I love talking to both of them, and they've inspired my truly insane antics used in both my speech and writing. Hope you've enjoyed this unintentionally long "essay" about my heritage. Again, sorry if I sound a bit inexperienced in some places. I'm not quite sure about certain concepts in Oma and Opa's history, may their souls rest a bit more comfortably than my own.

Picture thyme!!


My older brother David and I, when I had to walk him to the bathroom when we went camping. Drunk as a pirate, he was. xD


Pops and Momski, his wife. I love them to death. ^^


Real, real big one. From left to right:
Pops, Momski, Josh junior, Josh senior, my mother Tanya in the center, CJ in front of her, Gail, my aunt (through marriage) Tamika, me, the woman behind me is my mom's best friend Diana xD, the woman beside me is my mom's other best friend Esmeralda. The guy waving behind my mom's head, for the record, is Diana's young nephew, who I love. The man and the little girl behind my aunt Tamika is her husband Robert and their daughter Maliah. This was the party after my mom's graduation from college, it was so much fun. For some odd reason, my three other cousins weren't in that picture, but I assure you, they were there. ^_^

~ Murdoch Rouge of the Morgue.