seeking Margie Morris, part 2

I was fresh on my Ancestry.com kick, which could access various U.S. Census reports. But with a last name like Morris and 2 first names not altogether unique, I needed to start making some assumptions.

A woman in 1940 who was old enough to have a baby but too young to feel she could raise it on her own was probably somewhere between 15 and 23. Any older than that and she’d be more likely to be married; any younger and it’d be a pretty unusual circumstance. That gave me an est. birth date 1925-1933.

I did a keyword search for Margie, Sampson, and Morris against a rough range close to those dates. After at least an hour of combing through public records, I found a hit under the Cook County Genealogy Records.

Candidate #1

Name: Margie Morris

Marriage Date: July 19, 1939

Spouse: Robert Sampson

Marriage Location: Cook County, IL (i.e. Chicago)

This could be her??? Correct maiden name, but it looks like her married name would be Sampson so the name I know would have been inverted. Very possible.

I also found a census record of the two of them in Chicago in 1940, and they were logged as being 20 and 21. That means she would have been ~28 by the time she had my dad. This seemed too old. Plus she was married by then. Why give up a child at 28?

But, I needed some encouragement and this was something if not nothing, so I kept hunting with my new info. At the end though, I managed to only find one other document that supported her existence: an obituary clipping for a relative that referenced her living in a suburb in the 80s. End scene.

I kept looking.

I took to the internet (God help us all), searching for a slightly younger Margie Morris in Chicago around 1948. After another excruciating hour of experimenting my way through search terms, I found an obituary/article on a judge named Margie Morris from California. Which brings us to -

Candidate #2:

“Presiding Justice Morris attended Northwestern University School of Law, graduating in 1948. There she met her husband, Robert S. Morris…They moved from Chicago to San Bernardino in 1949…Morris was a trailblazing pioneer for women’s rights.”

Don’t get confused like I did. This is a different Husband-Robert from Candidate #1. This Robert has an S. middle name but that’s not the one that matters…we need her middle name to have an S. The interesting part, though, is that she was in the right city during the right year. And then she got out of dodge immediately after that with her new husband. I think giving up your child might be good incentive to leave town in the 40s, what do you think? And after experiencing such a deeply traumatizing experience that only a woman could empathize with, maybe you too would find yourself committed to fighting for women’s rights? How's the web I'm weaving...convincing?

The tail end of the article listed survivors and also that she had been predeceased by her son David. Majorly important detail. Did he have what my dad had? Which would make that disease absolutely hereditary and also would mean I might not even need to keep looking to have my answer? 

I searched ruthlessly for his obituary but not shockingly, "David Morris California" is a Where's Waldo rabbit hole. I also did search after search for every one of her living relatives - including her other son Stephen - and found NONE OF THEM. Ancestry.com, Facebook, Google, nothing. Why couldn't she have named the kids something with a little pizzazz? Maybe they could've moved away from the most populated state to somewhere nice and cozy with not-as-many-citizens? Because I'm sure I could find a Tobias in Rhode Island...

At this point, Margie #2 has most backstory, the most plausibility, and the juiciest lineage to offer. But I don't know how to dig up more information beyond what I have now. But now I can't let it drop. Every time I start searching again, I find something new. Surely something will pop up? 

seeking Margie Morris, part 1

When I was about 10, my mother told me my father had been adopted. With no gauge for sensitivities yet, I openly asked him about it in an assumptive way and was hissed into silence - my grandparents were my grandparents and that was that.

Now I have the same curiosity about adoption that I'm sure many do - hypothesizing about backstories, motivations...that critical point where someone decides they just can't or shouldn't raise a child. All the adopted children I've known have grown up in wonderful families and so it became a universal truth for me that adoption is for the best. If you're unsure, watch one episode of 16 & Pregnant and then we can pretend like this whole disagreement never happened...

So okay fast forward back to the adoption being rigorously denied. I had no idea how he felt like this was plausibly deniable in any way...he looked absolutely nothing like his parents or his sister (also adopted). There are mysteriously no pictures of my Grandmama ever being pregnant. Oh and there's the birth certificate that he once showed my mom, registering him to someone else. While my mom can't ever tell a true depiction of emotional facts, she does have a scary steel trap for details such as: Margie Sampson Morris*, 1948, Chicago.

I wouldn't think of Margie S. Morris with any real interest for years. But I also didn't forget her name.

Then, fast forward forward this time to a few key events:
1) Around 2004, my Canadian aunt finds her mother and invites her to a family wedding. Thus I guess the Adoption Cat was out of the bag. I don't ask my Dad about it, but my curiosity is peaked.
2) In 2005, my Dad is diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome, which is fancy words for a Real Piece of Shit Disease with no cure. When he dies in 2008, I suddenly realize this RPSD might be hereditary for all I know and man would it be nice to have Margie Morris' medical records. I do some cursory Google searches to no avail.
3) During Christmas 2014, I get really into Ancestry.com. (You're wondering how those words could come out of my mouth - I can't explain these things). I get a free trial and spends hours and hours and hours building out my family tree. Free plug for Ancestry.com - this site is the bomb. I mean, I found pictures of family members including a great-aunt who died in a school fire who I had never seen before...fascinating!

Anyway, that hot & heavy free trial period made me realized that clearly I just wasn't trying very hard with this Margie Morris thing. I mean, I'm a Grade A stalker when it comes to ex-girlfriends...how had I gotten tripped up on this person?

So, I put those stalker skills to good use and started searching for Margie Morris.

*Even though the whole point here is to find this person, it seems like a real dick move to "out" someone nearly 70 years after the fact, so names have been changed and whatnot.

the one and only child

As my friends embark on having babies, and some now moving on to baby #2, it's been interesting to hear them explain their desire to have a second. I totally connect with wanting to build a family—personally, I'd love to end up with a houseful of kids and chaos. But there's often a nuance of fear in the conversation too...the fear of having an only child.

Even though I don't have siblings, I get that having a brother or sister is nine-times-out-of-ten the shit. You have an automatic best friend, a playmate, an unbreakable bond, shared memories. That's a blessing that, correct, I can't truly understand. So I get it if someone is sad that their kid might not know that kind of a relationship, and that I can't actually "get" that at all. 

But the funny thing is, I have only one time felt at a disadvantage for being an only child, and that's when my dad died and I had to pick up the pieces alone. But even in that impossible time, I still recognized that being an only child made the process simpler; it meant no fighting over tough decisions and stupid material items that shouldn't belong to us anyway...I just had to decide what choices I could live with making, and then make them. 

Other than that, I think being an only child has worked out really nicely. And not just because I got whatever I wanted (I didn't). Or because I got all of my parents attention (I did, and trust me, that's a bad thing too). But when I had to play alone, it meant that my imagination just got extra ramped up...I mean, have you ever gotten to be the shopper AND the checkout person in the same game?! When I wanted to play with someone else, I made friends...and they were playmates I got to choose all for myself. Which meant that over time, I've cherry-picked a freaking fantastic lineup of people I can't live without, people that feel as close to me as sisters, people that I fiercely cherish. Being an only child also meant that I fell in love with animals, because they were the extra "people" that filled our home. It meant that I behaved, because there was no older brother to buy me leniency with his screw-ups first, and there was no younger brother to distract my mom when it was time to pick a punishment. It was how I learned to love writing, because nothing passes the time like a good ole journaling session. For the same reason, it was how I learned to really, really love a huge variety of music. It was why I turned into an extrovert. It was how I became me.  

So I don't know. I certainly want multiple kids, but that's more because I personally love being around a group of people and to live with a group sounds like a dream! I'm actually a little scared to witness sibling relationships...what if they grow up to become strangers? What if they hurt each other, or hate each other? I guess the fear is there on either side. But don't be too sad for your kid if they end up being an only child. The beauty of it is...we never know the difference :)

laughing at yourself

Embarking on yet another, how do the kids say it, "shitty-ass-shithole" of a winter has made me absolutely cherish the ultra warm wardrobe I'm lucky enough to have. When the highest temp of the day is still in the negatives, you know you need to move kill yourself kill everyone else be bundling up in the best of the best. I found this post from two years ago and genuinely laughed out loud when I read about my winter wardrobe. Let's walk the historical red carpet together.

HANDS
Year 1-2: Wool gloves.
Year 3-4: Wool mittens.
Year 5: Down & leather ski mittens that I sometimes forget aren't boxing gloves.

FEET
Year 1-2: Boots.
Year 3-4: Boots specifically for commuting.
Year 5: North Face snow boots with insulation that protects down to -25. Which is great because guess what, four days ago the wind chill WAS -25. How 'bout them apples!

BODY
Year 1-2: Short puffy coat.
Year 3-4: Long down coat.
Year 5: Long down coat with hardshell exterior so that snow rolls off like a duck on wheels. That's right. #duckonwheels

When your #duckonwheels hood won't stay up and you have to walk 3 miles in the snow + wind, it's time for an old-fashioned berka

FACE
Year 1-2: Nothing. Ha. Ha.
Year 3-4: 2 moisturizers.
Year 5: 2 moisturizers for the face, 1 hardcore treatment for cracked hands, 1 butter cream for pre-cracked hands, 1 extra moisturizing lotion for everyday all over body and hands, and lotion in my bag. Your takeaway here is GET IN THE LOTION BIZ NOW $$$$$$.


EMOTIONS
Year 1-2: Vitamin D pills, 1000 IU, late in the season after getting a blood test and learning the target range is 50-80 and I was at a 12. Twelve.
Year 3-4: Vitamin D pills, 1000 IU, earlier in the season.
Year 5: Vitamin D pills, 5000 IU, which is basically one step short of checking yourself into a mental hospital. But as far as I'm concerned, anything they sell OTC stands for Off The Charts (Get You Some). So I did.



Overall, I can't say I'm making it look good exactly, but I'm learning...slow and steady wins the race over here.

2K15

This weekend I did something out of the ordinary (dare we say, {extra}ordinary*) by my standards...I went to see a movie. In the theater. With snacks and everything! What a luxury to have enough patience to do this. (That's what 2 weeks off of work will do for you). Anyway, Wild was my first movie for 2015, and damn Gina did it make me miss blogging. It also made me miss: camping, pushing yourself, mountains, no makeup, and generally kicking ass in all sorts of ways. But it did make me miss this little blog that has run the gamut from "sentimental explorations" to "embarrassing vignettes that should probably be erased from the interwebs". I'm 100% sure no one even looks at it anymore. So fine. I'm back for me then.

Since the calendar flipped, I've been reflecting a lot on 2014...it was interesting in that it wasn't wrought with change, nothing terrible happened, and I took some fun trips in between. The end. JUST KIDDING I just started blogging again, I'm ready to typppppe! 

2014, in short:

• The new job - Beginning here. I've learned a ridiculous amount during my job change - the easiest nut to crack was that *HUZZAH* working in the nonprofit world is definitely the right field for me. Such a reassurance, considering it was the crux of my motivation to switch industries. In another post, I'll answer riveting questions such as, How much work is too much? Can I strangle the next person who says "lean in"? Will you define a "hostile work environment"? Is the grass indeed greener? Good things have happened too, I promise. 

• The new cats - One year ago today, we traipsed out into a snowmageddon to see if there were any kitties in the world that needed to be living in our house instead. Five minutes after we saw a tabby tween named Judo running across the room at a local shelter, we were filling out adoption papers...especially because he came with a brother, Sumo, who cuddled up to me immediately. They came home an hour later, and our lives immediately lit up! I feel so sorry for people who don't know the joy of animals. A strange, sad blip in the storyline is that Sumo came down with an incurable disease in June...within 4 days he was gone. It was such a shock. The only positive thing was that we were glad he lived with us instead of on the street while he felt so sick (unbeknownst to us, because dammit cats are good at hiding being sick). 

Sumo the Wolf (front) and Judo sharing the new cat tree.
Note: this tree is so big that it prompted a guest to ask "So like, do you have 17 cats?"

• By September, it was clear that Judo needed a companion or else because we simply weren't entertaining enough for him. Enter: Pixel the Kitten, another fantastic shelter find. I hope she's with us forever+ever because she truly completes our little four-some! She's the friendliest, spunkiest little thing I've ever met, chock-full of tortitude and ready to wrestle much-larger Judo at any moment. They are perfect playmates. 

  

  Pixel likes to jump on your back whenever possible and immediately lay down. Because your back is her property.  

  
  

  

  Judo is all grown up now, teaching Pixel to sit in the window

  
  

  

  Pixel, sacked out

• More church - I mean really, can you ever get enough of God?! Kidding / not kidding. I skulked into Community Christian Church in Spring 2011 and managed to fly under the radar for about six months before the pastor, heretofore known as Tammy, started to wonder who the wanderer was. Since then I've slowly become more involved, joining the "First Impressions" team (serving during service), joining a small group, and even nearly taking a full time marketing/communications job there. This year I starting overseeing the service team and accepted taking over our small group in the coming months...something I'm nervous about but really think it's going to do wonders for me and my walk of faith.

Hanging with church peeps. Out of church. PROOF.

• Domestic travel at its best - As per usual, we had a lot of weekends away, starting with visiting Jackie in St. Louis, our camping "party of bizz" in Wisconsin, Port Aransas girls trip, Texas for my mom's birthday and later Thanksgiving, Austin for the triathlon, Vegas for funsies, and Florida for a beachy Christmas (with a night in Biloxi mixed in). That's a lot of Southwest drink tickets. And perhaps more gambling than is necessary. But overall, such an amazing time connecting with friends and family...as grateful as ever for the ability to travel.

I hope the year ahead contains more yoga, less clutter, more nature, less cat hair, more writing, less days under 30 degrees, more green smoothies, less DVR...it's a tall order for 2015!

*blog jokes are the best

moms

I waited to write this post until I was certain (or at least mostly certain) about the trajectory that the story would take. Now, Mother's Day two years later, seem apropos.

Two years ago while skiing in Tahoe with friends, my mom found out she had breast cancer. Sadly, we can't say it was the most unexpected things since my grandmother (her mother) and my great-aunt both got it when they were in her 60s. My great-grandmother had breast & ovarian cancer as well, so we have it coming from all angles.

Together with her doctors, she decided to undergo a double mastectomy (which I'm sure she'd kill me for posting about on the worldwide web) within three weeks. At the time of the surgery, they would be able to determine if it had spread and then what further treatment would be needed. So it became a waiting game.

During that time, I thought a lot about the timing of major life events and what it all means. I've got to think there was a good reason for this news arriving at the very beginning of a five-day vacation with friends. I'm not one for compartmentalizing, so I can only assume I would've holed myself up in some crying vortex if I had been in Chicago. Or tried to fly to Texas immediately. Neither of those things would have really done any good, so although it really skewed my level of enthusiasm on the trip, I have to say that the distraction probably served me well in the long run. By the time I got back, I had gotten most of my sporadic emotions under control and was able to focus on what it was that I needed to do.

Of course, I never figured out exactly what I needed to do. The biggest lesson I learned from my dad's illness/death was that even though it seemed like the healthiest thing to do was to maintain as normal of a life as possible during the chaos, that could mean that you ended up being surprised by death and then second-guessing every time you allowed yourself to maintain a normal life. Since hindsight is 20/20, I figured maybe I should use this "learning" now...but to do what? The alternative of acting like everything is okay is to pretty much say or do the things you've always wanted to do/say for fear that your loved one will die without knowing or experiencing something. But in doing that, you insinuate that a situation just might not end up okay...which is why you're hedging your bets. And in a situation like my mom's, where she was terrified of dying, I figured the best thing I could do (independent of my lesson) was to be as positive as possible.

My mom recovered from surgery remarkably well and was back to work within a few weeks. After a lot of tests and doctor's appointments, they decided that she wouldn't do any sort of chemo or radiation and instead take a less-intrusive medication and continue to be monitored - so essentially, the best case scenario. Sweet, sweet relief! The weeks leading up to the surgery and through the initial recovery were just short of excruciating for everyone involved, but it's hard to believe that it all happened so fast! The experience feels so surreal now. And I'm certain it will never be over for my mom, who now had to adjust to a new body and also the fear of a recurrence. But still, I think we walked away from this with the biggest dodged-a-bullet sigh of relief you can imagine. I mean, my friends were amazing (especially Keely, Amy, and Megan, who drove from near and far to be with me and my mom), my stepfather proved to be even more loving and supportive than we already knew him to be, and I think a little piece of my relationship with my mom was restored during all the pain and fear. I saw her in a way I never had before - she was relentlessly determined and fought through pain and sickness to do her part in the healing process, and I think that played a huge role in why she recuperated so quickly. I've never heard her complain about it, and she's produced some wicked boob jokes out of it too (always a bonus). I'm proud to call her my mom.

So...here's to taking care of our bodies, taking care of our moms, and taking what's coming around the corner in stride.

Day before surgery, 2012

2013, Chicago!

X-mas 2013, Texas

tales from the train V

Today I was back in my standard, voyeuristic position looking over someone's shoulder on the way to work. 

This guy was 45, slim, ruddy skin, clean cut, glasses, close-cut hair, suit attire, big hands. Your standard white-collar nice-guy.

I first noticed him pinching the skin on the back of his left hand with his right index finger and thumb. Slowly scraping and pinching. Stop. Scrape. Pinch. Pinch. I realized he had a little bit of OCD in him, maybe the kind of guy who also likes to eat chalk...then I saw him stretch out his fingers and they were really, really knobby. It seemed like he might have an extra joint in his fingers. And then I thought, I bet if I wait long enough he'll do something weird again.

Patience is a virtue on the train. No less than a minute later did he nibble at the big joint on his thumb for a few seconds, then put it back in his lap. Wait for it....now nibbling at his next finger....wait for it...you got it, more nibbling. So the knobbiness wasn't just like a weird circus freak thing, it was actually a compulsive-biting-induced full-blown inflamation all over his hands. By the time I got off, his hand was wet with slobber. I AM NOT EVEN EXAGGERATING.

CTA: 5, LB: 0