The most random and crazy of happenstances

So, I named the blog "Crazy Random Happenstance" for the simple reason that I'm a nerd. And I loved Dr. Horrible's Sing A-Long Blog (and now watch it on my iPod while running at the gym.) And I needed a name and poof! it just appeared out of nowhere.

And then as things sometimes happen in life, you realize the truth behind certain cliched phrases. Like that one time my sophomore year of college when my neighbor was looking at a bumper sticker on someone's back pack and she said "Mean people really do suck." I mean, duh. But it's like so totally true. And so the same with crazy random happenstances. Something that maybe didn't pop into my everyday vocabulary until just this past July, but I am realizing more and more that there are a lot of these little random happenstances in life. In fact, one might even say that life is just one big crazy random happenstance.

Okay, so there's my quick philosophy theory for this Friday evening.

This week's Crazy Random Happenstance of choice - my family. Or to be more specific, my mother's family. A few years back when my aunt died, I started to realize how much about my parent's I didn't know. I could get a lot of knowledge about my dad through his nieces and his sisters. But my mom was a different story. She came to the U.S when she was 20 with her mother and her brother. My mom's memory has been pretty fuzzy since she had her initial cardiac event when I was 14 and lost her short term memory. My grandmother passed away when I was still in college. And over the years, family tensions and stubborn minds have prevailed keeping us pretty distant from the rest of her family aside from a niece and nephew. The family tensions and stubborn minds are on all sides. And have trickled down through generations. And now even I am stuck unable to really talk to my uncle or try to re-connect with my cousins.

Since my mom died in October, I've had this really desperate need to know more about her. I want to know who she was before she became my mom. Before she moved here. What were her dreams and her hopes. Stuff I never had the chance to really talk about. How many people have those heart to hearts with their mom when they are 13 and younger? I know I didn't. But I think we would have been close when I was older. We were close. But it was different. Our relationship was very much flip flopped. And as such, there was a lot I never got to as. Or if I did ask I was never sure what was true.

This desperate need has translated to a few near phone calls to my uncle. A few attempts to pry stories out of my dad (who only take on story teller roles after he's had a few glasses of wine.) A few random conversations with cousins who knew my mom from the minute she married into my dad's family. But those conversations were all pretty superficial. And I can't yet bring myself to call my uncle. What would I say? How do you overcome a family's lifetime of anger with a simple phone call? And is it even up to me to do it? That I still need to mull over. I'm still reeling from the fact that my mother is dead. How can I move forward on that front?

And where is the crazy random happenstance in all of this?

This week I received an email from my mom's cousin in Italy. A person I did not even know existed. A person who was looking for me because he is trying to finish a family tree. It's like someone just threw me a little gift. Out of nowhere. And now I need to act on it.

There's trepidation for sure. How did this person even know I exist? Why now? Why me? Why not my brother who visited my mother's hometown?

But not to act on it would be wrong. And contrary to everything I keep saying I want. I want to know who my mom was - so who best than someone who apparently played with her as a child. Maybe I can finally find a way to name all the people in my mother's old photos.

And that is where my random life keeps heading.



And my gluten free food recommendation for the week - Trader Joe's Gluten Free Ginger Snaps. Spicy + Sweet = AWESOME