Wednesday....mish-mash

I started out my day this morning by getting a haircut. I like getting a haircut and I really like my hairstylist, too. She and I are about the same age, and she's been cutting my hair for six years so we've kinda gotten to know a bit about each other's lives in that time. So I usually look forward to not only a haircut, but also a nice chat. I get my hair cut every two months, so I visit with her six or seven times a year. And these last two times, she's done an absolutely fabulous job on my hair. Vanity be damned, I must say my hair is lookin' pretty good! I think it's partly because I've had her cut it a bit shorter than usual too which I think has made the difference these last few months.

Once I got home from my haircut, I had to get working on a report that I had hoped I would have had completed yesterday. Sometimes I think, writing reports is like doing home improvement projects...they always take longer than anticipated. I think it didn't help that for this project we wound up having to analyze for practically every chemical on Earth which resulted in a really large laboratory report to review and interpret. I finally finished up at about 3pm. Sarah will have the joy of reviewing and editing it tomorrow. I'm sure she can't wait!!!

The parents arrived home from their trip to Europe late this afternoon. Mom called me as the plane taxied in from the runway at around 4:30p. Surprisingly traffic wasn't too bad and I arrived at the baggage pick-up area at the terminal shortly after 5p. We threw the luggage in and off we went. No muss, no fuss. It sounds like they had a great time. It sounds like mom had some good luck finding out some information about her father's side of the family which she knows next to nothing about. She got a copy of her parent's marriage certificate at the historic Lutheran Church in Riga, and was able to find out her father's mother's maiden name which will help track family relations. She took the information to the Latvian Red Cross which helps people search for family separated during WWII. It was the Red Cross that was able to find out what had happened to her father during the war when the Soviets marched in to occupy the Baltic countries. Five years ago while on one of her trips to Latvia, the Red Cross gave mom several found documents which indicated that her father was arrested by the Soviets as a spy. He was a lawyer and he worked high up in the Latvian govt. and was an outspoken pro-capitalist. He was convicted and sent to a gulag in one of the Soviet Muslim states in 1942. He died that same year in the gulag. He was 36 years old, and my mother was 2 years old. My grandmother's family that remained in Latvia under Soviet rule lost touch with my grandfather's family almost immediately and really for self-preservation purposes. Anyone feared being associated with a person labeled as a spy for fear that they would be arrested by the Soviets as well. Apparently one of my grandfather's brothers was also sent to a Soviet gulag, but he survived and was released at some point. Essentially though, my grandmother's family that stayed in Latvia destroyed any photos, books, or other mementos relating to my grandfather out of fear, so much was lost. It's a terrible shame, and my mother feels that a good part of her heritage as well as her life was taken from her. Don't get me wrong, my mom would say that she's had a wonderful life here, but she has questions and pieces are missing from her life. I just know that there are others to find there or maybe some wound up here in America or Canada. I would love to see her unravel the mystery to find other relatives somewhere in Latvia or elsewhere. It's my heritage too.