Wishing on a Star

Make A Wish Meme

Our good blogger buddy, Linda, has put up a new meme - Wishing Upon A Star - even offers to make you the badge to display for it if you're like me and a bit -ok, a whole lot in my case -technically impaired and can't figure out how to do the badge up.

But anyway -here's what I wish for if I'm wishing on stars. (Most of the time, when it comes to "wishing" I generally adhere to the old adage "Wish on one hand and S**t in the other and see which one fills up first" -which gives you a bit of an idea I suppose of how successful I've been over the years in the "wishing" department.

This wish -unless I start buying lottery tickets and hit one for a super lottery - will always be just a dream of mine though as there is no way I could ever scrounge up enough money unless I suddenly start getting lots of pay-per-post opportunities or some of these other "Paying"ventures somehow magically start to earn me big, BIG bucks and even then, I would have to live as long as did that the guy in the Old Testament - I know his name but can't for the life of me spell it but he lived to be 800 or 900 plus years, ya know, and that's about how long it would take me to save enough buckaroos to fulfill my wish.

Why is it something that I dream about, wish for this to happen anyway, you ask? What exactly would be so special about taking a trip to Sweden and also, to Scotland?L

Well, both of my Dad's parents were born in Scotland -in Lanarkshire -and they came to this country as very young children back between 1870 and 1878 - and I'd love to be able to do some research pertaining to my ancestry in that country.

My maternal grandfather was born in Sweden - in Dahlsland in a little area known as Bolstad - and since I grew up with my maternal grandparents, I often listened to my Grandpa and his older brother - my Great-uncle Erick -talk about their homeland, the house where the family had lived, remembering the bad things like being so poor that their parents had no money for shoes so from fall throughout the winter and until warm weather set in again in the spring, they couldn't leave the house as they had no shoes to wear. But to Grandpa and Uncle Erick, this was like a treasured memory the way they talked about that and so many other things.

I'm really interested in family tree research and I lucked out shortly after I got my first computer when a friend of mine connected me with a lady in Sweden who copied the church records of my ancestry on most of my Grandpa's family. Through those records, I was eventually able to figure out who was the direct ancestor and thus, trace my roots clear back to the early 1600's in Sweden. I was amazed when I was able to do that as I had figured that considering my great-grandparents were poor as the proverbial church mice so how could I ever expect to be able to trace anyone living in that kind of abject poverty, you know. But a king of Sweden back in the early 1600's had a lot of foresight and as such, had made it a law that all the ministers of the churches in Sweden HAD to keep records -name, age, parentage, and the like, of every one in each parish and that's how I was able to get records about Grandpa's lineage.

A few of my Mom's first cousins have visited Sweden and recently -oh within the past 8-10 years now -a cousin of my generation (third cousin -her Dad and my Mom were first cousins) and her husband visited Sweden, toured the little town where our ancestors had lived, worked and came back with lots of pictures and some wonderful memories of their trip.

As much as I love reading some of the bloggers on my favorites list, on my reader, (two from Norway now and one from Sweden) and seeing the beautiful photos they often post of my ancestral land, I'm inclined to use another old adage -"I'd give my right eye tooth" to be able to go and see the sights, walk where Grandpa and his parents, grandparents and way, way back before them once walked too. But technically, I can't really use that expression about the "right eye tooth" now because I no longer have the right one -or the left one either for that matter. Do you think that really would make a big difference though in the general scheme of things?L

But anyway, that's my wish - a nice trip abroad to tour Lanarkshire in Scotland and Bolstad in Dahlsland, Sweden -maybe even meet some really distant relatives there too while on my grande tour!

If anyone reading this would like to take a trip to these countries and has oodles and oodles of money to burn and who would like a congenial traveling companion too (ME) to fund my dream and see it come true, please feel free to contact me immediately as getting a passport should be no problem for me and packing my bags - well, I could have that done in a heartbeat for the opportunity to make just such a trip as this!

Taksa micka! (I suppose there are some of those little marks you're supposed to put over some of the letters in that sentence there -don't have a clue if it is spelled correctly otherwise or not -it's my phonetic interpretation of "Thank you" in Swedish!

Now, it's everyone's turn here to do the "Make a Wish Meme!" Let's hear it folks -what do you wish for when YOU wish upon a star?