52 Ancestors Week 34: Chosen Family

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 34's theme is "Chosen Family." Family isn't always related by blood. Adoptions, step-children, foster children, and special friends of the family can be just as much "family" as those who share DNA. (I think I was 10 before I realized that my Uncle Bob and Aunt Mabel weren't actually related to us.) This is the week to highlight one of their stories.

Family can be whatever you'd like it to be. For many people family could be a group of friends who you share a connection with. Blood doesn't always make one a family and it's especially true in my case. Over the years, my brother and I have had many people who we've called "aunts" or "uncles" in our lives even though they weren't related to us. Usually they were friends of our parents. Ironically, one such friend has the last name "Coppola" and my 2x great-grandmother was a Coppola. Funny how that worked out, right?  And to this day I'm still very good friends with their kids who are around the same age as me. Still not related!! That Coppola family came from Sicily and mine did not. "Coppola" is a VERY common last name, guys! Not as common as Tedesco!

My brother and Aunt Mimi!

While most of our "aunts" and "uncles" were of Italian descent, one couple took care of my brother and I when we were very young and were always there to talk to us or tell a story as we got older. Their names were Peter and Mary Matorian and were of Armenian descent.

Peter and Mary lived around the corner from my father's dental practice and very close to the junior high I attended in the early '90s. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. How did my family meet the couple? Well....

My parents were friends with their niece, Judy. Her aunt Mary was taking care of Judy's young sons, Brian and Kevin. My mother was pregnant with my brother at the time and the couple offered to babysit him as well after he was born. My parents both had full-time jobs in the medical field and agreed to have the couple look after Jim. I came along two years later and the rest, as they say, is history!

Aunt Mimi (She liked to be called that.) and Uncle Pete were both born in the early 1900s and came from really big Armenian families. She loved to cook a variety of Arabic and Greek dishes for Jim and I and It's honestly amazing that we never filled out our clothing if you know what I mean. Growing up she made the following dishes:

No two grape-leaves recipe are the same!

* Grape-leaves
* Kibbie
* Kaftka
* star shaped cookies that were essentially 99% LARD. (You can feel the heart attack coming can't you?)

Here's the thing about the grape leaves. They were so good and basically melted in your mouth. You take ground lamb. Put parsley and rice into the mix. Wrap them up in grape leaves and serve. Pure. Bliss.

The Matorians had a grape plant or two in their yard and I think the freshness of the leaves is what made the grape-leaves so good. Ever since they both passed away, my brother and I have tried and failed to find a place which had grape-leaves like how she made them. One place came close! SO CLOSE!

Nothing will ever compare to her grape-leaves. We were spoiled rotten. I'll be the first to admit it right here on the Internet. We had the best grape-leaves in the world and we were spoiled!

While Aunt Mimi was a great chef and amazing person to talk family history with, uncle Pete was always willing to take my brother and I everywhere we wanted to go. It didn't matter because he'd always call it "The cleaners". He called it that because his wallet would be cleaned out. Get it? HAHAHA! He enjoyed taking us for a ride in his very old green Ford....which had no seat-belts. Gotta love child safety in the '80s!!

Pete's family had a farm in town and he'd often tell Jim and I the history of Salem, New Hampshire. Unedited. He had books about the town's history and was always happy to talk about it with anyone who'd listen. His family's farm (Which is still technically in operation) would take goods up the main through-way in Salem to cities as far away as Lawrence. Naturally, I would often ask questions and he'd go into great detail about everything! Meanwhile Uncle Pete would have something he liked to call "A lousy Uncle Pete sandwich". You take wonder bread, a slice of ham and another piece of wonder bread and there's your lousy Uncle Pete sandwich.

Aunt Mimi and Uncle Pete did do a lot of stuff for us like cooking and taking us wherever we wanted to go. They were always good to talk to. As Jim and I got older, we still visited them on a semi regular basis. In fact, I would walk from the school to their house after cross country practice. It was close by and once I got there, I'd call and tell my parents where I was.  And by the time my mother came to pick me up, I'd have a box of grape-leaves to take home for dinner!! =)

Uncle Pete in the 1920 US census!

This was just a snippet of the kind of people they were. Aunt Mimi and Uncle Pete were always warm, caring, funny and great people in general. They both passed away while I was in college in the late '90s and early 2000 respectively. Once I got into genealogy, one of the first things I did was look for them in the US census. I found quite a bit about Uncle Pete and a little about Aunt Mimi. I still need to find more. I haven't even made profiles for them on WikiTree. Yet. I promise I will get around to it!

There's a lot more I can say and I think this blog is at a decent length already. To this day, I am grateful to Aunt Mimi and Uncle Pete for not just looking after my brother and I. But, for being essentially a second set of grandparents who watched us grow up.  They saw us graduate high school in the '90s and I like to think that they're still watching over us. You never know. Through them, I got an appreciation of great food, local history and even cheesy daytime soap operas. Aunt Mimi was always quick to tell me who the "stinker" was!

In the end, they were just two of the wonderful people in our lives and I miss them even twenty years since their passing. They were warm, caring and great people. Nothing else can really be said.

See ya next time!