My father gave me a second mother at the age of twelve, a beautiful, intelligent Bulgarian woman who could cooooooook and bake, no more three-glass of water pork chops for me! She was the quintessence of Christmas and Easter, and because of her faith, and my Grandma Charlotte’s death, I became a Byzantine Catholic and raised my daughters as such. She taught me so much, especially about being a good mother. Every day my oldest would come home from school to her home to do her homework at her Baba’s house, where she would watch I Dream of Jeanie and eat Andies Mints and whatever cookies her Baba had baked in the cookie jar. It was an idyllic upbringing for her.
She took us in as her foundling daughters and raised us alongside her son, Quinn Jason, wise healer, the father now of Quinn Thomas and Moxie Faith, and the husband of Jen. Their family is the pride of my life in many of ways, as my daughter’s father would have said.
Because of this Bulgarian influence and my being included in this Eastern European upbringing of love, perseverance and faith, I am who I am. I became a court reporter in her footsteps, and I follow in them to this day, as closely as I can, for she is a woman of great influence, a true queen, whose grandmother, Danka Brezov was married to Russe Brezov in a small village in Bulgaria. He promised her mother, who was the village healer that he would never take her, the youngest daughter away, and yet the morning after their wedding, he took the gold sewn into her wedding dress, and his bride of eighteen years of age and headed out for Paris, France.
The family icons had maps sewn into the backs of them so that there would be means of escape when the communists or other well-meaning bastards came along to steal and plunder. People today should think hard when they dream of socialist governments that could bear up and support this nation, as once Lenin, Stalin and Hitler promised their people they would do. Even Mao. Because in the end you will all end up giving all you own over to these individuals like my forefathers and mothers in Bulgaria were forced to do, in the name of progress. So beware, and read Snowed In when it is at last finished.
They ultimately missed their initial boat, the Titanic, Thanks be to God, because Danka was late getting up in the morning, I believe. When they finally arrived, they made out for Utah, where they did not stay but for a few years, because the people there called them dirty foreigners, and stole from them their farm goods and grandmother’s baked goods. They made their way to Fullerton, California, and a better way of life, with their three daughters, Nadezhda (Daisy), Tennessee (Tenny), Rozanna (Rosey), and their son Lenin, (Darrell).
Grandma Daisy was a pervasive influence in my life as was my Great Uncle Darrell, who often referred to my daughter Natasha Shokokara as the Ascendancy to the Line of Raskolnikov, a compliment it took her years to comprehend. He was a genius whose IQ was almost untestable. May God rest his soul. Daisy knew more about spiritualism than any other human being I have ever known, and she gifted me with many of her books, some of which I had the privilege to study, and some of which were outlawed by the Vatican. Alas. Knowledge is power.
So, there are many foundlings in our family, which is why I remark that family is forged of blood and fire. No one can say that I am not a Bulgarian as much as I am a Viking. For my daughter’s name, though Japanese, Shoko, also in Bulgarian, means, a small hot cup of cocoa, which my Grandma Daisy and great aunts and uncle thought I had named her after because of her dark skin and long black hair. In the end, we are all FAMILY, and God’s children, after all. To this day, I love when other Bulgarians tell me that I look Bulgarian. I am proud to be a Bulgarian foundling and most blessed to have the mother that my father chose for me, Constance Faith, whose CCR number was 8. Mine was 273 in the State of Nevada. How about that?