Gramma Pickles : The Person

She's got a sparkly sweater, sparkly glasses, and red finger-nail polish (and usually a sparkly beer, too). She's the coolest Gramma I know!

Why do we call her "Gramma Pickles"?

Soon after my son was born, we were trying to figure out how to differentiate MY grandparents (now Great-Grandparents) from my parents who were first-time grandparents. Gramma had given us a huge jar of her famous pickles. We lovingly referred to the pickles as "Gramma Pickles" whenever we pulled them out to accompany our lunches. So the next time we saw her, SHE became Gramma Pickles, and the name stuck.

This is a jar of the current batch of Gramma Pickles (See the Recipe) :

What's in a Name? - Matucheski, Pt.2

I didn't change my name on my wedding day, June 19, 1999. That last week, it became an identity crisis for me : Would I change it , or not? Would I give up the name I'd had for nearly 29 years to become Michele Long?

My mother was telling me, "It will make it much easier to tell if you're a family. What about the children?" She works in public health, and sees all manner of blended families where it is difficult to tell who belongs to whom.

Well, in my mind, in the family CL and I would create, the kids would KNOW they belonged. That was never an issue for me. Growing up, my best friend Janna lived in a house with 3 last names (Campbell, Kerska, and Bettis), and none of them seemed to have any kind of an identity crisis.

The morning of the wedding, my mother-in-law told me, "You should really change your name. You'll save a lot of time just writing your signature for the rest of your life."

The efficiency argument didn't move me either.

What did move me was losing my identity. I'd spent 29 years building up that name with good academics, good character, good credit, and a career as MM. It had been good to me.

Who was Michele Long? No one with no past ...

If I had gotten married at 18, it might have been a different story. My identity would not have been so precious at 18 years of age.

After I finally decided to keep my given name (at the very last moment of signing the marriage license), it was a tremendous relief to me. It's been almost 10 years since I made this momentous decision, and I know it was the right decision for me.

I did unofficially change my middle name from Leigh to Long, but the government doesn't know that.

There are benefits to having a long Polish-Americanized name :
* It's unusual.
* People HAVE to look at it, so they usually spell it right.
* They don't know how to pronounce it, so they usually ask.

What about the kids?
CL and I decided that boy children would take the Long surname; girl children would take Matucheski. We had a boy who we named Oliver Long, with eyes as green as mine. There is no doubt he is my child (and he knows it, too!).

What's in a Name? - Matucheski, Pt.1

Thomas Matucheski, my Polish Grandfather, had a small dairy farm in Deerbrook, Northern Wisconsin. He did the work, but his brother kept getting his milk check. He solved this perplexing problem by changing the spelling of his name.

Matucheski is the American phonetic (sound-it-out-and-say-it-just-the-way-it-looks) spelling of Matuszewski.

To this day, half the family still spells it the old way, and half of us spell it the new way. But we're all still related.

From the little bit of research I've done, the old spelling is a very common name in Poland. I think it may be translated as Matthews. If anyone reading this knows different, please tell me.