Answers to today’s questions thefridayfive@Dreamwidth
1. Are you and your birth family close?
I was adopted when I was 1 month old, and I’ve never met my birth family. I’ve only talked a little with one of my half-sisters when she informed me that my bio-dad had died and I was one of his heirs, which shouldn’t be happened because the adoption was supposed to cut all legal and otherwise ties to my bio family, but the law had changed a few years after the adoption and we didn’t know until 2022 when she informed me about his death. (If you want to know more, I’ve posted about this before. It’s still unsolved.)
So the answers to these questions are about my adoption family.
I’m very close to my Mom, was close to Mamma (Mom’s mom ) while she was alive, and growing up I was pretty close to my girl cousin in the sense that we only saw each other maybe 3-4 times a year but it was like no time had passed at all and we always got fun and games going immediately.
Now I’m only close to my Mom, I’ve (we’ve) pretty much lost touch with anyone else over time.
2. How far away do you live from your various family members?
From my Mom – about 6 minutes by car, 30 minutes by walking, 15 minutes by bike and 60 minutes by bus.
I don’t even know where precisely anyone else my age lives at the moment other than that it’s around this same town as ever. We e-mail/WhatsApp occasionally though. I don’t have personal contact with my younger relatives since they’ve moved out on their own; I know many of them have moved a lot because of work and university.
3. When was the last time you visited with relatives?
My Mom – I visited her on July 9th (I remember the exact date because of the bathroom renovation was in it’s second week and I went to do my laundry to Mom’s on the Tuesday of that week!). My Mom visited me on Monday the 29th to see the new bathroom when it was ready.
I don’t remember the last time I visited my other relatives – these days we usually meet for a coffee in the town sometimes rather than go to each others homes. Seems easier this way and doesn’t require as much planning and work.
4. Do your relatives travel to visit you?
Nope. None of the relatives I see sometimes live far away. But we live around the same area/the same town and it’s about 30 minutes by car at most everywhere or 45-60 minutes by bus. That’s normal and not “travel”. My Dad’s brother and his wife used to travel to visit us (and us them) once or twice a year from Helsinki (about 2-2,5 hours away by car) back when I was a kid, and my Dad’s sister with her family from Harjavalta (about the same by car) but after Dad’s death we lost touch with that side of the family. I don’t think I’ve seen them since turning 20 and I’ll be 50 next so.
So Mom and I aren’t really close with any of our relatives except for each other, but it isn’t bad blood anything like that. Just life and circumstance and in a few particular cases, having to move to other cities to get work, that the relationships ended drifting apart over time. My Mom has said that we all lived very close to each other when I was a baby and so spent time together, and then there was also the grandparents who’d everyone visit for Christmas and holidays and birthdays and such and stayed in touch just simply seeing other because of that. But after the grandparents died and people moved further apart with random work schedules and seeing each other started requiring actual planning, a lot of those relationships just drifted apart overtime.
I don’t miss having closer relatives but my Mom would like to have a closer relationship with the only brother she has now here in Finland; she’s tried, but you can’t keep a relationship going all by yourself – it requires two, and he’s kinda busy and a kinda messy and Mom’s given up. My Mom also has siblings living in Sweden that she’s never met or known except for postcards and photos – the siblings were sent to Sweden as tiny toddlers for safety during the Winter War/Continuation War in the early 1940s before Mom was born, and never came back. I don’t actually know whether they were formally adopted or if it was another sort of legal arrangement (a lot of kids were sent to safety to Sweden, and it seems most of them didn’t return when the war was over), but essentially they have Swedish parents and were raised there as their own kids with their own kids, and are for all intents and purposes Swedish but with Finnish connections and background. I don’t think they’ve ever met their bio family after being sent to Sweden, but there’s regular yearly contact with postcards/letters and the occasional phone call.
5. How do you stay in touch with family: phone calls, email, snail mail, texts, other
I talk on the phone with my Mom 1-3 times a week and more often if something is going on, and we also WhatsApp each other several days of the week. Also e-mail but that’s more rare these days now that we’re using WhatsApp.
Facebook and WhatsApp with all the others.
I don’t keep contact with my distant relatives either. Even when I lived in Poland, I was in regular contact only with my parents, my grandmothers and my aunt (father’s sister). I have some distant cousins, some of them I met a few times in my life, the others I have never met, only heard about them. I can’t say I particularly miss close relations with them as I’ve never really had them in the first place. I guess in some cultures it could be considered weird not to have contact with relatives, in Poland there also used to be more pressure on family relationships, but now it’s not anymore (at least not in my family). I guess now it’s more like in Nordic countries, where people keep in touch with those they want to.
I didn’t know that during talvisota and jatkosota some Finnish children were sent to Sweden! It surprised me that they didn’t come back though. But then, if they were sent as toddlers and grew up with their adoptive family, they probably didn’t remember their biological family and considered the adoptive one to be their real family. So maybe it’s not so weird. And also those were war times, which are always difficult. Still, it seems that they have some ties to their biological families, if they have some contact through postcards and phone calls?
That’s it for me too, don’t really miss having close relatives due never having them in the first place. By the time I was old enough to start remembering people and things, the relationships had already drifted apart a lot due to circumstances and I only know what they were like from Mom having told me. Part of me thinks it’s pity, but not in a really personal way if that makes sense.
I remember learning about the kids sent to Sweden back in school and some of them not coming back for reasons you say. But Finland also had to pay war reparations to Soviet Union after the war, and for many years there was regulated mounts of various goods and food allower per person (such as sugar, butter, salt, clothes, shoes etc.) for a long time even after the war ended. So no doubt that was also a big reason why the Finnish families allowed their children to be adopted to Sweden and never took them back. The kids were better off there. I don’t actually know about the other kids, just that my Mom’s siblings maintained contact with some letters, postcards and phone calls. I don’t remember learning much details about the kids that stayed in Sweden, just that a notable number never came back due to being adopted there.