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Five Things You Don’t Know About Me

A little New Year’s Day fun and procrastination tool.  I saw this meme over at Queen Heroical.  Five things you don’t know about me:

1. My great grandfather Walter Von Bruckner (on my father’s side) was a general in the Austrian army and I am also related to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (son of my great grand-uncle).

2. I skipped my senior year of high school to begin college a year early.  After college I joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps which brought me out to California.

3. While in school, at different times I played the violin, clarinet, and flute.  Never the cello though, I think that may in part be because one of my friends played professionally from an early age and still does.  (I also went to school with Yasmine Bleeth, — yes of Baywatch fame — Edgar Nascimento (son of Pele), and Dustin Hoffman’s daughter Jenna, with whom I played the role of “dirty laundry” in our third grade performance of Cinderella — okay, probably much more than you needed to know!)  :-)

4. I did not speak to my father for the nine months before he died.

5. I have a butterfly tattoo on my ankle in honor of my mother.  After she died I was going through her clothes and was taking pins off of her jackets and I noticed many butterfly pins that felt significant because of resurrection symbols.  The night before her memorial, we went to her favorite restaurant for dinner.  When we returned back to her place as I got out of the back seat of the rental car, I found a small ceramic butterfly bead lying there that had not been there before.  Then the next day at her service the first card I was given had a butterfly image on it.  I feel like it was her way of telling me she was now free.  I glued the found butterfly on the corner of a photo of us together I love taken about ten years ago.

    

I tag everyone who reads this!  Let me know if you do play, I would love to find out new things about all of you!

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7 Responses

  1. Butterflies. Let me imagine the lab where I am sitting at work filled with yellow butterflies. Even now. How their wings beat against the computer screen. How one lands on my lab coat sleeve. Where have they come from, these messengers of life resurrected? From You. Oh, Divine Mother of mine. All is from You.

  2. Thanks for the inspiration Krina, it was fun to do. The choice to no longer speak to my father was my own, for self-protection, then he died quite suddenly of a heart attack. But I have never regretted my choice, just sad for his own choices. Blessings to you, Christine

  3. Oh goodness, I am surprised and honoured that my little meme would “inspire” you to do your own. Thank you.
    And, my own father died within 6 months of a cancer diagnosis and I only saw him once in that time.
    -Krina

  4. such interesting now-known facts about you! wow, very cool that you’re related to Ludwig Wittgenstein. you have a wonderful and rich heritage. you have those same splendid qualities. how interesting learning about the presence of butterflies that relate to your mother…and i love your tattoo!!! its a beautiful and meaningful design. perhaps i will try it at my blog soon, too.
    hugs, bette.