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kareinaThe following summary contains highlights from the stories my mother told me about her life:
Norma Jean Tyyska was born on 19 December 1940, in Ewen Michigan, the third child (of four) of Martha and Alex Tyyska. Her early life was spent in a variety of locations in and around that town as her parents alternated between different options to keep the family going, including running a restaurant in town when she was little, and later moving out to a farm. As a tomboy who enjoyed shooting guns and being active, she thrived on the farm, even though she resented needing to help out with some of the necessary chores, such as milking the cows (which task was made more fun by singing to them a variety of rather inappropriate songs that her sailor brother had taught her).
Her childhood was full of music, as her father, Alex, had a violin that he had built from a mail-order kit and a harmonica that he played often and with enthusiasm. Norma’s first instrument was a trumpet, an instrument that was so loud she was sent to the sauna for practicing, as that was just far enough from the house as to not disturb her mother.
Norma had a hankering to travel, and wanted a college education, but the family couldn’t afford the tuition and fees that would have been needed for college. So, she enrolled in a much shorter (and non-degree granting) program an Airline School, thinking that if she worked for an airline, she would be able to travel often. However, that path took an unexpected, but welcome detour. Just before the course finished a representative of the government visited the school and administrated a test for potential civil service workers, which she passed with flying colours. Coincidently about the same time the airline industry was facing a major strike, so Norma packed her bags and moved to Washington DC to start a job as a secretary at the Pentagon.
During her six years in DC mom’s social life was active, with many parties hosted in the apartment she shared with friends. During one of these late-night gatherings she was convinced to open the window, stand with the trumpet facing out into the night, and play Reveille. This, of course, caused the newly married man in the upstairs apartment, who had only just completed his basic training, to be up, dressed, and ready to go out the door, before he realized that he wasn’t on base, it was only 01:30 or 02:00, and he had no where he needed to be. Even more often though, she had her harmonica out, since that could be played without waking the neighbours.
Her time in DC left two very lasting effects on our family. First of all, she introduced her good friend Nancy to her brother Jim, leading directly to their marriage. Secondly, this was where she met Ray Chmielowski (more commonly called “Ski”), her first husband. Ski was in the air force, and was transferred to Lackland AFB, Texas after his time in the DC area, and Norma accompanied him there. Soon after their wedding (which took place in February of 1966) she, Ski, and a couple of their friends were spending an afternoon out in the Texas country side, out on a row boat in a lake. One of the friends had a pistol with him, and the guys were amusing themselves shooting at (and missing) a bottle floating in the water. Norma asked if she could take a turn, and the owner of the gun, fooled by her fashionable short skirt and heels (and not realizing how she had spent her youth), took the time to re-load, then proceeded to careful explain to her how one should aim and shoot. She thanked him politely, took the gun, and shot all six bullets, hitting the target at every shot. After a moment of stunned silence, the men in the boat all told Ski that he had better behave, lest his sharp-shooting wife decide to use her skills to keep him in line. (Ski just laughed, as he already knew full well her talents in this regard, having accompanied her on visits to the family farm.)
After a few months to get used to married life Ski got his next set of orders, to spend a Temporary Duty Year (TDY) in Thailand, without his family, so Norma, already pregnant with their first child at this point, moved into a shared apartment with her friend Liz (whose husband was also going TDY) and her three children to await the baby’s arrival and Ski’s next orders. Riia Marie arrived in December, nine day’s before Norma’s own birthday (and six before Ski’s), and not long thereafter bags were packed for road trips, to take her to meet Ski’s family in Pennsylvania and Norma’s family in Michigan.
Then Ski’s next orders were cut: Japan (his second duty tour there), and they decided that Normal should drive the car to California, put it on a boat to be shipped to Japan, and fly over to join him. So, she got a cardboard box, made a baby bed in it, and set it on the floor of the car in front of the passenger seat, tossed her bags in the back and Norma and Riia set off across the country together. Norma quickly fell into a routine—drive for as many hours as she could, then stop at a restaurant, carry the baby in, hand her to the first waitress she could find who wasn’t actively busy, and say “please hold my baby while I use the toilet”. Pretty much every stop, when the people found out that she was doing a cross country trip alone with a baby, they would happily play with the baby while Norma ate her dinner, and then give her back.
During their three years in Japan Norma worked in base Supply. Thus, she was one of the people in charge of coordinating the special sale they were going to have to sell off surplice goods at reasonable prices. Therefore, she knew that one of the things to be sold off was a brand-new accordion, that had been purchased for the Military Band, but the guy who could play it had been transferred to another base. She also knew exactly which shelf and row it was on, so when the doors opened the day of the sale she walked in, went directly to that shelf, picked up the case, and walked directly to the payment station, thus obtaining a very nice quality musical instrument at a very good price. She taught herself to play, and soon every party would include not only harmonica playing and sing-alongs, but also a bit of accordion playing (which had an advantage of being able to sing and play at the same time.
Ski’s next transfer was to Germany, so the family decided to go there by way of the US, so that visits could be made to both Michigan and Pennsylvania to see her family and his, which visit was made more interesting by Riia having the chickenpox and giving them to the cousins in the states. Not long after they arrived in Germany their daughter Beth was born, and both Norma’s mother and Ski’s mother came out for a visit. The two of them took full advantage of their first trip to Europe by traveling together and exploring. Since Norma’s mother could speak Finnish and Ski’s mother could speak Polish, between their three languages they could get by pretty much every were they went.
While in Germany Norma and Ski made a point of heading out to local pubs to connect with the local culture. One of the first times they tried this, when they entered the pub the atmosphere was very subdued and dire, as the men sat quietly around a common table and spoke seriously with one another, but, of course neither Norma nor Ski could understand a word being said. Norma thought that they were all much too serious, so she reached into her purse, pulled out her harmonica, and begun to play. As soon as she did everyone around the table stood up, and walked out of the pub, and Norma worried that she had done something wrong. However, a couple of minutes later they all came back in, carrying musical instruments, and a very happy evening was spent playing together. (They later learned that it was a local political meeting that she interrupted and turned into a jam session.)
After a year in Germany they were transferred to Crete, which was close enough that they could drive there (though Riia sat in the back of the car during a traffic jam in an Italian city muttering “I told you we should have taken the plane” with all the dignity her 4-year-old self could muster). Norma’s stay in Crete was short, since that was the point at which she realized that her relationship wasn’t going as she would have wished, so she and Ski separated, and she took the girls back to Michigan.
They spent one year in Michigan, first staying with Norma’s sister Barbara (and their mother and Barb’s five daughters), then renting a small house a few blocks away. However, there were no jobs to speak of in Ewen that payed well enough for a woman to support herself and two daughters, so she decided to move back to Texas. Barbara’s third daughter, Jennifer, graduated from high school that year and wished to move somewhere, but didn’t want to go to college. Therefore, Norma made her an offer: come with us to Texas and do the babysitting while I look for work and get settled, and then you can go find a job of your own and move out. Jen found this to be a good suggestion, and happily accepted.
They settled in to a small house in a suburb of San Antonio near enough to the Air Force base that Norma could work on base, but the girls could go to school off base. The families living on that street were very friendly, and it was common to gather in one yard or another in the evenings, and many a sing along was aided and abetted by Norma’s harmonica.
After three years in Texas Norma decided that since it had been a while since the girls had seen their dad, who had retired from the military and moved to Alaska to work as a labourer on the road crew building the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline, that they should take a two-week vacation to Alaska to visit Ski and meet some of his brothers (who had lived there for years). During that visit Norma and some of her (former) sisters in law decided to do a girl’s trip to Anchorage and left the kids with their dads at the family homestead in the middle of the state for a couple of days. When they returned Norma announced, “I got a job, we are moving!” She left the girls with their dad, Uncle, Aunt, and cousins, flew back to Texas, sold the house, sold the car, bought a pick-up truck, filled it with much of their household goods and sold the rest at a garage sale, then drove back to Alaska, picked up the kids, and moved to Anchorage.
Norma spent 11 years living in Anchorage, during which time she discovered Toastmasters International, which encouraged her to share her joy of public speaking with many new friends. She was also active with the Parent-Teacher Association, and even made an attempt to run for office (which gave her an opportunity to teach her daughters a new word: “gerrymandering” as she withdrew from the race when she suddenly found herself in a new district where the incumbent was a good friend). Even so, it was her love of music which continued to draw attention. She was one of the people to be selected to take the inaugural trip of a new train, during which she broke out her harmonica and got a sing a long going, which made the evening news.
When she sent her youngest daughter, Beth, off as a foreign exchange student to Finland, Norma had no idea how much it would change her life. She probably didn’t even think anything of it when Beth got home from her year abroad, and she received a letter from one of the other exchange students saying that she wanted to give Beth an international phone call for a birthday present, and please be certain that Beth would be home to answer the phone on the appropriate day.
However, when Beth got off of that phone call and told Norma that “Kirsty’s Dad wants to marry you”, Norma was in just the right mood to say “That is the first marriage proposal I have had in years, I think I will accept”, and they sat down together to write a letter of acceptance addressed to “Mister Dart”, and starting with “G’day Mate” (since they had no idea what his first name was). In the letter she asked when he would like the wedding to be, suggesting that she always thought a summer wedding would be nice. Terry enjoyed the letter and replied, “you didn’t say whose summer, yours or mine, I don’t believe in long engagements, how about January?”.
Given that Norma had already moved to Alaska on the spur of the moment, and had been known to fly to Fairbanks at a moment’s notice just because she was invited over for spaghetti dinner, no one who knew her was really surprised to hear that she had decided to marry a man she had never met, just because their daughters arranged it, and the wedding party was well attended.
Norma and Terry lived happily together in his home in Victoria, Australia for about five years, where they were both active in Toastmasters, before Terry took an early retirement and they moved to Alaska. Five years later they decided to retire to Tasmania.
Retirement meant that they had more time for hobbies, which included Toastmasters, and, in Terry’s case, wood turning, and gave them an opportunity to take a round-the-world trip together. During that trip they got the chance to meet many of her father’s first-cousins, who live in Finland and Sweden, none of whom had ever had a chance to meet their US relatives before. That trip, like so many others Norma has taken, was filled with music from her ever-present harmonica, and much joy and laughter.
After five happy years in Tasmania we lost Terry to cancer and Norma moved to Seattle, where Beth and her new husband, Beto, were about to buy a house. She joined them, and they were soon joined by Beth’s daughter’s Anahi and Lucia. Meanwhile, in Australia, Kirsty and her husband Mike were joined by their sons, Felix and Caspar. A few years thereafter Riia moved first to Italy for her first post-doctoral position, and then to Luleå, Sweden. Amber, who had been living in Vancouver BC when Norma first moved to Seattle, wound up moving to San Francisco. This gave Norma even more motivation to travel now and then between states, and between continents, so that she could spend time with each of her daughters, and with both sets of grandchildren.
During her visits to Riia in Europe she also got to visit many of her Finnish cousins and share music with them. However, perhaps the highlight of her travels while she lived in Seattle was her “Tip to Tip” cruise, during which she got to visit the three continents upon which she had never lived: South America, Antarctica and Africa. Since it was a cruise the time between stops gave her ample opportunity to discover which of her fellow travellers enjoyed music and song, and her harmonica got a good workout.
She spent 15 happy years based in Seattle, watching her granddaughters grow into talented singers, active in the local music theatre scene, and her heart filled with pride and joy. When it was Norma’s time to go, she assured us all that she had lived a good life, and she was content to pass on to whatever comes next; that it is ok to be sad, and even to cry, but we should always do so with a smile on our face. She understood that sorrow mixed with joy is the easiest sort to bear, and her life has spread joy to many.
Norma Jean Tyyska was born on 19 December 1940, in Ewen Michigan, the third child (of four) of Martha and Alex Tyyska. Her early life was spent in a variety of locations in and around that town as her parents alternated between different options to keep the family going, including running a restaurant in town when she was little, and later moving out to a farm. As a tomboy who enjoyed shooting guns and being active, she thrived on the farm, even though she resented needing to help out with some of the necessary chores, such as milking the cows (which task was made more fun by singing to them a variety of rather inappropriate songs that her sailor brother had taught her).
Her childhood was full of music, as her father, Alex, had a violin that he had built from a mail-order kit and a harmonica that he played often and with enthusiasm. Norma’s first instrument was a trumpet, an instrument that was so loud she was sent to the sauna for practicing, as that was just far enough from the house as to not disturb her mother.
Norma had a hankering to travel, and wanted a college education, but the family couldn’t afford the tuition and fees that would have been needed for college. So, she enrolled in a much shorter (and non-degree granting) program an Airline School, thinking that if she worked for an airline, she would be able to travel often. However, that path took an unexpected, but welcome detour. Just before the course finished a representative of the government visited the school and administrated a test for potential civil service workers, which she passed with flying colours. Coincidently about the same time the airline industry was facing a major strike, so Norma packed her bags and moved to Washington DC to start a job as a secretary at the Pentagon.
During her six years in DC mom’s social life was active, with many parties hosted in the apartment she shared with friends. During one of these late-night gatherings she was convinced to open the window, stand with the trumpet facing out into the night, and play Reveille. This, of course, caused the newly married man in the upstairs apartment, who had only just completed his basic training, to be up, dressed, and ready to go out the door, before he realized that he wasn’t on base, it was only 01:30 or 02:00, and he had no where he needed to be. Even more often though, she had her harmonica out, since that could be played without waking the neighbours.
Her time in DC left two very lasting effects on our family. First of all, she introduced her good friend Nancy to her brother Jim, leading directly to their marriage. Secondly, this was where she met Ray Chmielowski (more commonly called “Ski”), her first husband. Ski was in the air force, and was transferred to Lackland AFB, Texas after his time in the DC area, and Norma accompanied him there. Soon after their wedding (which took place in February of 1966) she, Ski, and a couple of their friends were spending an afternoon out in the Texas country side, out on a row boat in a lake. One of the friends had a pistol with him, and the guys were amusing themselves shooting at (and missing) a bottle floating in the water. Norma asked if she could take a turn, and the owner of the gun, fooled by her fashionable short skirt and heels (and not realizing how she had spent her youth), took the time to re-load, then proceeded to careful explain to her how one should aim and shoot. She thanked him politely, took the gun, and shot all six bullets, hitting the target at every shot. After a moment of stunned silence, the men in the boat all told Ski that he had better behave, lest his sharp-shooting wife decide to use her skills to keep him in line. (Ski just laughed, as he already knew full well her talents in this regard, having accompanied her on visits to the family farm.)
After a few months to get used to married life Ski got his next set of orders, to spend a Temporary Duty Year (TDY) in Thailand, without his family, so Norma, already pregnant with their first child at this point, moved into a shared apartment with her friend Liz (whose husband was also going TDY) and her three children to await the baby’s arrival and Ski’s next orders. Riia Marie arrived in December, nine day’s before Norma’s own birthday (and six before Ski’s), and not long thereafter bags were packed for road trips, to take her to meet Ski’s family in Pennsylvania and Norma’s family in Michigan.
Then Ski’s next orders were cut: Japan (his second duty tour there), and they decided that Normal should drive the car to California, put it on a boat to be shipped to Japan, and fly over to join him. So, she got a cardboard box, made a baby bed in it, and set it on the floor of the car in front of the passenger seat, tossed her bags in the back and Norma and Riia set off across the country together. Norma quickly fell into a routine—drive for as many hours as she could, then stop at a restaurant, carry the baby in, hand her to the first waitress she could find who wasn’t actively busy, and say “please hold my baby while I use the toilet”. Pretty much every stop, when the people found out that she was doing a cross country trip alone with a baby, they would happily play with the baby while Norma ate her dinner, and then give her back.
During their three years in Japan Norma worked in base Supply. Thus, she was one of the people in charge of coordinating the special sale they were going to have to sell off surplice goods at reasonable prices. Therefore, she knew that one of the things to be sold off was a brand-new accordion, that had been purchased for the Military Band, but the guy who could play it had been transferred to another base. She also knew exactly which shelf and row it was on, so when the doors opened the day of the sale she walked in, went directly to that shelf, picked up the case, and walked directly to the payment station, thus obtaining a very nice quality musical instrument at a very good price. She taught herself to play, and soon every party would include not only harmonica playing and sing-alongs, but also a bit of accordion playing (which had an advantage of being able to sing and play at the same time.
Ski’s next transfer was to Germany, so the family decided to go there by way of the US, so that visits could be made to both Michigan and Pennsylvania to see her family and his, which visit was made more interesting by Riia having the chickenpox and giving them to the cousins in the states. Not long after they arrived in Germany their daughter Beth was born, and both Norma’s mother and Ski’s mother came out for a visit. The two of them took full advantage of their first trip to Europe by traveling together and exploring. Since Norma’s mother could speak Finnish and Ski’s mother could speak Polish, between their three languages they could get by pretty much every were they went.
While in Germany Norma and Ski made a point of heading out to local pubs to connect with the local culture. One of the first times they tried this, when they entered the pub the atmosphere was very subdued and dire, as the men sat quietly around a common table and spoke seriously with one another, but, of course neither Norma nor Ski could understand a word being said. Norma thought that they were all much too serious, so she reached into her purse, pulled out her harmonica, and begun to play. As soon as she did everyone around the table stood up, and walked out of the pub, and Norma worried that she had done something wrong. However, a couple of minutes later they all came back in, carrying musical instruments, and a very happy evening was spent playing together. (They later learned that it was a local political meeting that she interrupted and turned into a jam session.)
After a year in Germany they were transferred to Crete, which was close enough that they could drive there (though Riia sat in the back of the car during a traffic jam in an Italian city muttering “I told you we should have taken the plane” with all the dignity her 4-year-old self could muster). Norma’s stay in Crete was short, since that was the point at which she realized that her relationship wasn’t going as she would have wished, so she and Ski separated, and she took the girls back to Michigan.
They spent one year in Michigan, first staying with Norma’s sister Barbara (and their mother and Barb’s five daughters), then renting a small house a few blocks away. However, there were no jobs to speak of in Ewen that payed well enough for a woman to support herself and two daughters, so she decided to move back to Texas. Barbara’s third daughter, Jennifer, graduated from high school that year and wished to move somewhere, but didn’t want to go to college. Therefore, Norma made her an offer: come with us to Texas and do the babysitting while I look for work and get settled, and then you can go find a job of your own and move out. Jen found this to be a good suggestion, and happily accepted.
They settled in to a small house in a suburb of San Antonio near enough to the Air Force base that Norma could work on base, but the girls could go to school off base. The families living on that street were very friendly, and it was common to gather in one yard or another in the evenings, and many a sing along was aided and abetted by Norma’s harmonica.
After three years in Texas Norma decided that since it had been a while since the girls had seen their dad, who had retired from the military and moved to Alaska to work as a labourer on the road crew building the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline, that they should take a two-week vacation to Alaska to visit Ski and meet some of his brothers (who had lived there for years). During that visit Norma and some of her (former) sisters in law decided to do a girl’s trip to Anchorage and left the kids with their dads at the family homestead in the middle of the state for a couple of days. When they returned Norma announced, “I got a job, we are moving!” She left the girls with their dad, Uncle, Aunt, and cousins, flew back to Texas, sold the house, sold the car, bought a pick-up truck, filled it with much of their household goods and sold the rest at a garage sale, then drove back to Alaska, picked up the kids, and moved to Anchorage.
Norma spent 11 years living in Anchorage, during which time she discovered Toastmasters International, which encouraged her to share her joy of public speaking with many new friends. She was also active with the Parent-Teacher Association, and even made an attempt to run for office (which gave her an opportunity to teach her daughters a new word: “gerrymandering” as she withdrew from the race when she suddenly found herself in a new district where the incumbent was a good friend). Even so, it was her love of music which continued to draw attention. She was one of the people to be selected to take the inaugural trip of a new train, during which she broke out her harmonica and got a sing a long going, which made the evening news.
When she sent her youngest daughter, Beth, off as a foreign exchange student to Finland, Norma had no idea how much it would change her life. She probably didn’t even think anything of it when Beth got home from her year abroad, and she received a letter from one of the other exchange students saying that she wanted to give Beth an international phone call for a birthday present, and please be certain that Beth would be home to answer the phone on the appropriate day.
However, when Beth got off of that phone call and told Norma that “Kirsty’s Dad wants to marry you”, Norma was in just the right mood to say “That is the first marriage proposal I have had in years, I think I will accept”, and they sat down together to write a letter of acceptance addressed to “Mister Dart”, and starting with “G’day Mate” (since they had no idea what his first name was). In the letter she asked when he would like the wedding to be, suggesting that she always thought a summer wedding would be nice. Terry enjoyed the letter and replied, “you didn’t say whose summer, yours or mine, I don’t believe in long engagements, how about January?”.
Given that Norma had already moved to Alaska on the spur of the moment, and had been known to fly to Fairbanks at a moment’s notice just because she was invited over for spaghetti dinner, no one who knew her was really surprised to hear that she had decided to marry a man she had never met, just because their daughters arranged it, and the wedding party was well attended.
Norma and Terry lived happily together in his home in Victoria, Australia for about five years, where they were both active in Toastmasters, before Terry took an early retirement and they moved to Alaska. Five years later they decided to retire to Tasmania.
Retirement meant that they had more time for hobbies, which included Toastmasters, and, in Terry’s case, wood turning, and gave them an opportunity to take a round-the-world trip together. During that trip they got the chance to meet many of her father’s first-cousins, who live in Finland and Sweden, none of whom had ever had a chance to meet their US relatives before. That trip, like so many others Norma has taken, was filled with music from her ever-present harmonica, and much joy and laughter.
After five happy years in Tasmania we lost Terry to cancer and Norma moved to Seattle, where Beth and her new husband, Beto, were about to buy a house. She joined them, and they were soon joined by Beth’s daughter’s Anahi and Lucia. Meanwhile, in Australia, Kirsty and her husband Mike were joined by their sons, Felix and Caspar. A few years thereafter Riia moved first to Italy for her first post-doctoral position, and then to Luleå, Sweden. Amber, who had been living in Vancouver BC when Norma first moved to Seattle, wound up moving to San Francisco. This gave Norma even more motivation to travel now and then between states, and between continents, so that she could spend time with each of her daughters, and with both sets of grandchildren.
During her visits to Riia in Europe she also got to visit many of her Finnish cousins and share music with them. However, perhaps the highlight of her travels while she lived in Seattle was her “Tip to Tip” cruise, during which she got to visit the three continents upon which she had never lived: South America, Antarctica and Africa. Since it was a cruise the time between stops gave her ample opportunity to discover which of her fellow travellers enjoyed music and song, and her harmonica got a good workout.
She spent 15 happy years based in Seattle, watching her granddaughters grow into talented singers, active in the local music theatre scene, and her heart filled with pride and joy. When it was Norma’s time to go, she assured us all that she had lived a good life, and she was content to pass on to whatever comes next; that it is ok to be sad, and even to cry, but we should always do so with a smile on our face. She understood that sorrow mixed with joy is the easiest sort to bear, and her life has spread joy to many.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-12-07 05:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-12-08 07:47 am (UTC)Thanks for a look at a fascinating life. Yay Musical Mother!