At the end of 2018, my Dad showed me an obituary and said “this was my mother.” He was so certain. He had been adopted through the Catholic Charities and given very little info other than his birth name and date. This woman’s maiden name matched his birth surname. It’s not a terribly common or uncommon one. An anglicization of the modern Irish Gaelic O’Riordan (which itself is derived from the original O’Rioghbhardain, meaning royal bard). A few years ago I had gotten him to do a National Geographic DNA test but it didn’t yield much. In 2020, we opted to do ancestry.com and 23 & me as well. When his results came back it turned out he was right. The woman in the obituary was his birth mother. Two of her surviving children popped up as my Dad’s half-siblings. My Dad doesn’t have a computer so I’ve been managing the bulk of this enterprise. I messaged the close matches and arranged a few phone calls. We learned that my Dad’s birth mother married the year after he was born. She went on to have ten more children. All single births. She was, essentially, pregnant from 1944 to 1968. Wild. And nine of these half-siblings are still alive. But, because of the pandemic, an in-person meetup was delayed. Until last month. When we met all of them. On Memorial Day. It was overwhelming but wonderful.
Ice Castles is an award-winning frozen attraction located in five cities across North America. The experience is built using hundreds of thousands of icicles hand-placed by professional ice artists. The castles include breathtaking LED-lit sculptures, frozen thrones, ice-carved tunnels, slides, fountains and much more.
There are other outdoor activities to investigate this winter. Stillwater is hosting the ongoing World Snow Sculpting Championship and an Ice Palace Maze. There are Ice castles in New Brighton. And, closer to home, the Art Shanty Projects will be running for a few more weekends yet.