[0:01] Erin Mustard: Today is September 14th, 2023. My name is Erin Mustard and I’m here to interview Ronda. Could you please tell us a little bit about yourself and why you decided to share your story with us?

[0:11] Ronda Steinke-McDonald: My name is Ronda Steinke-McDonald, and I heard about your project. At first, I thought I wasn’t going to have anything to offer the parameters when you first described it. And then, the memory of a story slammed into me and I thought, maybe, maybe this is what you’re talking about. So.

[00:40] Erin: So the story. So we’ve talked a little bit about the story in advance. And you, one of the things that you kind of started out with was talking about it being about Scandinavian immigration or that your family is Scandinavian. They immigrated here. Do you still feel that there’s… that you have an influence from that culture? And what kinds of influences are those?

[1:05] Ronda: Of my four grandparents and their parents, the ones that probably had the strongest input on just shaping how I conduct my daily life was definitely my grandmother, my Scandinavian grandmother, and her tales of growing up in Minnesota before she migrated to the Detroit area, when she would talk about the life there and just the certain decorum. It very much matches the hospitality that we shared this afternoon, in the same type of thing. So I feel that, very much, that old world way of doing things that was maintained in those Scandinavian communities in Minnesota, that then that migrated into our life and our way of being. And it has continued on into this generation. I…I think very much that from the stories I derive and how they were with one another and just knowing other little aspects, that it was very much those Scandinavian communities, they very much wanted to assimilate. They were Americans, very important. But they also had an appreciation for what one another was going through. And so they…it was in everyone’s best interest that they would all survive together. And so they were very, very helpful. And it’s interesting in those Minnesota communities today, when my… one of the characters in the story that we’ll be talking about, Sven Fornell, my great grandfather, when his barn came down in.

[03:03] Ronda: I guess it would have been 50 years after he had died.

[03:08] Erin: Wow.

[03:09] Ronda: And the newspaper ran a story and it was still called Sven Fornell’s barn. They brought it down. So there was…there was that sense of everybody’s place in their community and the kind of this connection with that.

[03:25] Erin: That makes a lot of sense, especially in terms of the story as we get to it because of the idea of community and the communities that, you know, your grandmother relied on and other people relied on, but also that that decorum is a big theme in this. You know, that this is what you’re supposed to do. And some people do it and some people react against it.

[03:45] Ronda: Exactly. Yeah.

[03:47] Erin: So before we talk about the story, so can you tell a little bit about… tell me a little bit about who the person is and how they’re related to you.

[03:57] Ronda: So the story that was told to me is about my great great grandmother, my paternal great great grandmother, who was born in 1867. If my Ancestry.com is working for me and her name is Maria. And the…the essence of the story is essentially what does an immigrant woman do when she suddenly becomes a widow?

[04:33] Erin: So you never met her?

[04:36] Ronda: No.

[04:37] Erin: Do you wish you’d met her?

[04:40] Ronda: Honestly, if there’s one person.

[04:43] Erin: Yeah.

[04:45] Ronda: That I could go back to in our family’s history. And there are some rich, vast, juicy stories left and right. But Maria is the mystery and I wish I could know what… her real mind and her motivations had been.

[05:05] Erin: Right. You were saying that, you know, when we were speaking earlier that nobody that you know now or that knew that you can talk to knew what happened to her after a certain point in time because she left. Okay, so who told you this story?

[05:24] Ronda: So this story was told to me by my beloved grandmother and my grandparents for much of my childhood. They lived a block away. And then at some points in my adolescence, I lived with my grandparents, and they, uh, my grandma’s kitchen table was where coffee, cake, cookies, there was always something wonderful strudel, and there was always a story. And so she had this playlist, you know. And along the way, the story of Maria was finally shared with me.

[06:10] Erin: Okay. Can you share your story about Maria?

[06:15] Ronda: Yes. Maria was either a Swedish or a Danish immigrant, and she had come to this country and she soon married. I believe she married here and she had three daughters. Her daughters would have been eight, six and two when her husband had an unfortunate incident where he took a bet on driving a car, driving a wagon, excuse me, across a frozen lake. And at one point the worst happened and he was submerged. And he survived that. But I believe it aggravated his case of consumption. My grandmother, my great grandmother, excuse me, had related to other family members that she remembered when she was two years old, sitting on the bed by her father as he was coughing, coughing, coughing and then shortly after, he passed away. Well, Maria now had a predicament. And this is where the story would pick up. As my grandmother would tell me. When…when her husband died. She now had the responsibility of her three children. Maria decided to leave her youngest child, who is two years old then with, I believe, relatives. I think there is a loose blood relation there. And there was a couple, Sven and Alma Fornell, who were not going to be able to have children. And so they were…they agreed there was an arrangement made where they would then take care of this little child. Maria then leaves the area with her older two daughters. Along the way, she leaves the second oldest child, the six-year-old, with a farm family. And she proceeds to go on to California, which was her original destination. And she puts her oldest daughter, who remains in her care, she puts her in a convent school with nuns, which is very strange since we’re very much a Lutheran family and all her children have been baptized Lutherans, so something significant in that time period. When the story would be told, by my grandmother, and I heard it more than once; but, there would always be this tightening of her mouth before she said it. My grandmother was legally blind, so she would be…she could… she has shards of vision, but for the most part she was blind. And I think sometimes she did not realize she could be seen in the same way a fully sighted person might. And so as a child, I very much watched the facial theatre that was going on with any and every story that was told. But in this one her mouth would pull to the side. She would have a, um, a darkening. And I think it’s interesting that she did not have this story firsthand.

[10:14] Erin: Right.

[10:15] Ronda: I do not believe she learned it from her mother. I believe she learned this story from her grandmother, her adopted grandmother, the woman who took the mother. And now she loved this woman as dearly as I loved her. And this woman was a…the adoptive parents, Sven and Alma, had really been well picked. They were dedicated to their daughter and then they were dedicated to their granddaughter. But we are definitely getting second-hand, third-hand information, right?

[10:49] Erin: Right.

[10:50] Ronda: So I would watch this story come and it was told as a cautionary tale. Do not be like Maria, this woman who would do the unthinkable and relinquish one child after another. And in the pursuit of what? I can remember my grandmother. Casual conjecture probably. And at that point, now that I am a grandmother and I tell stories, I know that sometimes I will be in a story and it will be raw while I’m telling it, and I’m just hoping I make it through the story with my granddaughters, you know, so I can imagine at some point, that might have been happening for her even. But my grandmother would sometimes talk about her being an… Maria, being an actress, which would have been very unseemly at that time.

[11:51] Erin: Yeah, definitely.

[11:52] Ronda: And…and then also talking about owning a hotel.

[12:02] Erin: Yeah.

[12:03] Ronda: And she ultimately ends up in Los Angeles, I believe, because that’s where Agnette, the oldest daughter, is. But there is a…I can remember times where, distinctly, where my grandmother said, “And nobody’s heard from her since the San Francisco earthquake. I hope she died there.” And so that lets you, at least as a young child, you knew exactly where people stood on the idea of child abandonment, right? You know the worst, the worst could happen to you. No one would pity you, right? But in this tale, Maria goes on. And at some point she was back for a visit. But I think that, I think that that was curtailed. And of course, the times that they were living in travel was not the easiest thing, even with the train lines, you know, at that time into California, it still was a difficult process.

[13:09] Erin: Right?

[13:10] Ronda: So.

[13:11] Erin: Wow, that is incredible. That was an incredible story. I guess I was wondering about your initial reaction to that story, and maybe you can share that and then some other reactions you’ve had over time, or how that might have changed over time?

[13:31] Ronda: Well, I was definitely my grandma’s girl. So when that story was first told, I knew where traffic was being directed.

[13:42] Erin: Right.

[13:43] Ronda: And I went where I was motioned, you know, like we don’t like Maria. And shortly…shortly thereafter, my own mother, when I was the same age that Maria’s oldest daughter would have been, eight years old seems to be a real hot spot in our family. So when I was eight years old, my mother, my…my grandmother, the tale-teller’s daughter in law, my mother had to go into a mental rehabilitation center for about a month. And, it was a very brave act; instead of ending her life. She did that. But. It was interesting. I think even as a child I grasped this, that you were a bit damned if you do and damned if you don’t. And, I think I was already ascertaining that it was very difficult to be a mother. So, years later when you know, as..as all of our lives went on, I thought it was very interesting that my grandmother had eight grandchildren, four of us girls, four would hear these stories. I don’t remember the boys that were sitting around her table, but I know that my youngest female cousin and I have had lengthy conversations about the Maria issue.

[15:20] Erin: Yeah.

[15:21] Ronda: And it seems to be something embedded in our family. All of us have grappled about the time our oldest child is eight, ironically, with no conscious connection. We have grappled with how to continue being a mother and how to continue functioning and that absolute tug of war between the sacrifices one makes for children and what one needs to stay alive as an individual as well. And I…I have definitely grown in my sympathies with Maria and I feel not…I… I can definitely understand where my grandmother was coming from, but I feel much more resilient and much more merciful with what Maria might actually have been undertaking. And I don’t think that you drop your children off. I don’t think anybody….

[16:26] Erin: Right.

[16:28] Ronda: Is placing a child in a really good home, and then another child with the nuns in a very good environment and not caring about the middle child. When my grandmother might, excuse me when my great grandmother, that youngest child was adopted when she was a young woman, she got a letter after she was living in Detroit. She got a letter from a woman who said, I am Agnet, I think I am your sister.

[17:04] Erin: Wow.

[17:05] Ronda: And without, you know, any kind of the cyber connection. Joy. Now, like, how did people ever find someone again? Since my grandmother had moved now from Minnesota to Michigan, but somehow she had found her. And when she put this all together it was through her that my grandmother learned what had happened to their middle sister, and I don’t really believe the three sisters ever had any kind of big unity or connection.

[17:39] Erin: Did they ever…did all three of them connect in some way or?

[17:43] Ronda: My grandmother, so I don’t know for sure.

[17:45] Erin: Okay.

[17:46] Ronda: My grandmother said that, Karolina, the middle child, had been raised by this farm family, but more as an indentured servant. And if you think of her being 6 or 7 at the time, that begins.

[17:59] Erin:Yeah.

[18:00] Ronda: That sounds brutal. But my grandmother also said she thought somebody should have died in the San Francisco earthquake. So there was this moralizing that would sometimes…

[18:15] Erin: Yes.

[18:16] Ronda: …would seep in there. But I don’t recall any kind of story that my..my living relatives shared that those sisters ever got reunited. And I do remember my grandmother specifically saying Karolina remained bitter about it and everyone thought that was not such a leap.

[18:40] Erin: Yeah.

[18:41] Ronda: That that would happen, but it makes me wonder if you know, now that I’ve been a mother, that idea of things people will hold on to, and you never intended for them to go in that direction, or that had never been what you set out to do.

[19:00] Erin: Right.

[19:01] Ronda: I… you know, I think that there was a, if anything, the Maria, for my youngest cousin and I, Maria stopped being a cautionary tale at some point and began to be more an anthem and… and to try to understand as we have struggled being the dynamic individuals that we are.

[19:34] Erin: Right.

[19:35] Ronda: You know, how do we incorporate something from Maria’s example and not castigate her because our divergence is as women, um…it makes me think. Maybe…maybe Maria was a very divergent person. I mean, she said across the country, alone, handing children out, like raffle tickets or something. And um… That’s our bloodline. Not…not the nice…

[20:00] Erin: Right.

[20:01] Ronda: People. You know where I’ve got their antiques and they talk to me, right? My thoughts and…

[20:07] Erin: Right.

[20:08] Ronda: They have chosen to be our family. And I feel that that tie in adoption is… is as profound as blood. But genetically, I think we’re all much more the daughters of Maria than anyone would like. And her own daughter that had been given up for adoption in this very stable place, my great grandmother, Alma, well, she becomes a…she’s raised beautifully by this family she’s adored, not overly spoiled or anything like that, but just a very well loved child all the days of her life. And she goes off to become a schoolteacher. Well, it’s the Jazz Age, Minneapolis, she meets up with a man. They get married, they have a child, they divorce. He was a jazz musician. That was part of the Jazz age. And…and then her parents help her raise her child until her daughter’s eight years old, and she remarries and moves to Michigan and has her, you know, and then that child is ripped away at eight years old from what she loved. So it’s just this very interesting cycle. And when I think about how my great grandmother, Alma, was maybe more like her mother than her adoptive mother. And it does make me think that genetic stirring, and in a way, how unfortunate it was that somebody was trying to put the cork down in the bottle. Keep… keep that Maria stuff in. Keep that under wraps, girls. I do think my great grandmother was possibly the reason my grandmother was making this a cautionary tale. I think she saw her mother’s wildness. And…and her mother continued to, you know, just have her own mind about things all her life. My grandmother was actually the only one who ever really put the cork in the bottle and kept it there. Obviously Maria and Alma, her mother, had not. And then, her children and her grandchildren. We did not.

[22:43] Erin: Do you think that it was sort of like, if you think that maybe that the role of them, of it being sort of tamped down and pushed down, did that sort of make it, maybe not consciously, but make it more exciting, enticing, or do you think it just sort of happened?

[22:59] Ronda: No. Not really, I don’t think enticing was ever the case. You never heard the Maria story and thought that anybody was really happy with how that transpired. Yeah, although there were blessings all along the way, Sven and Alma, their whole life was made by that decision, you know, both to have a child and a grandchild and then great-grandchildren. They…they loved their family, but there…there was only the sense of the unfortunate there, especially because we never knew what did become of Maria. And we could never say for certain that it wasn’t rumbling, tumbling buildings crashing down on you, burying you alive or something. But, in our own lives if anything, it set the stage to try to… to try to do the best you can, to be very conscious and sober of that responsibility to your progeny.

[24:09] Erin: So it seems like that this… this story is well known in your family. This is, or parts of it are or… Well, tell me about that.

[24:18] Ronda: Okay. So, my cousin and I, we know it.

[22:24] Erin: Yeah.

[24:24] Ronda: And when I didn’t know that anybody else really sat around my grandmother’s table. And I am wondering about the two sisters who lived also on that same block with us, if they ever popped in.

[24:45] Erin: Yeah.

[24:46] Ronda: But I just about… I was in my grandmother’s kitchen every day, at some point, and my youngest cousin was. So maybe just the two of us gleaned this. But it’s very interesting how our…um…I ended up, for a short time, having my cousin’s child in my home while my cousin was absent. And so… my own children, I left them when my oldest was eight, my youngest was two for 40 days and 40 nights. Another emotional mental wellbeing issue. And so for these two…and then our children go on. And they also are very much like us. I mean there’s…the blood flows. But, there…there are many things. My grandmother was an amazing storyteller and there are so many things. The family comes to me for these stories now.

[25:49] Erin: Oh wow.

[25:50] Ronda: And so younger cousins, their children; So not everybody has the storytelling gene.

[25:51] Erin: Right.

[25:52] Ronda: She had it, I have it, and my younger cousin has it.

[26:05] Erin: So you’ve talked a lot about the different impacts that this has had on you and how it’s…it’s shifted your perspective in your life. But could you kind of summarize how this story has affected your perspective on your life?

[26:19] Ronda: Well, initially it was meant as a cautionary tale: Do not be Maria. And then unfortunately, we all became Maria in some way, shape or form. And I thought it was very interesting. During that time period, my same grandmother, the storyteller, had always had a saying she would try to prod me along with in life and that is “Ronda, you do what you have to do.” And I’m sure that helped her raise her three children with her blindness, get through strange rationing and war years, it helped her leave her world on the farm with her grandparents to go to, you know, metro Detroit. That was quite a change, at the beginning of the Depression. Like,

[27:13] Erin: Yeah.

[27:14] Ronda: Lucky us, you know. But when she would always say that saying, I would think deep down inside, I am never going to let that saying do anything to me. I do not have to do what I have to do if I can’t do it, I can’t do it, you know? Anyway. So yeah, there was a there was a deep war inside of me. And it was ironic when I did have my time away from my children, talking to my grandmother about it was, to let her know what was transpiring, was terrifying to me, but. You know, part of putting yourself back together, as you must declare who you really are. And so I made the phone call, and I’m talking to my sweet Gram Betts and. And I said, broken woman that I was at that time, I said: “Grandma. I’m not at home with the kids. I’m at my mom’s house and…and David, David’s with the kids.” And I was waiting for this caustic, pinched face, terse judgment. And my grandmother rolls out her standard saying with new intonation. And she says, “Well, Ronda, you do what you have to do.” And I remember in that moment reveling in the idea that, like, you mean this statement is flexible. And it was an amazing moment. I don’t even know how conscious she was of what she had just done for me. But that idea, and almost for me, applying it to me, it was almost like we were retroactively baptizing Maria also of, like, maybe Maria had to do what she had to do.

[29:20] Erin: You’ve shared a lot about this, this story and its impact on you, and you said that you’re the storyteller of your family and that people come to you to ask these stories, and you keep them and you preserve them and you care for them. Is this…is this something that you’ve been doing a lot of and kind of have you wanted to do this more? Have you been doing it for a while? Is it more formal? Is it informal?

[29:45] Ronda: Well, I am a writer and I am a teacher. And so, that has been woven through both my classroom experiences. But then in writing, I’m working on pieces like this. And memoir is something that comes again and again in addition to fiction and nonfiction. I also happily gave birth to storytellers. So, you know, in our family now, the new problem isn’t about coming to me for the story. It’s all of us arguing about whose version is the correct one. You’ve probably been at…

[30:19] Erin: I’ve been to one of those. Yeah.

[30:21] Ronda: Yes. But I do feel that just storytelling is absolutely essential. I was horrified when, I was in my last year of teaching, we did a special Ancestry.com project where I helped all of my children put their family tree together in anticipation of a unit I was going to teach on immigration because, I thought, if they know who their immigrants are and you get a face to it or a name at least, that’s going to mean more to them. When I’m asking them to study these waves of immigration that will mean nothing. And it really bore out. It was a wonderful project. But I was horrified at some of the parents who came in with their children, parents who, sometimes didn’t know their mother’s maiden name.

[31:16] Erin: Wow.

[31:17] Ronda: They didn’t, definitely didn’t, know middle names and some of them had just lost track. I’m so sad that we lost our connection to Maria and that we never know. And to Karolina, and that we can never really know. Where did you go? How did this end up? So I think that it is very valuable for a family to try to tell its pleasant stories, its unpleasant stories. I think it’s also wonderful, if you can acknowledge your biases while you’re telling them. I feel this way about it, leave a range in there for people to have their own relationship to the story and its characters. But I also think that it is very wise if people don’t just, for those who are the storytellers, don’t just develop your, like I said, called it earlier my grandmother’s playlist, her set playlist. Try to come out of those. My grandmother told me a story when I was 50 years old that I had never heard before, and I was really had to, like, authenticate this. Turned out to be all accurate. And I was thrilled and I thought, and it was something that really fleshed out an aspect about her mother, that was so beautiful. So I think it’s wonderful to go beyond a playlist. And to try to really share what it was, what it felt like in those places that you’ve walked through your life. And if you have those old stories, you can’t really do that with them. But for the stories here and now, the ones you’ll be leaving with your grandchildren or great grandchildren for this we can capture, you know, the pandemic we just went through, all of these types of things. We can really say what it was we were experiencing to give it real flavor.

[33:19] Erin: Well, thank you so much. This was a wonderful time.

[33:22] Ronda: This has been wonderful. Thank you for the story project.

[33:25] Erin: Thank you.

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