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In the bowels of my inner conscience remains a Finnish fight that I cannot foresee but am prepared for.  A fight that is bred in determination and unwillingness to give up.  Despite myth, it became a learned behavior that the Finns have sisu and will never give up when facing adversity.  
My grandma, Helia Winquist, a joint owner of Chisholm Supply, was orphaned at the age of 9 and became a household servant by 14.  She was born in Helsinki, Finland, on August 24, 1901, and moved to Minnesota at age 2.  Her mother died in childbirth when she was 2, and shortly after, Helia’s twin sisters died. Her father died when she was 9, making her an orphan. She then had to live in homes from Minnesota to Michigan to survive.  Her father did marry when she was around 7, and she kept ties with the blended family. My grandma became a buyer for a big department store by age 19, but when she got married at age 21, she retired from working life.  She had my mother, Lorraine, almost dying in childbirth.  
Visiting Chisholm, Minnesota, every summer gave me a sense of heritage and congruity.  My grandpa, John Winquist, had a lot of cousins and brothers.  George Winquist, another co-owner of Chisholm Supply, played the banjo.  He would play at Lake 14 every summer, and we would sing along to songs like “Oh, Susanna.”  The Winquists were grounded in Finnish pride.  It gave me a sense of invincibility.  By my senior year of high school, I became the state indoor mile champion and won the Gold Country Classic at the University of Minnesota.  Our senior year, White Bear Mariner also won the state cross country team title; I led the team with my twin sister.  I indirectly attributed my success to my Finnish gene and my desire to not give up.  My coach, Lyle Helke, was Finnish.  I went from fifth best runner on our high school team to fifth in the state two-mile with a time of 11:24 in 1978.  
After coming to Duluth after living in California since 1999, I decided to look up Helia’s relatives still lingering in Duluth.  There was Dale, whom my mother bribed to learn piano pieces for $1 a pop.  There are Toivo and Charlotte, who live on Canyon Lake and have always been great supporters of our family.  He is retired after being a teacher and holding other jobs.  He does woodworking in his basement and has his pieces all over the lawn in his lake home.  Jill, their daughter, is closer in age to me, and we worked for a brief time at the same company.  She loves Nascar and cats.  Her sister, Lynn, relocated to Madison, Wisconsin, and is a talented journalist.  Lynn made me feel that our reunion meant something.  
Reuniting with the Finns gave me a sensibility and ownership that I cannot describe.  For so long, I was a nomad in L.A. with no familial ties.  My twin sister even lived 40 miles away from me in San Pedro.  I came from a family that built something in life.  Chisholm Supply was the grocery hub of Chisholm.  My mom was close friends with Dinella Valentini, who owns the famous supper club.  Our family took pride in the mining industry and would tell stories of the melting pot, how all Europeans collectively descended onto the Iron Range to work in its heyday.  No one second-guessed their ethnic origin or sense of pride.  In a way, that generation often compared Italians to Croatians to Hungarians and often mislabeled them with cultural slurs.  But in a sense, they honored each European distinction and highlighted their strengths.   
I still believe that as a Finn, I have sisu, and it’s genetically driven.  I have survived living in eight states, the death of a child, raising an autistic child, working three to four jobs at one time, and being a single mom.  I am no greater than anyone else—I just know that being Finnish has given me a core identity I can look to with pride to fight my battles.  My grandma Helia ended up living in Chisholm until her death in 1989.  She saved $88,000 on Social Security and a fixed income.  Her husband died in 1965.  My grandma was feisty and often unforgiving.  She was a take-no-punches kind of gal.  She raised my mother to be a talented violinist and swimmer, expecting nothing less from her daughter.  She measured my dad’s bottles of whiskey with a tape measure when they visited.  My grandma wore the pants.  Life did not take her down.  She lived until 88 having survived many immediate family deaths.  Hail to the Finns for giving me the idea of possibility and belief.