The Rascal Who Grew Up

Tweet

I wrote about my hubby Martin’s daughter Mara and now it’s all about her brother Andris who is some years older than her. Andris was the problem child in the family. Being older he always got caught up in something from watching his little sister to a tug-of-war between his parents. Since Andris was a boy Martin wanted him to live with him when he and his wife separated but the grandparents had other ideas. So it was Andris who got pulled between Riga and Jelgava which is a city some hours away. Martin would get his son into a school in Riga and then next thing you knew his grandfather would yank him out of the school and pop him into a school in Jelgava. As you can imagine this influenced the boy greatly. Meanwhile his sister being smaller and a girl was living with her mom in Jelgava. As a result of which he became a very rambunctious little boy. He was always into some kind of mischief. When I came along it was clear that he would be one of those troubled teenagers. His passion was cars or I should say anything on wheels. If we had lived in the day everyone rode a horse he would probably have ridden horses. Anyway the only car at Martin’s house was his sister-in-law’s. Of course if you can’t keep an eye on the boy all the time things happen. Now Martin’s mom was home all of the time but she couldn’t handle a rebellious teen. He took Vija’s car without permission and went for a joy ride with his friends. Now the advantage that we have in the suburbs here is that there are plenty of back roads you can drive on. The other side of the coin is that the joy ride ended against a tree. None of the boys were injured but Martin had to pay for damage to the car. At that time I had transported my car over to Latvia. You guessed it. He took my car and an automatic drive well that was sheer pleasure until he crashed it into my fence. My fence meant no lawsuit. However Martin made sure that Andris helped us to repair the fence. My mom was still alive at that time and she got very upset. Then came the usual teen problems like not doing homework, not going to school, hanging out with friends and staying out late. Well through it all we all survived. Andris got his high school degree and finally grew up. He never really knew what he wanted to do but he got interested in computers and that interest gave him the opportunity to be able to work with computers anywhere in the world. He lived in England for awhile and one summer when money was short he got his dad a job there. Martin got to work for three months in England and be near his son. Afterwards Andris moved over to Cypress for awhile and then Spain. During this time he even managed to fall in love and get married to a lovely girl named Vika. They were a match made in heaven because Vika also loved computers. Right now they have settled down in England and often get in touch with us. So the rascal who would be a terror finally grew up and he has become a bright young man. He just celebrated his 32nd birthday. Another great thing happened to him and Vika they had a baby daughter named Monika. Monika will be two years old this September 10. I have attached a picture of her.