broken molds

"When they made you, they broke the mold!"

Walking home in the snow

I have a really distinct memory to share. I've been thinking about my childhood this week and the kids on the street that we lived on until Kari and I were 9 or 10. I remember that the boys up the street had a backyard that sloped to the river to create a giant sledding hill. The older boy had a toboggan that fit 3 of us. So it could be him and us twins or Solveig and his little brother and him. He was always steering because the goal was to fly down the hill and shoot across the river and land in the cattails on the other side. One time mom came to pick me up from their house and we were walking home and in hand. She stopped and pointed to something on her jacket near the lapel. It was a perfect snowflake. I asked if it was really. I'm sitting here writing this and I can still see it, with the mauve color of her benchwarmer coat as the background.

Prepping for NaNoWriMo 2008

Like last year I think I'm going to write at least in part about my mom as part of NaNoWriMo.

In 2006 I wrote a fantasy where I was able to jump into different parts of my mom's life, but i didn't finish it.

In 2007 I wrote kind of a "young adult" novel which was inspired by Pat Murphy and Ellen Klages, basically writing about myself and the experiences with my mom getting sick, but revising my teacher for gifted and talented class to be actually cool, and to be actually an amalgam of all these awesome mentor women that I wish I knew when I was growing up in North Dakota.

I actually did know some of them (Mrs. Langemo, Eileen Maresh, etc) but couldn't really connect with them.
Anyway - now I'm going to write I think about a character who is like my mom, but never had kids, and who either actually does become a doctor as a young woman, or who returns to medical school as a 2nd career (after being a med tech first).

This should be a great option for large descriptive passages about the med school experience and what it's like for someone who's not the same age as the other students. Lots of material for 50,000 words.

Anne Murray at the Blood Center

Yesterday I (Solveig) went to donate blood at the Stanford Blood Center on campus.
Apart from the overall desire to help in the current blood shortages (they are only 20% capacity of my blood type right now) - I somehow feel closer to my mom, just being in a lab.
Around all the (mostly) older women in white lab coats. I remember her telling stories about the lab where she worked, about the quest to find veins to stick, some of the crankier patients, being on call, doing rounds at the Care Center or the hospital.

Several years ago I was wandering around on campus (as an alum) and decided to give blood at a Bloodmobile on White Plaza. The woman who did the donation reminded me of my mom even more, she had brown hair, she was around the same height, and she was being very nice to me. I think she may have even called me "sweetie" at some point.

So yesterday the lady who was doing the initial screening (questions, blood pressure, temp, hemoglobin check) did not look like my mom at all (she was an older Indian lady) -- but she was very nice.

The point of this whole post - though, is that they were playing an Anne Murray album! I had thought it was just one song at first - but I was able to hear at least 3 while I was getting my tests done with the Indian lady. Kind of cheesily but it felt like my mom was watching, or was there. I was so happy because I thought I'd get to listen to it while I was donating blood in the next room, too.

Sadly, when I went next door to the donation room, I couldn't hear the music anymore...although I tried.

The donation went ok after that - everything fine. In the "cookies/juice" post area, I had an entertaining conversation with a Paly High debate team member (at least she had a Paly High debate t-shirt, may be now in college) - who was volunteering, and a 6th grader. Not sure how/if they were connected. I started talking with them because teenager asked me about the "Dishwasher Pete" book I was reading.

Then 6th grader pointed out that she was reading Harry Potter, and teen pointed out that she had lived each book of Harry Potter along with Harry - the same age as Harry for each book.

6th grader was very cute with a fleece zip-up with a horse's head on the front.
The 6th grader, very "old for her age", told very precise stories about her grandfather and the "grapes in his backyard" and the "other vineyards" that he has.
Both girls could say "prosciutto" (at least I can spell it) and the 6th grader told us a recipe from her grandmother that uses it.
The teenager had gone on a "medical mission" to Ghana recently with her mom's friend who is an OB/GYN, and her mom, who I think is a psychiatrist. Apparently the girl's job was to run in and out of the operating rooms bringing needed items.

I asked her if she wanted to be a doctor - was she doing this to get experience?

No, she said, she wanted to go to Ghana and it seemed like a fun thing to do... She never said what she is interested in doing.

I didn't realize until I started writing about these two girls, that they could represent me at this two important points: when i was 12 and Mom went into the coma, and when I was 16 and she died. (And if teen is college, also when I was 18 and left home to go to Stanford, leaving the twins at home).
I don't think I was even 1/10 as confident as the 6th grader. She acts literally as if the world is her oyster. So well supported.
The teenager was a little rougher around the edges but she also just seemed so herself. for example, she was supposed to make sure people stay in the break area for 15 min after donating. She would write the time to leave on the person's juice cup, but instead of writing the full time, she just wrote the number from the clock.
So I was supposed to leave at the "6" so she had scrawled a six on the cup. I wound up staying until the 8 because the chat was so interesting. And there were good cookies.

Memories of Mom from Ginny

Two years ago I (solveig) got this really awesome email from my godmother Ginny, when I asked her for memories of what it was like for my mom during the time when they became friends, living in Wisconsin before I was born (and after I was born!)

I wanted to hear more about what my mom might have felt like - since she was pregnant with me while her own mom was sick (Ragnhild "Ruggie" Dahlen). Ruggie died in December 1973, only a few months before I was born in March 1974.



The picture on the top is Tom and Ginny in May 2008 when I went to WisCon in Madison and got a chance to visit with them and their daughter Anne and her husband Joe (and unborn baby Chloe, as pictured with Anne and Ginny in the bottom picture).


quote begins below. I might break this up into separate posts since it's kind of long. But it is also very interesting all together too. Hopefully I can scan in some old pictures from this actual time frame as well....


I'm sorry I've taken so long to answer your questions, and I'm not sure how completely I can answer them. Tom and I moved to Monroe in June 1973 as soon as we graduated from college. We were pretty occupied with our first "real" jobs, and planning our wedding for the first several months we were there.

I think your folks moved there roughly the same time we did. Your mother was working evenings in the hospital lab so Tom got to know her, and your dad was teaching at the high school and got to know Larry L. We all belonged to Grace Lutheran Church and were all in the same general age group. We were also all not Swiss in a community where "there is one way, the right way, the Swiss way."
(note that Monroe is the "Swiss Cheese Capital of the World and that the mail order company Swiss Colony is there...)

It came as quite a surprise to me when Tom came home from work and said that your Mom had asked if we would be your Godparents. We knew there were family members they could have asked, and friends they had known far longer than they had known us. We were happy to accept the honor and responsibility, and made a point of spending more time together from then on.

Your mother was traveling back to Minot as often as she could to spend time with her mother. I remember asking her if she was concerned about traveling that much while she was pregnant. She told me that the worst that could happen was that she would have the baby in Minot where she had a doctor she knew and she would be surrounded by family and friends.
(Kati was very impressed by all this driving. Note that this is a 12 hour drive, 795 miles, from Minot, ND to Monroe, WI, completely crossing the state of Minnesota and going more than halfway across ND.
See map. It seems like it would feel scary to me to think about potentially going into labor alone on the road, if she wasn't close enough to Minot.)


I can only guess as how much she missed her mother during that time. Tom's mother died 15 years ago and I constantly find myself wanting to share things with her - all the wonderful landmarks in the kids' lives - confirmation, graduation, having a poem or story published, and of course their engagements and weddings. It's still painful not to be able to tell her that Anne shares her love for quilting. Your mother had to have experienced the same thing with all those wonderful milestones in your life - your first smile, you rolled over for the first time, you took your first step .
(and it is really hard right now, not sharing the milestones that Ginny mentions above like engagements and wedding with my mom too. And trying to imagine what it would be like if I had a baby without her around.)

I gave a baby shower for you and your mom a couple of weeks after you were born. The guests were friends from church and from the lab. It was a very pink shower; I don't remember the whole menu, but I know there were mini cream puffs filled with pink cream, and that one of the beverage choices was Southern Comfort Open House Punch. Leanne L. didn't realize that the
punch had alcohol in it and when she got home told Larry that the spike was punched.

Your house was on the way home from work for Tom and me, and more days than not we stopped on the way home for at least a few minutes. We were in full agreement with your folks that you were the most beautiful baby we had ever seen. Tom took a photography class and had a variety of assignments to turn in. Somehow no matter what the subject of the assignment was, he managed to have you in the pictures.
(need to scan in some of these...)

I don't remember how much time she was able to have off work with you. I know you had a baby buggy, and by summer most evenings when she was working your dad would put you in the buggy and the two of you would walk the few blocks to the hospital to have supper with her.
(this almost reminds me of us going up to the hospital or Care Center to have supper or watch tv with her in 1986-90 when she was there after coming out of the coma...)

We got to spend part of your first Christmas with you. Your Dad's parents
had come for the holidays, but we came for Christmas Eve too. Ruth (my grandmother, dad's mom- whom we called "Bestemor - Norwegian for "best mother".) was making eggnog - far more potent than I was expecting since I was used to eggnog straight from the carton. I had made rommegrot (I make it better than I spell it) and I remember a pudding that we needed to eat very carefully to find out if we had the intact almond in our serving.
(note, I remember having this many times at Bestemor's also)

Your mom was on call, but was home most of the evening before she got called in to work. When we were opening gifts I got to hold you and share your excitement with the pretty paper and bows and all those good things.

Tom and I lived in a 3 room flat, and you were in a house, so it was natural that most of the time we spent together was at your house. There was a screen room on the back of the house and we spent a lot of summer evenings together there. The 4th of July we decided to make lefse. Not one of our better decisions. We made a large batch of lefse dough, and started rolling and baking it. It was a hot, humid day and somehow we apparently got some wild yeast into it because we had potato rising bread. We worked for hours rolling and baking that lefse. Tom was on call that day, and got to escape for a while. The rest of us just kept rolling and baking lefse. Oddly enough I can't remember a thing about the quality, only the quantity.

I had grown up on the Betty Crocker Cookbook as the basic; your mother grew up with The Joy of Cooking. She told me that with any of the friends she grew up with, if someone wanted a recipe the answer was always "page .."
(this is interesting because it seemed like Mom used the Betty Crocker cookbook more when we were growing up. It was all dog eared and several pages had stains on them, especially the cookie recipes, I remember.)

We decided to go together to process corn late summer. Your dad, Tom and I went and bought a couple bushel of sweet corn. When your Mom got home from work that day we were all husking corn like crazy, then blanching it, cutting it off the cobs and packaging it for freezing. Again, a project that was a lot bigger than we intended.

Your folks wanted to make some repairs around the house, and Tom is pretty handy, so he helped. I know he helped rip out the contact paper that was the tub surround in the upstairs bathroom and put in a real tub surround. I vaguely remember him helping do something with the ceiling. He and your parents had been working all day, and I stopped on my way home from work. They were just finishing up when I got there. It was a hot summer day and
that was the memorable occasion when I first drank a whole can of beer.

Shortly before we moved we were over at your house and your mom gave us a "thank you" gift for the help with the house. It was a Sunbeam Mixmaster. All I had was a little portable mixer, and I was into cake decorating. It couldn't handle a big batch of butter cream. I had borrowed your mother's Kitchenaid mixer a time or two when I had a big cake to do. When we unwrapped the mixer, she told me that I'd have to buy my own Kitchenaid, but this should help in the meantime.

We moved back to Eau Claire so Tom could go to grad school. Not seeing you several times every week was the hardest part of the move. We did get back down to spend your second birthday with you. There had been a horrible ice storm the day before. It was an interesting trip down from Eau Claire. We stopped at your house - the front yard looked like someone had emptied an
ice machine there with all the ice "cubes". The power was out there, and we found you and your mom at L's. I had made a big rag doll for you.
(I remember the doll but not sure what has happened to it now. Is it still at the Valley City house?)
I got the pattern from my mother-in-law. I was pretty much a novice at sewing and the pattern called for felling the seams. I had no idea what a felled seam was. All of us at work put our heads together and came up with the answer, but it took us a while. Not like now when you can Google
practically anything.
(this ice storm was documented by Mom in my baby book too...)

It wasn't too much later that your Dad got a job in Milwaukee and you moved away from Monroe too; then a short time later you all moved back to North Dakota.

I was working evenings at Luther Hospital in Eau Claire at the time. Tom called me late in the shift to say you were in town for the night - that you were moving back to North Dakota and could I get off work early so we could spend some time with you. My co-workers agreed to cover for me so we went to the motel where you were and spent a couple of hours together. I remember you lying on the floor of the motel room showing us the exercises you and
your babysitter did every morning.

early picture

This is my favorite picture of my mother, most of the ones of her before she was sick are still at home and the others I have here are from the fall before she died, so this is really the best one we have handy (except for the senior picture that Kati scanned in).

I think this is at Lake Sakakawea in central North Dakota, judging from the size of the body of water. This is probably early marriage (since she was married at 23) and pre-my birth, when she was 26.

Mom and Us

This is all of us, probably around 1982 or so. (Kati says that Kati and Kari are around 3 or maybe 4), so it has to be 1982 or 1983.
There is a later picture of us all together before Mom got meningitis in April of 1986 and went into a coma, but she is wearing her wig in that one... (She did come out of the coma but spent most of the next 3 years in a nursing home).

I am wearing my beloved blue Star Wars Darth Vader watch (digital). Kati has a memory of this day, she said. But I'll let her decide if she wants to contribute it.

Mom's Family and also Church

This is Mom's Confirmation picture with her mother, Ragnhild "Ruggie" Dahlen, and her dad, Lester Dahlen.
Ruggie died in 1973 before I (Solveig) was born, and I just realized relatively recently, how hard that must have been for her. She was only 25 when her mom died, and it was right before she was about to have her first child. I never thought about this loss being such a blow to her, because I always thought of it as if "she was a grown-up already." She was our mom. "Now if she were a _kid_ - that would be hard!"

In my Motherless Daughters group, so many people who are mothers now, talk about how hard it was having their children without their mom around.

We got to see Grandpa Dahlen quite a lot because Mom and Dad moved back to North Dakota from Wisconsin. We only lived about 2 hours drive from Grandpa, so we got to visit "Whynot, Minot" and I learned the exact order of all the towns from Bismarck to Minot. Riding in the backseat with a backpack full of books, I also pored over the map quite a lot.

When we moved to Valley City in 1982 we were about 2.5 hours further away, but we still got to see Grandpa fairly often. When Mom got sick with the meningitis in 1986, Grandpa started coming down to see her every week.
He would drive all 5 hours down and have lunch with us, and then drive all the way back the same day.

On the religion and Confirmation topic - we remember her being a lot more serious about religion than Dad is, but we didn't go to church at all until we started Sunday school. We heard that she really liked our Valley City church (Our Savior's) because it reminded her of First Lutheran Church in Minot. And then when we visited First Lutheran, I think for Grandpa's recent funeral, Kati noted that they are very similar.

Special Mom Phrases

Here is a list:

• "Your eyes are so blue you look like you drank the Windex"
• "Give that girl/boy a quarter"
• "I'll sell you to the gypsies!"
• "You look like nobody loves you!" (Solveig remembers this being said if she tried to leave the house with wild hair).
• we were also sometimes told "You look like the Wild Woman from Borneo!"
  
• (from tape with Solveig as toddler): "I wouldn't sell you for a million dollars."
• Solveig: laughs
• "Do you have a million dollars?"
• Solveig: laughing, "no"
• "I wouldn't take it!"
• Solveig: laughs more.

Kari:

I also remember how she used to smash up aspirin and put it in a spoon with maple syrup to make it more palatable, and also when I would get upset (I remember getting upset a lot) she would put maple syrup on a spoon and give it to me like it was medicine. Does anyone else remember this?

Music She Liked

I think that Mom's favorite singer was Anne Murray:

She used to listen to Anne in the kitchen while making dinner.
I think we feel very comforted by hearing Anne's songs because of this, even the newer ones that Mom had never heard.
Here's Anne singing "Snowbird." thanks, You Tube!

At my wedding, Dad and I danced to Anne's version of "What a Wonderful World". Before the wedding I could hardly listen to it without tearing up and it was a little hard to dance in front of so many people, but we got through it. Anne hadn't done this version when Mom was alive.
Someone made a YouTube video of a compliation of images of Otago, New Zealand with this song in the background, makes me want to go to NZ.



We think that she also liked John Denver, but not sure if this was because the only two 8 tracks we had for our VW Campmobile were John Denver's "Some Days are Diamonds" and Luciano Pavarotti's "Greatest Hits".

Here's an interesting YouTube of John singing Some Days are Diamonds on a German show in 1982. "Meine Damen und Herren - John Denver!"

Singing Songs to us

This is a quick list of little songs that she used to sing to us.
She also played the violin in high school.

"Button Up Your Overcoat"
Transcribed from vocals by Helen Kane, recorded 1/30/1929, from the musical "Follow Through,"

* Oddly enough, this page from someone at Cornell has lots more health tips and actually says that the person remembers her mom singing the song to her as a kid too.

* Captain Kangaroo version on YouTube - a bit too cheesy in the delivery....Maybe I heard this on the show and that's why she used to sing it...

* Here's another YouTube of the Helen Kane original....

These were the only two stanzas that Mom would usually sing:

Button up your overcoat,
When the wind is free,
Take good care of yourself,
You belong to me!

Eat an apple every day,
Get to bed by three,
Oh, take good care of yourself,
You belong to me!"

* You Are My Sunshine - she sang this and here is a YouTube of Anne Murray singing it.

Mom would sing this part of the chorus:

"You Are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine

You make me happy - when skies are grey

you'll never know dear

How much I love you

So Don't take my sunshine away."

Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz, Oh What a Relief it is

Apparently this was one of my greatest hits as a toddler, it's on a tape that I have and have digitized, hopefully I can link to it.

"not the kind of cancer that kills anyone"

That's what she used to say, at least before she got meningitis that led to her falling into a coma (and which didn't kill her either!)

I remember being worried about having two parents that both had chronic diseases - cancer and diabetes -- which seemed like they could worsen at any time, but apparently were not going to, at least for the near future.

I didn't seem to treat her differently though - now I wish that I had somehow been able to talk to her about a lot of things, but I think she wanted us to have her functioning as a support for us as an actual mom (without worrying about her) for as long as possible.

She had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma - here's the LLS page about the disease. Looking at this I think she must have had the slow-growing version, since she was diagnosed in the early 80s and survived until 1990.

As of 2007, an estimated 544,266 people will be living with lymphoma (active disease or in remission).

Being Independent and Resourceful

Kati says:

I also want to add improving her environment.
I remember what seemed like whole summers where she would paint the fence, replace a faucet, find a new use for some random durable good that came into the house.
Being capable and handy mattered to her. I just crossed my mind that maybe the power tools that Dad gave me this summer were actually Mom's and that is why we never saw them or used them growing up, because Dad didn't know how to use them.

I remembered that she also clipped coupons and saved up UPC symbols and Good Housekeeping seals to get stuff by mail order -
We wound up getting a cool inflatable Honey Nut Cheerios bee, and also Cheerios You Did It bowls....along with a lot of other interesting stuff.

Kati says:
I forgot about the UPC symbol collections! I think that Dad still has piles of them in his kitchen drawer. This might explain my strange attraction to this occupation. Steve and I collected enough Kellogg's Granola UPC symbols to get a DVD last year. We were really upset when it looked like they weren't going to continue the promotion, and then they started again. I was attracted to that Smart Start cereal last night because you could get a bowl if you sent in enough UPC things.

Kati also says:

I think that the idea of her wanting to be as capable and handy and useful as possible was the foundation of how she worked and worked and fell into a coma, instead of taking it easier. But it also made her this really inspirational, modern woman.
So I'm happy that she was so willing to learn new skills and model that behavior for us when we were young. I think that it helped us know that with or without a mother, we could collect a bunch of skills on our own.

Sewing and Knitting

Mom sewed and knitted a lot of stuff for us - just a small sample:

* our 'fake' Cabbage Patch kids (which were actually way cooler than the "real" ones) - She bought the heads and "skin" and patterns at the store and was able to make very cool dolls.
Hers had nice hands and feet where you could really see the fingers and toes and they looked much better than the Cabbage Patch Kids, who had little balls of stuffing with tiny toes sewed on the top. I or Kari will upload a picture.

She also made a set of outfits for us (pictures to be uploaded later), cat costumes for Kati and Kari, and my costume for my role as "Donkey 1" in the third grade Christmas play - "Wee Three Kings".

* She knitted a lot as well - I still have a pair of slippers that she knitted, and now I also have a pair of slippers that Kati knitted in almost the same way, which is really cool.

Kari remembers:

SEWING. A big part of my Mom Mythos is how she made clothes for us... and the cat costumes for me and Kati (I wish we still had those!), and of course THE DOLLS SHE MADE FOR US. You were already a little to old for dolls when she made them, but my doll is one of my most prized possessions. I love Mary McCatharie!

Kati adds:

I would like to second the sewing, plus her sewing produced, at least for me, the most comforting artifacts from her life. I also imagined that she liked to knit, since she knitted us all slippers and mittens and things. I think that it mattered to her a great deal that her children looked like someone loved them.

Mom's Hospitality and Cooking

Here's a list of things Kati and Kari and I remember Mom cooking, serving, and/or entertaining with, in no particular order but starting early and working forward.

Kati remembered that Mom always dished up the food in the kitchen and served it to us on plates at the table.
This is probably why I always feel at least a bit odd when passing dishes around at family events with the Zarubins - I never know what direction to pass in, etc.

* skillet lasagna (in pre-wedding tape letter made for Dad (in 1971?) - Mom describes planning to have her friend Kay over for dinner and making a new recipe for skillet lasagna.

Here is a recipe for skillet lasagna that is from the America's Test Kitchen New Family Cookbook.
It's probably a lot healthier than the one Mom made, but it's easy and I like it!

* dandelion wine (I vaguely remember hearing her talk about this or someone joking about it).

* Coffee (there is a recipe somewhere for "Diane's Send Em Home Quick Coffee") - which involves alcohol

* Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting - which was one of my birthday favorites

* lefse (to the uninitiated, this is like a really thin potato pancake or a tortilla - eaten usually with butter and sugar)

* apple pie

* cookies of all kinds - I remember most clearly chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter cookies

Kati says:

"To go along with hospitality, I remember that she didn't really bring the food to the table and have us serve ourselves, unless it was Thanksgiving or Christmas or something (I distinctly remember being told about my eyes being too big for my stomach at a holiday). She put all of the empty plates on the kitchen counter (she must have kept her counters clear enough to do this) and then she assembled the plates there and brought them out to the table. I think that is really classy. I remember when dad had to start taking some kind of pill with supper and mom came out of the kitchen with his plate with only the pill!

I don't remember a lot of supper foods. I remember steak because I didn't like it (it was really thin and dry) and I remember giving my fat to Kari because she liked it. I think that I don't remember more interesting foods because we were still little and she was trying to feed us stuff that we would eat. I remember bologna and yellow mustard on white bread for lunch. I loved it! I remember a lot of Kool-aid that was consumed. I remember how she would laugh because her wig would melt a little every time she opened the oven door. I remember roasted chicken with skin that was really tasty. I remember tuna sandwiches and I remember that Grandpa made the same kind of tuna sandwiches when we stayed with him in Minot in his little apartment. So it is probably a Ruggy thing to make tuna sandwiches."

Kari said:
"Sometimes I think that one of the reasons why I'm so into cooking and entertaining is because that's something that I can have in common with Mom-- I can't wait until I can make lefse and krumkake. "

For Better or For Worse - ending storyline

Yesterday I was unexpectedly teary to read the last Sunday comic in the original storyline of For Better or For Worse.

Dave and I had just gone out for breakfast and we were sitting in the parking lot of Bev Mo, and I was finishing reading the Sunday paper (i'd saved the comics from breakfast).
And I just got unexpectedly emotional.

Mom loved For Better or For Worse, as far as we remember. Lynn Johnston started drawing the strip in 1979, when I was 5 and the twins were just born.
I remember being slightly afraid of how messy and crazy everything was for Elly, the mom in these cartoons. She had Michael, who was 3 or 4 (just a little younger than me) and Elizabeth, who was a toddler, and all kinds of mayhem was always happening.

I'm pretty sure Mom had at least these two books ("David, We're Pregnant" and "Do They Ever Grow Up?") - pictured. These were pre-FBorFW, but the parents on the "David We're Pregnant" look an awful lot like the Pattersons).
These were Lynn's 1st and 3rd books of cartoons - which are currently out of print and hard to find (wonder if Dad has them still?).
When I'm thinking now about me reading the strips to see what it would be like to have a mother alive now
-- it hits me that my mom was reading the books above when she had 1 (or 3) little kids, and no mother of her own to ask for advice either (her mom died 4 months before I was born).
Lynn Johnston may be providing mother advice and reassurance to two generations!

After reading the strip about the original storyline ending, I realized what I was really most sad about was that this was one more thing that was no longer going to be the same (or at least similar) to what it was like when Mom was alive.
It has been so comforting to see FBorFW whenever I check out a newspaper or remember to go get a strip fix online. I imagine that Elly, the mom in the strip, is similar to what Mom would be like now, since I never got a chance to really know Mom as an adult.

Especially this August's storyline - where Elizabeth gets married to Anthony.
I was also moved when Michael got married, to see what it was like for Elly to be the mother of the groom, but this one was a lot more poignant since Elly is the mother of the bride here and I can imagine Mom doing some of the same things for our wedding that Elly did for Elizabeth's.


So I was all overwhelmed, and then I went online with my phone while Dave was shopping, and read this letter from Lynn on her site. She'd said in the strip that she was going to start over on Monday, and I was worried she was going to start completely over from scratch.

The letter said though that she is going to go back into the past again, and her old drawing style, and revisit the storyline from the beginning.
So that is way better almost - not only is she continuing, but she's continuing in the same style that Mom was familiar with when she was reading the strip and the cartoons!

So that made me feel a lot better. I posted on Lynn's site to thank her for all her work over the past 29 years and tell her a bit about how unexpectedly emotional (and then a relief) all this was.

Movies and TV

Here's a list of movies and TV shows Mom liked, as far as we can remember:

Medical Shows (and I liked these too so it's hard to separate between the ones I liked and she liked):

• M*A*S*H - big fan of Alan Alda as Capt. Hawkeye Pierce
  
• Trapper John, MD (wikipedia article)
  
• Trapper John slideshow - note it was set in San Francisco
  
• St. Elsewhere -wiki article and Youtube of the theme and opening credits
  
• Quincy
  
• plus YouTube of the Quincy Theme (someone on Youtube has a lot of time)
  

Also she liked Star Trek - I remember watching Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home with her, probably at the hospital room on a VCR, or else talking to her about it after we went to see it.

Silly/Fun things she liked to watch

• Muppets and Sesame Street
• Mr. Rogers Neighborhood - we never got to have a talk about how fun it is to watch this as an adult.
• Monty Python - I wonder if she liked Monty Python also. I remember us watching Monty Python on PBS before dinner but I can't remember if this is before she got sick or not.

food: Reubens

Mom (and also Dad) used to compare the quality of Reuben sandwiches they ordered at different places.

We just went to Max's Opera Cafe and myself and a friend had the Reuben - we both agreed it was not as large and messy as we'd thought it would be (not as much dressing or cheese).

Is it the high food prices?

Pictures that I envy a little bit

This is not really Remembering Mom, but more like, being aware of her absence.

I have a few blogs that I check out every so often, writers and other people that I like, and probably not coincidentally, more than a few of them are women in their 50s or 60s, and many with grown or teen daughters (Mad, others).

I just checked out the blog of the author Lois Lowry (who wrote the Anastasia Krupnik books, among others that I love) -- and saw this picture of her and her daughter:

Pang.
Maybe also because I just got back from one of my HFD hikes, which I'm doing in her memory.

There's a similar picture that I took of my godmother and her daughter, when her daughter was pregnant. A lot of stuff is represented there that I won't be able to directly experience.

Mom's Work

This is Mom working in the lab at St. Croix Hospital, in St. Croix, Wisconsin. (probably sometime between 1971, when she and Dad married, and 1974, when I was born, because I was born in Monroe).

This picture was from a newspaper section that Dad saved which was for "Hospital Week".

The caption reads: Left to right: Margaret Earnest, Jack Arsenault, and Diane Pederson.

Diane Pederson working on Bacteriology. Jack Arsenault reading Blood Chemistry Test results. Margaret Earnest reading the Flame Photometer which measures the body electrolytes.

I always found all of this stuff to do with Mom's job so vaguely fascinating. I don't think we really knew what she did really - I usually envisioned her sticking people, drawing their blood, and then testing it, which was probably pretty close.

I still have several of her name badges from various jobs. I don't know if we have one of her white coats or not.

Mom was really into medical shows - M*A*S*H, St. Elsewhere, Trapper John, MD, to name a few.

I have to look this up again on the original article - but this is Mom receiving the award for logging the most volunteer hours ever, as a candystriper at Trinity Hospital. I think it was 1000 hours. It may have been the most candystriping hours in the history of the state. Need to fact check.

Here is a much better picture of my grandmother also. I wish I had been able to meet her. I am almost envious of my mom being a teenager here and having her mom there next to her to support her.

My dad really loved Ruggie and always tells about what a great lady she was, and especially, how nice she was to him. She was just really classy, as was my grandfather also.