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.
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