View From a Prairie Home

by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist

To me, and probably to most of you, a welcoming place is where you want to sit down and just be yourself. To me, it wouldn’t be super elegant or expensively decorated. It might sound odd, but I believe houses and places have souls that comfort and welcome us. Maybe you do too.

I grew up in two suburbs of Oslo. When I was a baby, my parents bought an apartment in a small cluster of apartment buildings situated on a wooded hill with views of the Oslo Fjord. Our apartment was on the third floor with views on three sides. The veranda and living room faced the Oslo Fjord and even though I was a child, I enjoyed the view. On regatta days, which must have been frequent, I loved to watch the multitude of sailboats; white on the blue of the fjord. I loved being inside with our old, but cozy furnishings; the coffee table surrounded by a sofa and two chairs; an old desk separating the living room from the dining room. But most of all, I loved the outdoors. Here, a big group of kids would roam. There weren’t many cars back then and our one road just led to the various apartment buildings, so there was not much adult supervision. We pretended we were wild Stone Age people, building dwellings of stones and logs we found in the woods. We also had a big sand box where we spent multiple hours building and pretending. I still think running around outside is the most healthy place for a child; it fosters independence and creativity.

My brother was born when I was almost ten. The two bedroom apartment became too small so my parents bought a big house on the west side of Oslo. My father had just been promoted to the Chief Financial Officer in a big shipping firm and part of his job was to entertain. So our house had big rooms and sleek, modern furniture bought with entertainment in mind. We now had enough bedrooms, so the bunk bed my sister and I had shared, where we had shared stories and secrets at night, were substituted with two bedrooms with single beds and a desk. The houses here were all new and big, each with a separate fenced-in yard. There were multiple kids my age, but they were not so much fun, each so interested in clothes and bizarrely what our dads did for a living. My sister was bullied for being different and I spent a lot of time fighting on her behalf.

When Grant and I got married almost 50 years ago, we found an apartment by Oslo. We furnished it with what we could scrounge up from flea markets and relatives. It was kind of on the outskirts of Oslo, but the houses were close together and lots of people lived here. Looking back, it was amazing that we had found an apartment in Oslo that we could afford, but we didn’t like it there. And after our first child was born, we decided to move to the farm on the prairie in West Central Minnesota.

Here, we moved into an old farmhouse. It was surrounded by a small grove of trees and the driveway was half a mile long. Perfect for Reuben to run around and play. The house and yard were not in great shape, but we cleaned up the yard, painted the house and again, went to flea markets and auctions for furniture. And our house already had a soul. Kind, hardworking people had lived here before us. Their gentle voices and concern for each other had echoed inside the old walls.

And now, when I come home after having tried to “move on” with my life. When my grief sticks in my chest and the tears are barely contained, I feel my home welcoming me and I let it all out while my old house embraces me in comfort.