View From a Prairie Home

by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist

It has been a long and hard winter for everybody. We have struggled every day. With the snow. The ice. The wind. The impossibility to go outside when it is so cold and slippery. We are old and don’t want to fall and break our brittle bones. The snow combined with the wind has often made it impossible to drive anywhere. And then came the mud. Neither of us can remember mud like that. My jeep has a setting for mud, but even with that, driving was scary.

For something to do and because I knew spring would eventually come, I started cleaning closets. We have a lot of storage in our old house with four floors, which is good and bad. The latter causes things to pile up, because “wait and see” can easily be added to the “keep or throw “rule. I was cleaning the bottom of a closet in the basement. A place where we have winter coats but let the shelves and the floor of the closet just stay messy. Who really cares? That is when I found it. The big tote with a lid. On the top was written: “Erland’s baby clothes.” I carefully opened it. On top was a blue Norwegian cardigan knitted by my mother. I could picture him in it. He wore it often. A little blond boy. With sparkly blue eyes. He was a mama’s boy.

First, when he was a baby, I would carry him in a baby carrier on my chest. He was the baby of the family and was brought along as I hauled my other two children places. We didn’t have an infant baby car seat that could be carried back then. So I would carry him to the car and then strap him in to the back-facing baby seat. I can’t remember him ever crying. He was such a content baby. So smiley. He was allergic to almost all types of food, so I just nursed him. But he was tiny and people would ask me if I fed him. The pediatric allergist told us he would eventually grow out of his allergies and to keep nursing him until he was able to eat ordinary food. So I did. Maybe it was therefore we grew so very close.

When they did the allergy test on his back, they found the only thing he could eat was red beets. So when he was ready for finger food, that is what he ate. He sat, contently, in his high chair and ate cooked beets that were cut in small pieces. When he was full, he rubbed the beets into his hair, his chair and threw the rest on the floor. And he laughed at me, thinking himself clever.

It took him a while to learn to walk. He just would crawl. People would ask me if there was something wrong with him and I said he was just a late bloomer. It also took him a while to learn to talk. When people commented on his lack of words, I told them, he was a deep thinker and a good listener and was just waiting for the right moment to speak. And he did. In Norway. He opened up his mouth one day and spoke in sentences. Long sentences. In Norwegian. And when Grant came to our cabin in southern Norway, he spoke to his daddy in English. But he soon switched, when he realized that his daddy understood Norwegian too. So they were bilingual together.

As he grew up, I loved every stage of his life. Even his rebellious teenage years. He loved to sing and had a beautiful voice. At a ceremony in high school for choir and theatre students, he surprised me by singing a solo. My shy little boy. Before he went to college, I told him to be serious about his education. And he listened.

It has been a long, hard road for us to see our healthy son get cancer and die. Our youngest. Who was kind and compassionate. Who would call us every week from whatever country he was in. (52  during his amazing career). We would facetime when appropriate. And we could see how he just loved his life. He was still a good listener and a deep thinker. And now, he is gone. Nothing will bring him back. And I am so very sad even when spring is finally here.