I met Aunt Hannah's youngest in the nave of the Trinity Lutheran Church Monday, during our cousin's funeral. It wasn't the first time we had met, of course, but it was the first time in a long time. I guessed that it was Joseph, and he confirmed that I was indeed Stan, because, you know, I look just like Erling.
Joe had slipped out of the church sacristy to deal with a crying two-year-old. I had slipped out to get a photograph of the congregation. My work was done, his was not. So there we were, long-lost cousins, setting about together to silence a wailing child.I applied my new grandparenting skills, and wouldn't you know, Kayla quit crying immediately and smiled for her closeup.
I think her name is Kayla, and she is a mostly a very good girl. I am sorry if I got the name wrong, but my memory simply isn't what it should be anymore... but neither is yours.
Wooden spoon
That evening at Hannah's wake we met Joe's lovely wife Hatalina (phonetic spelling). Joe met her in southern Mexico and convinced her to leave her extensive family there to live in Watford City. They lived with Hannah until her death, sharing household tasks. Hatalina told an anecdote at the wake about a wooden spoon and her mother-in-law that was both telling and cheerful.
Joe was with Hannah as she died and he spoke of his willingness to let her go. And why not, Hannah had prepared for this moment all her life, and she knew where she was going next.
Her children related many stories of her life on earth, as a creative and resourceful mother and a loving and spiritual parent.
Flour sack
Her eldest, Harold, told of never wearing a store bought item until he was 14. Hannah sewed flour sack clothing and she didn't need to buy any patterns, they just came to her as she pressed fabric against her live model.
Harold and I attended the same college (Concordia) and were drafted into the same Army (U.S.). He was taking digital photos. He had driven to Watford from his home in Tennessee, which is in the mountains near Dollywood.
Most of his career was spent in Clinton, Iowa, 30 years or so, I believe. One of his skills is hanging drapes. He was assisting a business friend in that regard a few years back on a job site in Eden Prairie. Turned out it was just down the block from us on Canyon Ridge. Harold came over to knock on our door, but, sadly, we weren't home.Aluminum sheets
Harold recalled that his mother was so good at making clothes that she won a Pfaff sewing machine at the Minnesota State Fair in 1951 for the best flour sack creation. (We were at the Home Economics building last year. It appears homemakers aren't doing much of that particular craft anymore.) Now Hannah had two Pfaff sewing machines. She sold one for cash.
Harold's wife, Sue, a very creative, resourceful person in her own right, remembered Hannah's chicken coop, covered in aluminum sheets cadged from printing press leftovers. Hannah made wooden window scrollwork with a jig saw too, and Sue marveled at how everything fit together in an orginal work of art. And she marveled that a woman would work with wood.
That's Aunt Hannah, around 1946, with our mother, Beverly, and Linda and Becky, as well as the Rev. Ted Weltzin with baby Harold Theodore.Resourceful, indefatigable Hannah kept everything and organized it in or on homemade shelves. She entered crossword puzzle contests. . . and won.
Cedar posts
Her heart went out to those less fortunate, and she was often heard to lament what she would do for them, "If I only had a million dollars."
We spoke of our trip to the Dakotas a few summers past, when Kathleen and I loaded up Aunt Agnes and Aunt Hannah in the back of the Buick and went for a jaunt to the farm. The two grey-haired ladies chatted away non-stop this special day, telling every old story from Watford to Keene. "There's the bridge where they lynched a man. . . the best fence posts are made of cedar and come from the river bottoms. . . your grandmother homesteaded over there. . ." and so on.
Macrame purse
My Irish wife wasn't sure she would be easily-accepted by these strong-minded Norwegians, but her fears soon vanished. Taken by Kathleen's stylish cream-colored macrame purse, when our penurious aunts learned Kathleen had purchased it for 75 cents at a yard sale, she was forever within their graces.
Plaster plaque
Cousin Eloise, who lives in St. Paul, and Cousin Johanna, who now lives near Alexandria, told of other aspects of their mother's life, notably her spiritual certainty and guidance. Eloise quoted the same scripture passage that hung over the crank wooden telephone in our Lake Andrew kitchen, back when our phone number was "long-short-long." You know, the verse on the brown-toned plaster plaque: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son so that whosoever believeth in him, will not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16.
That's from memory, my dear siblings. Isn't it good to know we haven't lost it all?
