My Sentiments, too.

      "And I am a baseball writer now. I really have learned a lot about the game after all this time. I don't know everything. But I know a few things. I know what to look for. It's a great game for writers because it's just the right pace. You can watch the game and keep score and look around and take notes. Now and then you even have time to have an idea, which in many sports you don't have room for."  Roger Angell quoted in the Writer's  Almanac

    Yes, this is why televised baseball is so compatible with reading. As I wrote recently, "baseball is waiting for something to happen that seldom does."  Now days I sit in Joanne's chair, the TV tuned to the baseball game, the sound low, while I read my book. When the announcers voices rise I look up and watch the replay for the thing that 'seldom' happens. If one is actually watching the game as Angell says "you even have time for an idea." 😉  OK, OK, while I might have time for an idea it doesn't men that I will.

    Today provided a delightful opportunity, perfect weather and time, to visit Dennis at his place on St. Olaf Lake, near New Richmond, MN.  Dennis, and his wife, the late Maryann, became our friends when we arrived in Sioux Falls at the same time, i.e., 1975. On the principle I espoused earlier, that it's often easy to form friendships with others, who like you, are also new in the community.  Now we share notes on life in the land of grief, Maryann having died a year previous to Joanne.
    Filling out the group today were Les and Carolyn, who have been friends of the Negstads since Augustana days in the early 60s. However, Les, was also pastor to Dennis and Maryann when he was at Our Savior's, Sioux Falls. Interlocking friendships makes the connections even better.
    Trygve, too, loved being at the lake.

Takk for alt,

Al

Maryann, Joanne, Al and Trygve at the lake.

Dennis, Les, Carolyn and Al at the lake today.

Farm Boy Memories

     Who else would blog about a cow?  Life on the farm of my childhood, in the 1940s, was relatively primitive, at least by today's standards.  Our farm was electrified when I was three so I don't remember a time without it, though outages were fairly common, especially in the winter.  A trip to town was huge deal, and that was to Sinai population ca. 140. School was one room with 8 grades a mile away. Farm chores included watering the calves, feeding the chickens, milking cows and other sundry duties.  The sleeping rooms in the farmhouse were on the second level heated only by heat rising through floor registers. For a significant period of time we didn't even have a working radio. (A small excurses here: my older brothers, as teenagers, bought a cheap, used radio and put it in the barn. Dad thought that was very foolish. Before long the radio died and Dad went to town and bought a replacement; he'd discovered he could hear the news in the barn.😊)  A sleep over was big deal with my classmate Lloyd Hope, at either of our farms.
      Now I live on the 15th floor in downtown Minneapolis with radio, TV, internet, microwave, air conditioning, central heat, running water........In childhood all of this was unimaginable.  When I read the poem (below), in The Writer's Almanac, it evoked childhood memories. The poem's description of the cattle, water tank, cold well water, moss on the water,

was almost exactly as it was on our farm.  The decades have flown but the memories remain. 


After Reading John Clare on Thoughts of A Cow
by Tom Hennen

There are deep hoofprints in the soft ground around the
wooden water tank. A steel windmill with its fan blades spin-
ning free in the summer wind. No water pumping because the
connecting lever is not in gear and the tank is full. Thick green
moss floats here and there on the water's surface. Blue sky and
white clouds reflect in the pool, pulled out of heaven in a piece
just the right size to fit the old round wooden tank. The cow
yard is empty, the cows in the far pasture, strolling its hills for
grass, slowly, with quiet pleasure as if on a boulevard in Paris,
France. Nothing about a cow yard enters their thoughts until
late afternoon when I come with the dog to fetch them home.
Then they amble, dust stirred from its summer stupor by their
hard hooves that kick up the smell of dirt and powdered dung.
After the long walk from the pasture they remember they are
thirsty. Now in a hurry, they crowd around the water tank.
They drink and drink. When one raises her head, water and
setting sunlight drip from nose and muzzle. With a tin cup I
drink icy water from the pump and pour some into a pan for
the dog. The cows are dry of milk until fall. Now all they need
do is sleep. From the east dusk is sliding across the fields. Frogs
and crickets are tuning up, fireflies cannot wait and are air-
borne before the sun is completely down. The summer night
settles weightless as a feather on the grass. The windmill turn-
ing, cold water running out of the iron pipe into the tank, far-
off bells, and the murmur of starlight falling on water.


Tom Hennen, “After Reading John Clare on Thoughts of a Cow” from Darkness Sticks to Everything: Collected and New Poems. Copyright © 2013 by Tom Hennen.

Takk for alt,

Al 

8 years in this school house.

Blessed

    The clocks are steadily ticking away, see last night's post, and I'm enjoying that and the chiming. Perhaps, as has been suggested, it's a new time even though in the land of grief. Three mornings of teaching a week put me in touch with young people which I enjoy.  The groups at school are a mix of students new to me, 5th graders, and many I've had in previous years for a happy reunion. Three students I now have as 8th graders I've had for four years.
    Tonight I was with three women who have stayed in touch with me since they were students in confirmation. Between them they parent seven children so it is difficult to find a time to meet. The difficulty makes the time we do have together even more special. It is humbling that they still have interest in spending time with me but I am deeply honored.
    Joanne would be both surprised and pleased that my social calendar remains full. As previously explained, I need to look outward to fill me people needs because, though Trygve is a wonderful presence, Joanne is not here to provide companionship and conversation.
    The company I keep is a steady source of blessing for me and I am very grateful.


Takk for alt,

Al

From your left; Al. Amy Sara and Bonnie.

Winding The Clocks

      My parent's had an old fashioned, black mantle clock. When it proved unreliable, perhaps in the 1950's. they purchased a new, Seth Thomas Clock (see picture below) for their buffet...they didn't have a mantle. At my mother's death, my father had died 20 years earlier, this clock passed to me.
      When I left Zion Lutheran, Davenport, IA., my farewell gift from the congregation was a beautiful wall clock. (See picture below.)
       Perhaps a bit like the grandfather's clock which "quit, never to run again when the old man died' both clocks stopped after Joanne's death. The cause of their stoppage is no mystery, I quite winding them. Why did I quit?  Who knows? But quit I did so they've sat quietly for months neither telling time nor chiming the hours.
       Now they are tick tocking again because I wound them. Why did I wind them now? Who knows."  But I felt like doing it, I'm glad I did, and I'm enjoying their sounds. Could the clocks be like the chair? A marker of some threshold I've crossed? Dare I say, a metaphor 😮?  Have I entered a new place, a new time, in the land of grief?
        What's your opinion?

Takk for alt,

Al
       

The Seth Thomas

The Zion gift clock.

Her Chair

    Joanne's twin Laz-E-Boy recliner are one of the more poignant reminders of her and the presence of absence. The one, in which she fell asleep in the showroom, graces the condo, and the other purchased on a farm sale, lives in The Little House On The Prairie. Her condo recliner perches in front of the TV where she regularly watched MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and CNN. These chairs were also her place for reading those 3 or 4 books a week in her latter years. Sometimes they were also a place of refuge when she battled her persistent cough.
    Recently I discovered that the condo recliner is comfortable for me, with a strategically placed pillow. It's good place for me to read while a baseball game is on, with the sound turned low. Baseball is a game of waiting for something to happen that seldom does. As I read a book my ears perk up when the baseball announcer's voice rises. When that I happens I look up to watch the replay because the thing that seldom happens has happened for once.
    Could this late occupation of Joanne's chair be a metaphor for my life in the land of grief?  Does it symbolize all the ways that I now live life for both of us, thus "occupying her chair?" As I have recognized the terrible loss her death caused her children, our children, and grandchildren I have consciously tried to be more present in helpful ways. Frequently I've referenced our wonderful friends. Of course, they too have suffered the grief of her death. Their continued relationship has been a great source of sustenance for me. Hopefully I have also been there for them as they too grieve, as Joanne would have cared for them had I died.


Takk for alt,

Al

Joanne's condo chair.

Joanne in her chair during hospice care.

A Marker

       Through our moves to different localities I've discovered that often our new friends were people who had also recently arrived in the community  That was true in Mohall, N.D., where Mick and Sharon, recent university graduates, were new teachers in the high school who arrived shortly before us...this was in 1968. Quickly we became friends and that friendship has only grown over the years with a variety of shared experiences.
      Friendship with Mick and Sharon has also provided a marker to measure my  recovery from losing Joanne. About a month after Joanne's death we met at the Clearwater Exit on Interstate Highway 94, for lunch. It's about an hour drive for me.  It's farther for them to drive from their lake home on West Silent Lake near Dent, MN. My memory of that lunch was that I felt like a basket case. Sharon had flown from AZ to visit Joanne while Joanne was in hospice but they weren't able to attend the funeral. So this lunch was first time seeing them after Joanne's death.  Grief  then was powerful, palpable, over powering, and raw.
     Yesterday, we met again at the Clearwater Exit. Yes, I miss Joanne terribly and the presence of absence was profound. She loved Mick and Sharon would have been tickled to share that two hour lunch. Now, while grief is still present, it's much more muted. and an ache more than a pierce. The lunch was a helpful marker for me to measure my relative position in the land of grief. Naturally it was also a gift to be with long term friends...so much wonderful shared history! 


Takk for alt,

Al

PS I'll include a poem from The Writer's Almanac, which articulates how I felt when I met Mick and Sharon 16 months ago.

Funeral Blues
by W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

"Funeral Blues" by W.H. Auden, from Collected Poems. © Random House, 2007

Reading

    My 'reading switch' flips on and off. Recently it's been on which Facebook Friends will perhaps recognize. Joanne read little during her working years and then she retired. Suddenly she was reading 3 or 4 books a week. Her 'reading switch' flipped on. She wasn't very patient, if a book didn't engage her in the first chapter, she moved on. Perhaps that was particularly wise give her untimely death.
   Here are some of the books I've read recently and would recommend:
Flames of Discontent: the 1918 Iron Ore Strike, Gary Kaunonen
A Surgeon With Stillwell; Dr. John H. Grindley and Combat Medicine in the China-Burma-India       Theater of World War II, Alan K Lathrop
Blindness, Jose' Saramago (Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 1998)
My Life With Bob; Flawed Heroine Keeps a Book of Books, Plot Ensues, Pamela Paul
Once Upon A Town; The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen, Bob Greene
Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng
Martin Marten, Brian Doyle
A Woman of no Importance; The Untold Story of the American Spy who Helped Win World War II, Sonia Purnell
The Perfect Horse; The Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis, Elizabeth Letts.

   Participating in two book clubs does help to keep me reading. Likely the 'reading switch' will flip off again one of these days. Time, opportunity and eyesight are great gifts.

Takk for alt,

Al

Posting early today because we're celebrating Lisa's birthday tonight. 😊