In 2007, my mother, Marian Crook, wanted to write her memoir (expanding on what had been written in Slope Saga and taking her story on through her long and adventurous life), and she asked me to assist her. Although she had in the later years of her career in nursing certainly used a computer to chart for her patients at …
It’s been 10 years since we celebrated Mother’s Day with my Mom. She died less than a year later in what was at the time a shock but now what I probably view as a blessing. Mom was in relatively good health but suffered from some COPD and probably was a borderline asthmatic. She died in her own bed, just …
Sitting with my mom this past winter and showing her via Google Streetview the paved streets in the small southwest North Dakota towns she had not been to in many years. Paved streets and sidewalks. Right there on my smartphone screen. We did confirm that some of the landmarks (like the Waterhole Bar) are still there. I navigated to show …
If there was a geography bee my Mom might have won. It’s not that she just read a lot, which she did (starting with but not limited to National Geographic). And having chased a career military husband around the world added to her advantage. But a big addition to what she knew about the world is jigsaw puzzles. You see, …
A rerun from a few years ago. Because I can’t think of a better story to tell on Mother’s Day. I’m thinking of my mom on this Mother’s Day, as we all are. She’s been gone 3½ years now, but it seems like only yesterday I was making those semiweekly trips to Hettinger, N.D., to see her in the nursing …
My phone buzzes. It is Mom. Again. Third time today. Do I answer? Mom calls when she is distraught, when she has been walking the halls of the nursing home for hours, waiting for somebody to pick her up. Nobody comes. While wandering, Mom forgets she has a room and worries where she will sleep tonight. If I answer her …
I knew her as Martha, my mother. Martha was skillful and competent. She could build a ship in a bottle, make a model airplane with her grandson, draw a map of Pelican Lake to scale and mount it on the wall, fix the pipes underneath the sink, pull in a dozen walleye, change a flat tire, feed a throng and …
On this Mother’s Day, a big shout-out to these two little bugs who made me a mama — not just any mama. A mama of twins! Here they are (above) in their Minnesota Twins garb, which friends felt we must have. I was a sucker for Oshgosh togs. Although not apparent in this photo, my house in those days was like …
My Mom, Phyllis Maxine (Boehmer) Fuglie, was born Oct. 10, 1924, at the farm home of her parents, Peter and Sophia (Aaberg) Boehmer, near Edmore, N.D. Her family moved to Saskatchewan for a short time during the Great Depression, where my Grandpa Pete took work as a farmhand to support his growing family. But after a few years, they returned …
Today (Wednesday) my mother Minnie Vogel Vorland would have been 95. She died in 1991, a few days after my father, Kermit Vorland. They are buried next to one another in a cemetery near the former family farm south of Wellsburg, N.D. This picture (above) was taken by Dad, from whom I inherited an interest in photography. I was about …
I didn’t cry when I first saw her but I wanted to. I held it in for a bit in an effort to stay sober and soak in everything. Changes. Changes like the time I came back from living in Grand Forks for a few years to Fargo and I saw the back of my dad’s head sitting in the …
It’s much easier to stuff lately. And it’s not like I don’t have the energy to feel, it’s more like I’m making the conscious choice to avoid feeling much of anything that relates to the distance between us. Like wearing a life jacket in a rainstorm, it makes my inner child think I’m protected. Something new has started where I …
When it came to phone conversations with mom, I was always the one saying goodbye. This perhaps wasn’t the case as a child, but this is what I most remember. “Well, I’ll let you go,” and so on — so much so it just became a habit. After she became sick, it continued (despite the guilt) because I felt, I …
The woman who was my mother would have celebrated her 100th birthday Tuesday. I wish I’d known her. I knew the mother, of course … but I wish I’d known the woman as well. Lots of us suffer from the same emotion, I think, looking back on the women whom we were closest to. I was fortunate to have Mom …