My Norwegian roots

My maternal ancestors go back to a farm near Lillehammer, Norway, where the 1994 Winter Olympics were held. Most of my mother’s family immigrated to the United States and to, you guessed it, Minnesota.

My grandmother left Norway right after graduating from high school to join several older brothers and sisters who had already made their way here. That would have been 1884.

So my mother rightfully claimed being a Norwegian, and I have followed that.

My mother was an only child, born to a middle-class family in Minneapolis in 1898. She left to come west to Palouse, Washington, in 1929, as a result of the Depression.

It was never her home; her roots were firmly planted where she was born.

She and I were close; very close. So on Mother’s Day, I miss calling her. She passed in 1971.

My mother was always a booster to me. We often would sit and talk about any of a wide variety of subjects. She stayed up on current affairs and read often.

So Mother’s Day is a day of mixed feelings. I like to call the mothers in my extended family on Mother’s Day. When quiet time comes, I like to think back on my time at home and the many talks we had.

Her name was Margaret Ann. Her mother from Norway came west with the Lucas family. My father had been discharged, after serving in World War I, in Minneapolis. It was the Great Depression that threw a monkey wrench in a lot of families at that time.

My grandmother Mary spoke Norwegian and never really learned English. My mother was able to decipher, and so things went along smoothly.

My mother never forgot she was Norwegian, but she didn’t cling to it. I always knew where I stood, and it was clearly Norwegian.

Those pitiful Norwegian jokes just roll off my back because I know something the jokester doesn’t know, and that I have roots in Norway.

When moving west, my family had had to leave a lot of silver items with family members already there. They learned years later that the silver had to be sold to survive the hard times.

I knew my grandmother, but we were not close because she had passed when I was 7.

At the time, my parents, still suffering from the Depression, were unable to purchase a stone for her gravesite, and it had always been my hope of doing so, so that people who wandered by it would know that a Norwegian was buried there.

This hope was realized only this past year when my oldest daughter, Kathy, participated in seeing that there was a stone placed on her grave.

It was our way of thanking my grandmother for the heritage she gave us.

So if anyone wants to know if I am Norwegian, I can only say, “You betcha.”

My grandmother’s brothers distinguished themselves in Minnesota, one being on the Atomic Energy Commission board, another writing a mathematics book, and another who was a bit of a philosopher. He was always writing to a Minneapolis columnist, offering up ideas.

Later, my grandmother’s mother also came to America. I only suppose that they sold the farm and closed out their holdings there. I have a picture of the farm house and the church they worshipped in, and also a birthday card that she sent to me on my sixth birthday.

So, like so many people who have lost their mothers and other family members, there still are the memories.

They sparked again this year on Mother’s Day, and with a reminder of who I am.