We three cousins sat in Doc Hanson’s dining room. We looked at a winter ravaged garden struggling back to green life. We lingered over our Swedish lunch – you know, strong coffee. every recipe starting with a pound of sugar, a pound of butter and a pint of cream.
We’d gathered to say goodbye to Cousin Mary in hospice. California Cousin Dorothy and her husband Roy were legally responsible for making final arrangements. But Dorothy woke up with ‘a bug’. Jane and I volunteered to drive out to the Clan Cathedral and make burial arrangements.
We got the job done after getting lost a couple of times. All the old landmarks were gone.
Iona had promised us lunch. She’d bought Doc Hanson’s cottage when the ‘home place’ was sold up to a neighbor who ‘farmed big’. Thanks to our common immigrant ancestor making babies over fifteen years, we were all of a birthday age, but of different generations on the family tree.
‘Outlaw’ Cousin Jane had married into the clan during her first teaching job in the village. My summer visits to Grandfather made me City Cousin. Country Cousin Iona was born and bred on the homestead. We’d known each other all of our lives.
We chuckled over Doc Hanson’s eccentricities. He’d dug a steep ramp into his basement to park his Model T next to the furnace. “T’s” were famous for being able to back up steep inclines and hard to start in winter. So many memories to share; some sad, some sweet, most smiling chuckles.
As the sun sank toward the west, Iona told of wrenching pain over the decision to sell up the ‘home place’. No one in the current generation was Swede stubborn enough to starve on a quarter section.
We lingered over coffee reluctant to let go of our clan comfort. As we left for town, Iona wistfully commented, “There’s no place left but the churchyard!”
I said my final goodbye to Mary and said good night to the cousins. The next morning driving home I had an epiphany. I’d puzzled over my Mom’s insistence at subscribing to the village newspaper when she had not lived anywhere close to ‘the home place’ for forty years.
As late winter sun rose over a rolling prairie eagerly soaking up its renewing warmth, it hit me. My Mom’s identity was anchored in a Place. Even though her bed and board had come from a wide variety of spaces, the center of her “self” was in a place. A Place that changed very little during her lifetime!
I was blessed as a kid to know a Clan Place. It enriched my roots of “self”. My kids were born and bred in spaces. Spaces that changed often!
My grandkids are born and bred into cyberspaces that change with the speed of light. They will never know the old shoe comfort of our sweet sad clan lunch.
