At Home With Flashbacks - Part 2

As I mentioned earlier, the family home since 1947 has always been a shade of blue, until very recently.

FLASHBACK:  I see Mom and Dad and the seven of us posed for a family photo along that blue siding.

Mom keeps some of her favorite sheet music on the same piano that she has played all these many years.

FLASHBACK:  I see Mom and Jenny playing the piano together when she and Dad visited Tioga, North Dakota, for Gunnar’s First Holy Communion in May 2013.  It’s a ten-hour drive, one way.  I think the song was “Yellow Bird.”

Mom and I both like old time music and country classic music.  Dad, too.

Mom and Dad visited the homes of my children over the years — including Jenny’s townhome in Eden Prairie before marriage, and then Northfield, MN, Gonvick, MN, to Tioga, ND, and Nick and his family’s home in Brooklyn Park.

As we walked through their home with new eyes, I spied Mom’s electronic organ in a corner of their bedroom suite.

FLASHBACK:  I also see the organ that I had for many years in my home back in Victoria.

Mom and Dad’s master bedroom suite includes this large jacuzzi tub.  I always thought it would be a comfort to them if they got arthritis in old age, but I don’t think they used it very much.

Their bathroom is just as they left it some weeks ago already.

Then we walked back through and stopped again in the piano room, which is also Dad’s computer room.  For some time now, Dad mainly uses his iPad as his computer and for all his email and googling.  He drives back home to the farm to print off some pictures and other things he might like.  Mom used to sit at that computer and email us too.

I opened a door on my way by, and Mom enjoyed seeing once again her collection of caps.  Do you see those family photos on the wall behind the roll-top desk?  The one in the middle is from Dad’s 90th birthday party in March 2015.

Nobody likes to wear caps more than my mother, except maybe my daughter.  Mom let her pick out a favorite one.

Mom also let Addie and Gunnar pick out a favorite cap to take home.  Gunnar picked out a Boerboom International cap.

When Mom found the most colorful cap in her collection, she put it on and didn’t take it off.

FLASHBACK:  I see us visiting Mom and Dad down at their home in the Rio Grande Valley where we attended a concert by Myron Floren of Lawrence Welk fame.  Dad bought everyone a matching cap.  It was March 1988.

FLASHBACK:  I see Mom wearing a cap when she brought lunch to Dad and the boys in the field, and I see her wearing a cap whenever she went fishing, or to the lake with the family, or to the State Fair.

Mom’s collection of hand painted, numbered, and signed clowns found a special place in their living room at home.

FLASHBACK.  I see Mom shopping across the border into Mexico where she found her special clowns, each one different and original.  I see the clowns in Mom and Dad’s home in Texas, right around the corner from their front door, visible from the living, kitchen, dining room, and Texas room.  This was Mom’s 80t birthday in 2007.

FLASHBACK:  I see all of us gathered for that birthday party in March 2015, which was held at KB’s in Ghent.  All their kids and most of their grandchildren and great grandchildren at the time were in the picture.  Since then, more great grandbabies have been born and I think there are 35 now, plus a great great grandbaby.

FLASHBACK:  I see us sitting in Mom and Dad’s living room down in Texas.  We visited often when our kids were young and we kept visiting when they got married and had children of their own.  This was also January 2007.

Their living room at the farm is warm and comfortable and holds much memorabilia, including Mom’s special dolls, one of which is ceramic that she made and painted and dressed.  I see Mom taking her afternoon naps on that couch.

FLASHBACK:  I see us three little girls posing in that living room for a picture.  We are standing against the same wall as where the mirrors above are now hanging.  The window disappeared with the addition of the master bedroom suite some years ago.

We didn’t have this large entertainment center when we kids were growing up.  I see family photos, four-generation photos, pictures I took of Grandma Opdahl, Mom and Dad’s anniversary clock, stuffed bears that Mom made, a painted ceramic birdhouse from Jenny, carnival glass, a bowl and pitcher that Mom made in a ceramics class — and a framed poem that I wrote long ago.  Do you see it?

FLASHBACK:  The poem is about the old barn that Dad and little brother Paulie took down in 1978, board by board.  I framed the poem with faded red siding from the barn and gave it to Dad at Christmas 1981.  Jenny was 11, and always aware of her mama’s heart and special gifts.

Mom has had that china closet as long as I can remember.  I remember using a key to open the curved glass door, taking out each piece and dusting the shelves.  I never broke any glassware.  Despite my four little roughhousing brothers, and many roughhousing grandsons, the curved glass china cabinet remains unbroken and intact to this day.

FLASHBACK:  I see daughter Jenny and her daughter Addie sitting at the table in Mom’s dining room by the china closet, and remarking that it’s very much like the one I purchased for myself long ago.  This was May 2007, Mom and Dad’s 60th Anniversary.

As Mom and Dad, and Jenny and I, and Addie and Gunnar visited all the nooks and crannies of the home that is so familiar to us, Allan and son-in-law Christopher sat at the kitchen table and kept an eye on television.

FLASHBACK:  At that same kitchen table, I see Dad and us girls visiting and snacking on appetizers until Mom’s dinner is ready.  It was March 2012.

This aerial photo of the farm, which is framed and hangs on the other side of the kitchen cabinets (across from Mom’s wall of plates) includes the barn that I remember well and also “the machine shed” behind it.  The barn was taken down in 1978.  The house at this stage of life had not yet been remodeled, but you see that it was painted a light shade of blue.

FLASHBACK:  I see a lineup of red combines on their yard.

FLASHBACK:  I see those three red combines and a red truck at work in one of their wheat fields.

FLASHBACK:  I see Dad hauling wheat for the boys, from the combines to the bins back home on the farm.

FLASHBACK:  I see Mom and Dad and the seven of us walking around on a warm spring day, admiring the neat farm yard, with the mowed grass and all the trees they planted and watered by themselves, and the new big equipment sheds.  It was Mother’s Day 1994.

This isn’t really a bulletin board in their kitchen, holding so many pictures of us, the grandkids, and the great grandkids.  It’s a large map of the United States and it just came to be covered as the babies kept coming and kept growing up.

The real bulletin board is located above the kitchen desk and it, too, holds many pictures of kids and grands and greats.

FLASHBACK:  I see Mom and Dad and some of us hanging out in front of that kitchen desk on Mother’s Day 2006.

While we were walking around the house with Mom and Dad, remembering the old days, three of my brothers stopped in.  That’s Bernie in this picture.  The home place is still farm headquarters so the boys are often there.

That’s my youngest brother Paul on the left and brother Louie in the middle.  Jenny knows my siblings from all her growing up years and visiting the farm, but Addie and Gunnar don’t know their great uncles very well.  That’s how life is.

FLASHBACK:  I see Dad and Allan and my brothers Matt and Paul standing in that very same spot.  That long kitchen counter has always been a good standing up place.