Chapter Twenty-Five

RUTH WAS BEHIND the wheel, alone, when the road and sunshine disappeared.

She’d been driving along the open countryside of Highway 14, coming home from the airport in Madison with thoughts of her just-completed visit to see Mark and his family. She was wearing a pair of earrings that Minka had given her —stones in a gold setting —and a cross necklace she’d bought to match.

As she came down a hill near Readstown, she blacked out. Her car dropped into a ditch, hit a culvert, and launched into a dry creek bed.

She came to, disoriented and holding the steering wheel. As a passing motorist called for an ambulance, Ruth found her cell phone and called Charles to tell him she was okay and not to worry, but to come and help her.

The news shook up the entire family, Minka especially. The minute Minka heard the news, she marshaled her prayer partners and took to her own knees. She did not sleep easy until it was clear that Ruth would be okay. They learned later that Ruth’s episode was due to a new mix of blood pressure medication. Minka felt sure she couldn’t have survived losing Betty Jane just seven months after getting her back.

But Minka didn’t believe God had returned Betty Jane only to take her again so quickly. Especially not with a birthday party to attend.

Minka had missed all seventy-seven of her daughter’s birthdays. She was not about to miss the next one.

In May 2007, the Lee siblings chipped in to buy Minka a plane ticket to Wisconsin. She flew into the small airport in Madison. Brian arranged for Dawn to come, too, to help Minka navigate changing planes at the Chicago airport.

Minka couldn’t wait to see her daughter again, to see where she’d lived since her junior year of high school, to become even more deeply a part of her life.

Their August reunion had opened up Minka’s world in so many ways. Shortly after Ruth’s visit, Minka was invited to speak at a banquet for a local crisis pregnancy center, and the appearance led to her volunteering at the center every week —a work she was determined to continue until she could no longer move. Every Monday now, she went to the center to pray for the frightened young women who came through the clinic, girls whose pain she knew too well. Minka also made it her mission to support and encourage the director of the center, whose competence and kindness reminded her so much of Miss Bragstad.

Viroqua was bucolic, all rolling farmland, blue skies, and puffy, white clouds. It was much cooler than Southern California, but Minka was too busy to notice the chill.

First she met Charles, Ruth’s mate of almost sixty years, who mildly quipped that it was interesting to have a mother-in-law again after nearly five decades without one. Minka liked him immediately.

Ruth helped Minka get settled into an upstairs guest room, the biggest and most comfortable one, where the morning’s first sunlight fell brightly on hand-braided rag rugs. Being in Betty Jane’s home was strange and wonderful. All these years when Minka had tried to imagine her girl moving throughout her day, she’d had to picture her in an unknown kitchen, living room, or garden.

Now she walked through the spaces that had sheltered Betty Jane for so long, the rooms that had watched over her daughter’s family. She brushed her hand along the railing of the stairs, thinking of the years her daughter had walked these steps, the small children who’d charged up and down them. She studied paintings on the wall, wondering when they had been chosen. She gazed out the window at the views her daughter had taken in for decades.

These were Betty Jane’s things.

She felt a pang at the thought of all the grandchildren she had not rocked to sleep here, the drowsy warmth that had not filled her lap, the tousled hair she had not smoothed. There had been so many children’s secrets that had not been whispered in her ears. So many Christmases and birthdays and snowfalls she had not witnessed.

She pushed the sad thoughts aside. All a person ever had was the now, and her now was filled with joy.

And then her grandchildren came to meet her. Here was Deb, the oldest and shortest of Ruth’s children, who kept busy with church committees, her small business, and gardening. Deb marveled at her grandmother’s height and her firm grip.

Here was Mark, the famous grandson who’d traveled more than thirteen million miles in space, and his two cherubic, curly-headed boys. Minka told him proudly that her husband had been a pilot too.

Here was Tim, a middle-school teacher, and his two boys. He’d come to meet Minka straight from a track meet, where he’d done double duty as coach and official. Tim found it poignant, in light of his new grandmother’s strong faith, that her daughter had been adopted by a minister.

She met compassionate, free-spirited Carrie, a special-education teacher who loved to read.

Jay, who lived in Texas, was the only grandchild not there. But Minka had met him a few months earlier when he’d flown to California and stayed in her home for a weekend. They’d ordered Chinese takeout, gone to a farmers’ market a few blocks from Minka’s apartment, attended church together.

For Minka, who had always been bothered by her own lack of education, it was particularly satisfying that all six of Ruth’s children had earned college degrees, four of them advanced. Minka recognized bits of herself in each grandchild.

Like Minka, Ruth’s children were determined. They liked privacy but were generous with their time and thrived on doing things for others. Several of them loved tending to plants. Above all, perhaps, they were hard workers. As she took in their faces, heard them joke with each other and share family stories with her, as she saw how the house was still their home even as they reached middle age, Minka’s heart felt as if it might swell too large.

It almost hurt to love this much. This family, her family, was more than she had dared to hope for.

In all the decades she had spent wondering about Betty Jane’s family, imagining what they were like or what they’d think of her, Minka could not have dreamed up such a loving welcome. The Lee family enfolded her as though she’d always been a part of them.

* * *

As Minka had done in California, Ruth arranged an open house. Deb, Teresa, and Tim’s wife, Beth, helped Ruth clean house, cut up fruit, bake cookies. They set the table with plates and napkins in Minka’s favorite bright yellow, laid out photo albums of their families and of the first California reunion. Friends came by the carload to meet this birth mother, amazed that she didn’t look anything close to ninety-five. Guests flipped through the notebook holding the papers from the adoption file, perusing the old documents.

Ruth took Minka to meet her coworkers at Walmart. She had not yet returned to work after her March accident, but her friends there knew about the previous year’s reunion with Minka. When the two women entered the store, they were surrounded by people eager to meet this mother of such monumental faith.

On Saturday, the family drove to French Island in LaCrosse to attend the Deke Slayton Airfest. Mark would be presenting that year’s Distinguished Wisconsin Aviator Award, and his family was treated to seats in the VIP tent. They watched as a biplane and a helicopter performed tricks, diving and leaving a trail of smoke behind them. They saw the Blue Angels, the navy’s elite stunt team, fly four blue-and-yellow Hornets in impossibly tight formation against a cloudy sky.

Minka watched her grandson, the hometown hero so comfortable in the spotlight, as he shook hands and patted backs and chatted with spectators and dignitaries and old friends.

That night the Lees had a family picnic at the farm, just like the evening when Ruth had first called Minka, less than a year earlier. They ate barbecue, beans and salads, and a lemon pie baked for Minka by Teresa’s mother. There were more stories and laughter and joking. Minka took in how her new son-in-law, Charles, seemed to be the steadying force of the family, focused and unwavering in his work around the farm. He and Ruth appeared quite different in personality, but they were the timeless example of how opposites worked well together. Brian gave Minka further insight into his parents’ relationship, telling stories that made everyone laugh.

“One time Dad was making something in the kitchen and ran out of vanilla extract,” Brian said. “He asked Mom, ‘Ruthie, do we have any more vanilla?’

“After thinking a minute, she said, ‘Oh yes, we bought some in Mexico back in 1986 when we visited Brian and Teresa after Taylor was born. I know we have it. I’ll look in the basement for it.’

“Dad replied, ‘Oh, we don’t have that. It’s been much too long, and it was probably thrown out.’”

The room was alive with chuckles from the Lee children and grandchildren, who knew exactly where this story was going.

“Now the gauntlet was thrown down,” Brian said with a laugh. Charles stood off to the side, arms crossed at his chest, shaking his head. Minka caught a slight grin on his lips.

“So Mom marched downstairs and, within a few minutes, surfaced with the bottle of vanilla they bought in Mexico in 1986.”

“That’s our parents,” someone said from across the room.

Minka reveled in the stories, the effortless way the family interacted, and the love woven through it all.

* * *

Sunday dawned balmy and clear. Minka and Ruth woke early and ate breakfast together, then crossed the street and walked to church along the road’s shoulder. Immanuel Lutheran was the same congregation where Peder Nordsletten had come to minister in 1945 —Ruth had attended the church ever since. For the last thirty-eight years, the church had used this building, located just 175 yards from Ruth’s front door.

Two days later, on May 22, 2007, a year to the day after Minka had prayed her unreasonable prayer, she sat in a restaurant in Wisconsin with Betty Jane in the chair to her right. Her new family surrounded the large tables, which had been pushed together to fit everyone.

There was a cake for Ruth. Minka finally watched her daughter blow out her birthday candles and make a wish for the future. Silverware clinked and voices rose in laughter and light shone off water glasses as they were raised to lips. The scene was simple and ordinary and perfect. Waiting had been worth it. Her daughter had been worth it.

There was one more important visit to make before Minka returned home. On an overcast morning, Charles drove Minka and his wife to Viroqua Cemetery, where Ruth’s parents were buried. It was a spacious park in the countryside, ringed by evergreens. As Charles and Ruth bent to pull a few weeds, Minka gazed at the double headstone.

Olava Nordsletten, 1884–1960. Peder Nordsletten, 1886–1974.

Over the years, Minka had tried to picture this couple a thousand times. In the photographs Ruth had since shown her, they looked older than Minka had imagined, with serious but kind faces. So many times she’d wished to trade places with them. She’d spent long nights aching to hold Betty Jane on her lap, to brush her hair, to kiss her good night. But Minka was abundantly grateful —this couple had been as good to her precious Betty Jane as she could have wished.

Watching her white-haired daughter brush dirt off their headstones, Minka felt an eternal link to these people. Minka had given Betty Jane life. The Nordslettens had given her a wonderful home and a faith-filled heritage.

Someday we will meet in heaven, and I will thank you. I will thank you for loving her. I will thank you for teaching her about God, for showing her how to live a good life. I’ll thank you for being kind, for raising her to be a thoughtful and giving person.

Minka would soon say good-bye once again, to fly home to California. The farewell would be hard but joy filled. After nearly eight decades apart, she and her Betty J. —the “sweetest little girl in the world” —had been reunited. Nothing could ever really separate them again.

* * *

The century before, in a wooden church on a windswept prairie, a young Dutch girl heard the Reverend Kraushaar read ancient words from a German Bible. She had understood the words from the book of Job, about God giving and taking. But she couldn’t have guessed how thoroughly those words would come true in her own life, or how great the cost of their fulfillment would be. She couldn’t have known that a few years later, on a blistering day by a lake, she would be split into two pieces, a tear that would not be mended until she’d reached the other end of her life.

How could she understand it then —that one of her greatest blessings would come only through her greatest wound? Or that her faith, whose seeds were even then being planted in a stubborn, curly-headed farm girl, would sustain her through more earthly days than most humans were granted?

Der HERR hat’s gegeben, der HERR hat’s genommen; der Name des HERRN sei gelobt.

In her own life, the Lord had taken first.

And then, a lifetime later, the Lord had given back.

Blessed is the name of the Lord.