The Waiting

by Cathy LaGrow

  Ruth met Charles Lee on one of her first days at school. She enjoyed talking to the handsome high schooler, although he sometimes acted strangely.

  “What’s up with Charles?” Ruth asked her cousin Anita.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sometimes he acts really weird. I’ll think we had a really good talk, then the next time I see him, he seems to be making fun of me or something.”

  A wide grin stretched across her cousin’s face.

  “What is it?” Ruth asked.

  Anita couldn’t contain herself. “It’s not Charles.”

  “What? You’re saying it’s me?”

  “No, I mean, you aren’t talking to Charles.”

  Ruth squinted her eyes and felt a surge of annoyance. What was her cousin talking about?

  “It’s Chester, his brother. His identical twin brother.”

  “What!” Ruth said, crossing her arms at her chest. But a smile played at the edges of her mouth.

  “Chester and Charles sometimes switch places. They’ve been doing pranks like that for years. They’ve tricked teachers, parents, anyone they can.”

  Ruth began plotting revenge in her mind, but bemusement wrestled with her anger—and won.

  “At least now I know he’s not stupid,” she said with a laugh.

  Ruth was never fooled by the brothers again. She and Charles continued to talk, and Chester liked to tease them. Before long, Ruth and Charles were going steady.

  Through her junior and senior years of high school, Ruth and Charles were considered an item. Charles and his family belonged to the other Lutheran church in town, but later he began attending Reverend Nordsletten’s parish.

  During the summer months, Ruth went to Bible camps with many of the other Viroqua students, and she continued to sing and play the piano. Ruth’s passion for music only grew during her high school years. She especially liked the Big Band music of Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Sammy Nestico. As the family radio blared the music, even her parents grew to enjoy it.

  Although separated in miles, the Nordsletten family remained closely connected. Scotchy was stationed in Corpus Christi, Texas, in the navy. Ruth loved wearing his peacoat when he visited. Kenny was in Minneapolis, and sometimes Ruth took the train back to the city to see him, as well as Ole and his wife. Ole was going to seminary and would become a minister like his father. Ruth’s favorite times were when her brothers and their growing families visited. Olava seemed to glow when all her children were beneath her roof again, and Ruth adored the ruckus of voices—debating, discussing, or laughing.

  To Ruth, a full house meant happiness.

  * * *

  The morning of May 28, 1947, as Ruth dressed for her high school graduation, sunshine beamed through the windows. She wore a suit beneath her graduation gown, and white leather sandals, which she’d just purchased. Before walking to the school, Ruth posed on the parsonage’s green lawn for a picture. The sky was the kind of blue that promised warmth and the coming of summer, although the temperature was making a surprising dip and a bunch of clouds crowded together on the horizon.

  During the graduation service, the light coming through the windows softened, then faded. A freak snowstorm surprised everyone. Robed graduates hurried through the cold to their cars or raced home on foot, diplomas in hand.

  Charles and Ruth walked together in the falling snow. By the time Ruth reached her house, her leather sandals were soaked through. The straps dried stiff and misshapen; Ruth could never wear them again. That night, eight inches of snow dropped on Viroqua. The storm set records across the Midwest, some holding firm until a May storm in 2013.

  In Minneapolis, Minka Disbrow still thought of her older daughter, even as she held her infant, Dianna, in her arms. She’d continued to write letters to Miss Bragstad. She’d hoped that her Betty Jane would graduate from high school, an opportunity Minka never had. Will she be going to college next fall? Has she fallen in love? Is she happy? So many questions ran through Minka’s mind.

  Ruth was now older than Minka had been when she’d left the House of Mercy with a heart so broken it would never fully mend. While Minka had spent her young adulthood grieving, Ruth was anticipating a bright future, full of promise.

  * * *

  In late summer of 1948, Charles took Ruth to a jewelry store. He’d been working at a local business and had saved for this day. After they chose an engagement ring, he asked if she wanted to wear it.

  “No,” Ruth said. Charles recognized her stubborn streak coming on.

  “No?”

  “I want you to put it on my finger proper-like, when we’re alone,” she said firmly.

  Charles learned quickly that when Ruth dug in her heels about something, he’d better listen. This understanding would help him in the coming decades of life together. And once they were away from the curious eyes of the store clerks, Ruth welcomed the engagement ring onto her finger.

  Ruth had her hope chest neatly packed with things for their new home: pot holders, doilies, dishes, aprons. She and her mother, Olava, had spent years making pieces for it and choosing items that would someday fill Ruth’s own home. They’d purchased Jewel Tea dishes and cobalt-blue Depression glass for Ruth’s future table, carefully wrapping first a platter and then a serving bowl. In the decades to come, Ruth added to the collection, which would survive countless holidays and years of small hands “helping out.”

  Ruth and her mother had bonded from the first day they’d met at the House of Mercy. They’d sung together, worked in the kitchen, and done housecleaning in Minneapolis for extra money when Peder was traveling. For several years, during the summer and autumn months, they’d canned fruits and vegetables side by side, waiting for the soft, popping sound of lids sealing over the boiling jars. Ruth would find this skill invaluable in the future, when she’d make canning and freezing an essential part of her family life.

  Olava shared her cherished recipes with Ruth. Her beef vegetable soup had always been a family favorite, and the children couldn’t get enough of her baked goods. Ole described them well: “They were out of this world and halfway into the next!”

  Even with a houseful of children, Olava took bits of time to explore outside interests. Without any lessons, she had discovered a natural talent for oil painting. She could visualize a ship at sea or a mountain landscape—with no ocean or ranges for hundreds of miles—and her brush brought the image to life on canvas. Her children and grandchildren saved her paintings of a blacksmith’s shop, a deer, a waterfall, a sailing vessel. The generations to come would have something to remember their grandmother by.

  Since leaving Minneapolis, Olava had noticed a decline in her health. It was becoming difficult to open and close her hands from the effects of rheumatoid arthritis, which worsened as the years passed. She also suffered from asthma and struggled to catch her breath even when doing small tasks.

  Still, she enjoyed every moment with her children, telling them stories about her life, such as her time working as a nurse during World War I. Or childhood stories like when she’d nearly drowned in the Two Rivers area at the age of fifteen.

  She’d been delivering lunch and hot coffee to her father and brother-in-law as they worked in the hay fields on the other side of a river that divided their land. Two logs with their bark peeled back served as a little bridge. Olava’s arms were full—coffee in one hand, food in another—and the logs were slippery. Halfway across, she lost her balance and fell into the river.

  Frigid water filled her lungs, burning as it pushed out the air. She sank, but suddenly, “Jesus was beside me, the Lord in His white robes, as plain as day.” He spoke to her. She asked His forgiveness. Together, they prayed the Lord’s Prayer.

  Olava’s brother-in-law had heard a peculiar noise that roused his curiosity and drew him to the river. Instinct pushed him to run as he approached the water’s edge. He dove into the water and pulled Olava out, putting her into a nearby wheelbarrow and running her across the log bridge
and back to the house.

  She later wrote of the event, ending her account this way: “When I hear of people here and there who meet death by drowning, I think of my own experience, when Jesus came so close to me as He did in the Two Rivers in Northern Minnesota. They too may have had similar experiences with the Lord, as I did, before death took them.”

  She had no idea that the story mirrored that of Ruth’s maternal grandfather, Ben, who would perish beneath lake waters in the next state over, just thirteen years after Olava’s near-death incident.

  * * *

  Ruth and Charles’s wedding took place on September 24, 1948. She was nineteen years old. It was a family affair: her father officiated, her brother Scotchy walked her down the aisle, her sister-in-law Arlett played the organ, Ole sang, and Kenny served as usher. The only shadow crossing the day was Olava’s health. Scotchy and Kenny helped her get to the church to attend the ceremony, but she was quite ill.

  After the wedding, Charles moved into the parsonage with Ruth, into the same house as her parents. The young couple was broke and wonderfully happy. And it had been such fun growing up in a house with four kids, Ruth decided a couple more would only increase the joy.

  “I want six children!” she told Charles.

  Charles looked at her and said, “If six come along, they will be welcome and loved.”

  Soon they were able to move into an apartment of their own. After bouncing around Viroqua a few times and saving diligently, they had their $1,000 down payment to build a small house on the south end of town. The payments were $48 a month.

  By then, babies were arriving. Only a few months after their first anniversary, Ruth discovered she was pregnant. After a difficult labor, the couple welcomed a daughter, Deb, and Ruth happily immersed herself in homemaking and motherhood. Less than eighteen months later, Charles and Ruth celebrated the news that their second baby would arrive the following summer.

  But the joy was short-lived, and Ruth’s desire for six children was soon to be tested.

  Chapter Nineteen

  IT WAS the longest month of Ruth’s life.

  She stared at the bedroom furnishings in a house that wasn’t her own, listening to her toddler daughter and family members moving around in other rooms. She longed to feed eighteen-month-old Deb, to comfort her when she cried, to see every moment she was missing. She wanted to do anything but be alone in this room. But the doctor was emphatic: complete bed rest.

  The problems had come almost immediately after Ruth found out she was pregnant again. The independent young woman was now at the mercy of everyone else for companionship, for snatches of time with her active daughter, even for meeting her most private needs. It took all her resolve to keep from hopping up to help. Ruth appreciated her mother-in-law’s dedication to caring for her, but she wanted her own room, her own house, her normal life.

  The doctor’s words kept her in bed. More than all those other things, Ruth wanted a healthy baby.

  Ruth missed her own mother, who was too sick to take on caregiving or babysitting. She longed for Olava’s beef vegetable soup, and the soft touch of her mother’s hands on her forehead or shoulders as she tucked in the covers around her.

  Ruth knew that Olava had once lost a newborn son, but now it was made real to her. How painful that must have been for Olava and Peder. She touched her stomach, and dread coursed through her. Would she know such pain as well?

  The month finally ended, and Charles took her back to the doctor. The sky had never looked so bright nor the air smelled so clean. Ruth felt like an inmate released on good behavior, and her usual cheerful disposition returned. Surely her obedience of the strict orders would be rewarded with a positive report. But the doctor’s words were hard to hear.

  “I don’t know if the fetus is still alive. But let’s get you to the hospital and make sure you’re okay.”

  Ruth put her hands over the slight round of her stomach. The baby just had to be alive. At the hospital, Charles called the family, asking them to get on their knees and pray for the child.

  The doctor pronounced Ruth well enough to go off bed rest, but they would have to wait to find out about the baby. The Doppler fetal monitor wouldn’t be invented for another six years, and it was still too early in the pregnancy to hear the baby’s heartbeat on a regular stethoscope.

  About a month later, Ruth finally felt the first sweet stirrings deep inside—proof that her child was still alive.

  That August of 1952, Ruth delivered Mark Charles, a healthy 9 pound, 9 ounce baby boy. In later years, she’d remember those days in bed and think, What we would’ve missed had we lost him.

  Motherhood had woken Ruth to a joy she’d guessed at, a love she’d only thought she knew. It was deeper and more marvelous than she could have imagined. But this was her second challenging pregnancy. The labor and delivery had been excruciating with both Deb and Mark, and Ruth’s recovery was slow each time.

  While she adored her children, Ruth was rethinking her dream of having six of them.

  * * *

  In 1954, Charles took a job at a mink ranch, where thousands of the animals were raised in long rows of chicken-wire pens and sheds. The young family moved into a small farmhouse on the property, which they would later have to expand. Ruth’s days were busy with caring for her brood, tending to her house, and going to church on Sundays at her father’s parish. The Lees added a third child, Brian Michael, on a frozen day in late January 1957.

  Although this pregnancy had also begun with a stay in the hospital, things swiftly turned around. It would prove to be her easiest pregnancy, and the delivery was quick, with no real labor pains at all. Ruth’s spirit was renewed and along with it, her desire for a large family.

  Sometimes Ruth believed her brother Ole had passed down the mischief gene to her children, even though her adoption meant that he wasn’t a blood relative. Her little ones were full of imagination and pranks.

  One afternoon Ruth paused in her cleaning and noticed a peculiar stillness to the house. Even with little Brian down for his nap, it was too quiet. That was a sure sign of trouble in a house with young children.

  Ruth crept through the house, peering into rooms in search of Deb and Mark.

  She went to the back room, where two-year-old Brian was asleep on a long davenport couch. His head was covered with his beloved football helmet, a plaything he wore so often that it wasn’t unusual to find him napping in it.

  But Brian wasn’t safe from his siblings even with a helmet on his head. Bent over the toddler, eight-year-old Deb and six-year-old Mark were intent on their prey. First Deb, then Mark, took turns leaning in. They carefully lifted one of Brian’s eyelids. When he twitched or his eye fluttered, they jumped back, curling up into fits of soundless laughter, openmouthed, while Deb motioned for quiet. Then they did it again. Random snickers slid out as they collapsed against the davenport.

  Ruth struggled to keep her own chuckles silent, but she soon pushed the door open just enough to allow the creaking hinges to announce her arrival.

  Deb and Mark jumped away from Brian, faces guilty as criminals’.

  “What are you kids doing?” Ruth asked, as if she hadn’t been watching them.

  “Nothing,” they said in unison, shrugging and glancing around the room.

  “Were you lifting Brian’s eyelids while he’s sleeping?”

  “Nooooo,” Deb said.

  “No, we didn’t,” Mark seconded.

  “But I saw you.” The smile she’d fought to hold back was now gone.

  They denied it still.

  The humor of their prank was destroyed with the lie. If Ruth hadn’t seen their childish antics with her own eyes, she might have believed them. She knew she couldn’t let it pass. One of her father’s favorite quotes came to mind, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”

  “You two come with me. Now,” she said, motioning them behind her, away from their sleeping brother. She took them to the bathroom for
a lesson on how to clean the lie from their mouths with a touch of soap.

  “Don’t ever lie again,” Ruth said firmly as Deb and Mark wiped their eyes. They glanced at one another, grimacing at the bitter slivers on their tongues.

  “We won’t,” Deb said. Mark nodded his head in agreement.

  Ruth knew they would probably lie again. They were children, after all, and children had to be encouraged toward good character—it didn’t come without guidance.

  * * *

  Olava had been fighting it for years, but now she was sinking beneath disease. Her doctor would later reveal to the family that she’d had leukemia, in addition to her rheumatoid arthritis and asthma. By the time the doctor realized it, she was beyond treatment.

  Her love of family kept her fighting so long. Olava’s children and grandchildren brought joy to her pain-filled world. She cherished their visits, the sound of a full house, the stories and laughter and memories. Her grandchildren seemed to have limitless energy—it was hard to imagine she’d once been that strong.

  For Deb, Mark, and Brian, trips to both sets of grandparents were always met with excitement. Grandma and Grandpa Lee, Charles’s parents, lived on Main Street in Viroqua, across from Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. The house had a big porch, where the family would gather for the Memorial Day parade, watching for Charles’s twin brother, Chester, a national guardsman, who almost always marched.

  From the Lees’ place, the children could go through backyards and a bit of woods and end up at their other grandparents’ house.

  At the Nordslettens’, the children raced through the parsonage with its circular route of downstairs rooms. When they were too rambunctious, Olava and Ruth set the children at the table and strapped them into chairs. While the kids ate a snack, the women regained their energy before setting the youngsters loose again.

  Ruth watched how her mother’s face glowed when she brought her children over or when her brothers and their families came to town. They’d all laugh together, tell well-worn stories, try to catch up with new tales.