The Waiting

by Cathy LaGrow

  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, s
haking 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.

  Afterword

  WHEN GRANDMA PRAYED her birthday prayer for Betty Jane in May 2006, my first son was only five weeks old. I was shocked a couple of months later when my brother Grant called to tell me that Grandma had found her long-lost daughter—someone we hadn’t even known existed. He and my mother, Dianna, were preparing to fly to California for the reunion.

  Often, while nursing my son, I’d try to imagine having to give him up, an agony I now knew Grandma had endured. The idea was so unbearable, so inconceivable, that it caused me to weep every time I thought about it.

  As thrilled as I was that Grandma had finally gotten her daughter back, I was living in the sleep-deprived fog that accompanies the first months of motherhood. During the next few years, I enjoyed getting occasional updates about their relationship, but my life was too consumed by babies and toddlers for me to pay attention to much outside my own home in Oregon.

  But Brian Lee and I started exchanging regular e-mails, and he and Teresa—the brand-new cousins we’d never met—began sending yearly Christmas presents to my boys and to Grant’s twin girls.

  As Grandma was celebrating her one hundredth birthday in 2011, an Associated Press article about her reunion story went viral. Brian and I wrote to each other, discussing how crazy all the attention was. He mentioned that this story would make a great book.

  Early in 2012, with the blessing of Brian, Grandma, and Ruth, I began researching and writing The Waiting.

  As the months rolled by, Brian and I began talking regularly by phone and video chat. We texted constantly. Although we’d never met in person, in time he became like my third brother. He gave me a hard time. I called him a variety of pet names. Typical family stuff.

  This past November, we finally met. Brian, Teresa, Ruth, and I flew to Southern California to meet with Grandma and a crew from Tyndale, our publisher, to sit for interviews and photographs. On that day, Stephen Vosloo took the book’s exquisite cover portrait of Grandma holding the picture of Betty Jane that she’d carried so long.

  By this point, I’d been writing about Betty Jane for nearly two years. I’d read hundreds of pages of letters Grandma had written about her baby. I’d worked on scenes depicting those agonizing moments when she gave up Betty Jane, as well as stories about Grandma crying into her pillow during all the years that she kept her memories locked deep in her heart. Every day as I wrote, I looked at a copy of the photo of Grandma and her baby, which I’d pinned above my computer.

  And now I was going to meet Betty Jane, at last.

  Walking around the corner into the lobby of Grandma’s church, where Ruth and Brian waited, was a surreal experience. There stood “Betty Jane,” white-haired and smiling and little! (Evidently only some of us got those oversized DeYoung genes.)

  I’m fairly stoic, and it was a bit awkward to have cameras there, but tears filled my eyes as I hugged Ruth tightly. Hugging Brian was like greeting one of my closest friends whom I hadn’t seen in a while.

  Over the next few days I got to watch Grandma and Ruth and Brian together, and it was one of the biggest treats of my life. You would have thought Grandma and Brian had known each other forever—their nonstop clever banter delighted Grandma to no end.

  And I’d never seen two people interact the way Grandma and Ruth did—like the closest of sisters but with zero friction. Almost every time we got together, without planning to, they dressed alike, right down to their beloved “bling.” They patted each other and took care of each other and kept track of each other’s handbags and fussed over each other in exactly the right measure.

  My mother says that there was always a bit of sadness around Grandma, which is gone now. We agree that we’ve never seen her happier.

  Since that visit I’ve communicated with all of Ruth’s children by e-mail and have spoken to Mark and Jay on the phone. Brian and I continue to antagonize each other nearly daily. And Ruth and I stay in contact. She prays for me when I’m sick. When the temperatures in Wisconsin get too bitterly cold, I text to m
ake sure she’s staying warm.

  Long before we knew anything about “Betty Jane” or my grandma’s painful past, my brothers and I agreed that our strong, tireless, selfless grandmother was the most extraordinary person we’d ever known. It is no surprise to us that her first daughter, and that daughter’s children, are extraordinary as well.

  * * *

  In the years since their first reunion, my grandma and the Lees have slipped seamlessly into the close relationships typical of any loving family whose members live far apart. Brian calls Grandma every Wednesday to chat.

  “This is Lieutenant Colonel Lee,” he’ll say, “reporting in to higher headquarters.”

  “It’s about time!” Grandma says triumphantly.

  He has also become a sort of extra caretaker for her. During one of her visits to his home in Huntsville, Alabama, Brian noticed that Grandma’s military dependent ID card carried an expiration date. He took her to his local garrison and had her card updated to an “indefinite renewal” status.

  Grandma visits her family all around the country—she flies to Portland to see us, to Huntsville to visit Brian. Though she can’t make up for all the years she didn’t know six of her grandchildren and their families, she’s made it a point to be at some of the key events in their lives. She flew to Houston when Jay had a baby baptized at his Lutheran church, and to Georgia when Brian’s son graduated from college and was commissioned into the army.

  In the years following the reunion, my family noticed an intriguing phenomenon. As Grandma approached her hundredth birthday, she seemed to be aging backward. Her volunteer activities continued apace. She traveled to Nashville to attend church conferences.

  For her centennial birthday celebration, Jay and Brian flew to California to surprise her. The Piedmont School District in Oakland, which is still paying for all her health care, sent a representative more than four hundred miles south to congratulate her. (I couldn’t help but wonder if they wanted to make sure she was still really here!) The following spring, Ruth and Grandma flew to Brian’s house to celebrate their birthdays together—Grandma’s recent one hundredth, and Ruth’s upcoming eighty-third.