Preface
Walking or strolling from the Bauer Lodge at Green Lake, Wisconsin, I took time to stop and study some flowers. Most were absolutely beautiful---good color, good arrangement and they were placed carefully giving distinction to each other.
Then I noticed a yellow one—maybe a daisy, but now quite faded. Half or more of the petals were missing, worn out I guess. But that flower raised its head proudly among the rest. It was reaching toward the sun and surviving quite boldly.
This I likened to myself—quite worn, with a little less color amidst the rest of the strong plants and flowers. The plant is still standing, as I am—reaching for the sky, anticipating the day and happy for the beautiful ones around me. I’m glad they don’t pluck me or mow me down, so I am bravely and boldly maintaining the place that I have in God’s great flower garden.
Threads
Downsizing is underway.
Three things in life are certain:
Death, and Taxes, and Downsizing.
We live, we downsize, we die (and what we leave behind they downsize some more.)
When I was twenty-two, I wouldn’t be writing this.
I’m eighty-seven years old now. And I’m downsizing again. That’s why I’m writing this to you today. So I might not be totally discarded in the process, and what is of most value will remain.
This is taken from my journal 27 years ago (you may call it my “DOILY JOURNAL”): “It is dark down here. My brothers and sisters and I have gathered here in the cellar of my Mother’s house to decide...what to do with the things left over from my Mother’s lifetime of service.”
Mother’s cellar had traditionally contained excellent food—rows of canned vegetables, meats, pickles and jellies. Now it is different. Mother Olga is gone and her possessions are going into the hands of her children. After everything is decided, only the Hardanger doily remains.
It looks so lost and forlorn. The old doily stretches from its cellar floor to give me one last smile as I contemplate casting it aside. It does not look very enticing while crumpled and torn and lying on the dirt floor.
“What can I do with it?” I ask myself.
“Not much in its condition,” I reason.
My impulse is to say: “I’ll see what I can do with it.”
Family members in Norway have expressed this to me: “Evelyn” they said, “our women kept the fires going at night by supplying the small stove with firewood while their husbands were in the forest cutting down trees. They watched the children as they slept, thus protecting and caring for them.” My heart bursts with love and warmth as I remember how they told me of the courage and faithfulness of these ancestors. And skillful endeavors of my mother and grandmother taught me by example the joy of achievement. Grandmother Olivia brought the first doily from Norway. I was to learn through the years of her life a heritage lived on through our family. When I look at Grandmother Olivia’s doily, I see Life Between the Stitches
You may see intricate patterns, wrappings, and cutouts.
I see life.
You may see a discarded doily.
I see my Grandmother Olivia.
Bestemor
The Norwegian word bestemor means the best mother or grandmother and she was mine. I wish I could have trudged along behind Olivia as she rushed up the hill to the waiting horse and buggy.
Olivia Luka Bredeson was leaving the Luka home for good at the age of seventeen. Bestemor Olivia Luka Bredesen was the oldest of eleven children, born in the beautiful Finn Skogen forest of eastern Norway.
She was ready to sail to the new country in North America. With her she had a hand-carved box made by her father with the numbers 1857 beautifully carved on it. The small, engraved box contained dried beef, bread and fruit for the food she would consume as she crossed the Atlantic Ocean. A plain brown wooden trunk held the rest of her possessions. Over her shoulder was a hand-knit black shawl.
In her eyes were tears but she would not look back. The new land of America was before her. DOILY JOURNAL: Facing death with loved ones has given me a glance, not only of the tunnel we will all enter but of the glories that await God’s children.
Likewise, the stitchery has been completed. The errors have been redeemed. The edging is complete. The cutting away process is the separation of the doily from its background. No longer the need for the support given to each detail. The cutting away from this world is the separation of life from the earthly to the heavenly.
Olivia and Anton had two daughters, my mother Olga and her younger sister Inga.
The story goes like this:
Olga came home from town one day.
Inga was writing down her songs. She loved to write and memorize songs (and we still have one of her handwritten chorus books).
Twenty-something Olga was aflutter:
“Oh, Inga, I met someone today. His name is John. He is such a likeable person and a good businessman. He has the store in town.”
“And I think he was very interesting.”
Inga: “Was he handsome?”
“Well, he’s very smart and inventive...”
and Olga thought a little while.
“But he’s so homely!” and then they laughed.
This was the story Olga and John would tell for years after that, and then they would always laugh.
My mother Olga, a woman of beauty, married the man of her dreams. He was tall, lanky John of Russian and Dutch descent. John loved Olga dearly and boasted to all who came to our home of her beauty and her excellent cooking skills. She made the best butterscotch pies and fried chicken in the world.
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