I left Williston after 27 rain-soaked hours on a windy, sunny high plains morning. McCovey had never moved from under the Mainstay canopy. He was restless seeing cabs arrive each evening to take me to my dinner and bar residency at the WIlliston Brewing Company. It’s a good spot — easy to maintain distancing, good food, Idaho pours, etc.

Today, August 21st, would have been my Mom’s 100th birthday. Yes, she had me at a quite advanced age!

As I get to Devils Lake, I am reminded by the paradox that was Annabelle. She was kind, attentive and a fine parent. She was also a person who liked to be seen as proper and inside the boundaries. I was no hellion, I was a “good kid,” but I seemed to find a way to stay WAY outside what she considered “the boundaries.”

While proud of and tied to her family, she seemed to despise North Dakota, its weather, its lack of change. She was very proud of her Scandavian heritage and all of her distant, ND relatives, but she was most comfortable doing so from California. She was certainly courageous to leave at a fairly young age, attending the University of Washington for several years and making her way down the coast to the San Francisco Bay Area where she met my Dad in her early 30’s. Even under questioning, she did not discuss much about her time between North Dakota and California, say ages 16 – 32. My sense is, and I remember hearing about this faintly somewhere, she lost someone early in that time frame to war or accident. I just don’t know and no one would tell me. No one remains, now, that could tell me. I have some pictures, though, of a very young Ann with a handsome soldier. It’s lost to time, as we all eventually will be.

What I DO know is what happened when she met this handsome guy in San Francisco who had traveled the world, including all of Europe, Lebanon, Egypt, the Ivory Coast, Saudi Arabia and even Ohio, a man who had “post-war and more” bought a Studebaker (really, Dad?) and travelled the country to see where he wanted to settle after all the crazy he had seen. He chose Baghdad-by-the-Bay, she was all in, and I became a Giants fan forever.

She never really got over losing him in 1977 and having to face the last 30 years without him. She soldiered on bravely, but whatever darkness remained from her first loss certainly got harder with the second. At least that’s my unabashedly creative, romantic theory.

She wouldn’t talk about the former, and could spend hours revisiting the latter. And isn’t that ok? I’ve often opined that anyone who tries to tell the bereaved “I understand because I’ve been there,” is full of it. Misery may love company, but grief stands alone. Grief requires some drowning, and who knows what thoughts another is drowning in? Some need to talk it through, some need to gain distance, some just need to learn how to breathe again.

ANYway, she was a piece of work who loved her family and particularly her son. Completely, if not always empathetically. Perhaps it was tough for this woman who wanted many but only had her one child. It was hard for her to watch me make aggressive, off-the-path decisions in my early adulthood, emphasizing skiing, hockey, jumping out of airplanes and leaving great jobs and situations for unknown adventures. They say every good relationship has tension — ours had plenty.

My Dad had two words he would often offer her in her more shall-we-say “characteristic” moments. They are the title of this offering. One day in the mid-70’s, I came home after a looong day (doubleheader) of playing baseball in 100 degree heat to a note on the front door. She left notes for us everywhere. It said, “Your Dad is probably in the backyard. Phone doesn’t work. I’m at 201-291-4556.” And the doors were locked.

Oh, Annabelle.

She would offer aggressive opinions on air conditioning in New Jersey, the appropriateness of my date’s attire or why the guy at the local 7-Eleven could “barely even speak the language.” This just 2 or 3 minutes after telling us how proud she was of her Norwegian father who moved here to homestead and “couldn’t even speak the language!” Oh, Annabelle.

I told her once that so many people don’t realize that my children are adopted, because they look like us. “Sometimes God does things like that,” she said. She said lots of nice things to me, and to others. But I think that was the kindest thing she ever said to anyone. Maybe that ANYone has ever said to anyone.

Oh Annabelle!

She tried to be unfailingly kind, and usually was. She loved us, our children and life itself. And it’s an honor to be here seeing and feeling her roots.

So I get to Devils Lake and am met by my 3rd cousin — I think the only relative of mine remaining in town. Our grandmothers were sisters.

AND he is Highlander! Or Highlander II, sorry Brett. (See Grett’s Highway 24 Adventure waaay below.)

Rudi Bloomquist farms 1400 acres on his own. Well, but he does own a spaceship. You’ll see. He also is an architect and construction management genius, having helped restore local churches, buildings and even resetting a steeple that became the leaning steeple of Devils Lake. He is an EMT, a First Responder and firefighter. He ski’d like a madman in Steamboat in his youth, living in homes he was building (on less-than-pristine snow days only, of course.) He is a family historian and all around terrific guy. He is renowned as a Curling icemaker, and has made ice for many a bonspiel, and don’t we ALL love a good bonspiel?! We didn’t and are not going to talk politics in this day and age, but suffice it to say he is a thoughtful centrist who likes real truth. HaySeuss wept. Again. He is Highlander.

Rudi, a man of many responsibiities, spent hours showing me around the community and took the time to spelunk our way to the property my great grandfather JCW Anderson had founded out on what is now a dirt road named 53rd Street NE.

To do so, we stopped at another farm and asked about the Elvram (sp) and Johnson farms. After, of course, discussing the recent rains and if they mattered a fig for this most recently completed wheat harvests. We met a hardworking, interesting and helpful fellow who helped us triangulate to the promised land.

We went into another farm to check in and found THIS WAS IT. Unfortunately, nowhere near as currently promising as it once was or as was the property from which we triangulated. The current occupants seemed, shll we say, quite a bit less fit in any (read “almost . They informed us that the big old barn had been knocked down and buried “over there” and the new house had replaced the big old house that had succumbed to fire. Rumor had it that old JCW had poured two inches of concrete on the overbuilt 2nd floor to ensure he could develop some quiet from all the kids upstairs. I’m simply reporting the facts.

There was much more to come, including riding in a spaceship and meeting Diane! But that’s post-Annabelle’s roots….