Land and Legacies

Moving very slowly, she climbed the steep, dark staircase which rose through the center of the old house.Ý Light bejeweled with sifting dust particles poured through the four open doorways into the short hall at the top, but her spirits would not lighten; Mom was mourning the stringing wallpaper, the shredded curtains and faded, streaked paint on the walls of the once immaculately kept, high-ceilinged bedrooms of her youth.Ý Here she had absently rocked baby Louellaís cradle with one foot while stealing precious reading time; here the older sisters had shared stories of work and travel in town and in school far awayóto Mandan, even, or Bismarck.Ý Now the walls echoed only disuse and neglect.

The youngest but one of the seven surviving children of Fred and Ottilia Kurle, my mother was mostly raised by her domineering sister Lydia, the one who subsequently intimidated the next generation of the family as well as her own by serving as a missionary nurse to Tanganyika (later Tanzania) for twenty years. We can only wonder at the number of otherwise innocent and well-intentioned native Africans Aunt Lydia cowed into meek acceptance of her wayóand placed in lifelong competition with all their peers, as that seemed to be the primary control she exerted over Mom and her five other sisters.Ý I was raised apart from but still obsessed with what every other grandchild had, thought, didóand especially at what he or she excelled, since that became the standard for all of us. Growing up, we were never to brag about what we could doóbut we had better be the best at it, whatever it was; our cause would be championed among the sisters as they chattered in German at rare family gatherings, and we would feel cold and long disapproval if Mom had nothing to contribute about her children in the face of all the excellence racked up by her nieces and nephews.

Mom was the classy sister, for all of her hard-bitten homestead upbringing.Ý No slouch academically, she was kept on the farm for two of her high school years during the Depression to work, returned to school as an embarrassed older student, and boarded in town to graduate as valedictorian of a competitive younger class. My grandfather was mortified when the superintendent praised her graduation speech over that of the salutatorian, worshipped son of a prominent county businessman.Ý How awful that his daughter would detract from the glory of such a young manónever mind that the superintendent himself used parts of Momís speech in public addresses for years to come.Ý It was vital to her that her children be well-spoken, but not loudly; well-dressed, but not ostentatious; well-behaved, but not, not everóstuck up.Ý She herself modeled these traits, but did not teach them.Ý We were simply expected to know.

Education, hard work, religious devotion, hard work, service, and hard work were the mantras of these prairie settlers. To this day, the difficulty of the lives they led and expected to lead in the windswept, extreme climate on the rocky, miserly soil of southwestern North Dakota beggars the imagination.Ý Mom told matter-of-factly of skin torn open, whipped and scarred, even through the heavy menís shirts and coveralls she wore while gathering thistle to feed starving cattle on furnace-hot days during the drought years; of scouring hills and pastures all day to find cow chips sufficient to keep the summer kitchen stoves hot enough while Grandmother slaved nonstop to cook the abundant fare necessary to fuel a threshing crew; of herself as a six-year-old girl sent to guide and guard the ragtag herd of cows atop the barren hill pasture two miles away from sunup to sundown in the long days of Dakota high summer.Ý No trees, no water, no bug repellentóno sunblock; she made up word games and braided dry grass to entertain herself and kept the cows from heading home to water before the permitted time at dusk.

It is a cruel country, Dakota, but a wildly beautiful one, especially in the late spring.Ý Even the country churchyard where two infant sisters lay buried--one stillborn, the other taken by whooping cough at five months--is a pastoral, peaceful place, despite the pioneer tragedies told without fanfare by the stones in every family plot.Ý Wild roses bloom there in the lush years, natural gifts from fickle Nature.Ý Typically, the geraniums, tulips, gladiolas, brachtheanthus and marigolds planted by well-intentioned family members rarely survive more than a single summer. Rarely are they hardened enough.

The old house, two storeys of traditional white clapboard poking above wizened windbreaks and chokecherry thickets, still stands, although it is empty now.Ý Tall black windows symmetrically placed four to a side still stare from the upstairs rooms where the sisters crafted their shared inner lives. The now-barren yard, broken-down barn, and empty fields speak to the transience of their daily toil, yet the house is a testament to the tenacity of those who built it.Ý Only pieces failóa porch falls down, a cement stair crumbles, late-installed plumbing leaks, then breaks. The integrity of the structure will persist for years to come, as will that of the stocky, stoic people who built it and were born there.Ý In the house garden, horseradish grows rampantóa stubborn, eccentric statement for those who survive.Ý Mom loved that plebian plant.Ý Like its country, it is unforgettable, ubiquitous, persistent.

And so we continue to be Dakotans:Ý intensely private, privately proud, proudly strong, and forever mindful of the need to be humble in the face of power we cannot comprehend, let alone control. Poet Thomas McGrathís words, etched into the stone that marks my brotherís grave, speak for us and for my motherís legacies.Ý Dakota is everywhere.ÝÝÝ

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