ELLA DELORIS LUNDBERG

This is the anniversary of the birth of my mother, Ella Deloris Lundberg.

Ella was the fourth child of Clara Jensen Lundberg and Philip Arthur Lundberg. Her oldest brother, called Bootsy was born in 1913 and died in 1935 from a gun shot wound. Viola, her sister, was born in 1915, and a younger brother, Clifford, died at 3 days old in 1920. His certificate states: In utero, broncho pneumonia"

We do not know where Viola is, nor if she is alive; she would be 92 if she was. Mother died in 2002 in Thief River Falls, MN. The Lundberg boys are buried in Greenwood cemetery; mother is buried at Rindal Cemetery near Rosewood in the Ranum family plot.

There is something almost spiritual about leafing though mother's old elementary school papers. She loved school and according to her grades did very well.

She attended Northrop, Central, and Lincoln High School as well as a stint in Schiller Park a Chicago, Illinois suburb in her early years. Her dad, Philip, and the housekeeper, Mae, (who became the step mother). Bootsy did not go to Chicago with them, Old Trunks as no evidence that Viola did.




Philip and Mae were married there in the spring of 1929. Mother, as a seven year old would start school in the fall as a second grader.







We do know from looking at the back of report cards that mother spent part of a later school year with her birth mother near Downer, MN. We know this because, Mrs. Clara Henry signed the report card. It is also charming to know that mother circled these signatures and stated in pencil that she loved her.




We have no way of knowing just how the divorce between her parents or the gruesome death of her brother affected her. Mother was a quiet person, she didn't say much and when asked about the ancestry of her family, she wasn't willing to offer information. One had to be in her presence at the moment to catch the history, or it was forever lost.







One of the things she did talk about was having to clean the cook stove on Saturdays. This was her job. She didn't like it because it was a dirty job.




She talked about having only one dress for school and one for play and one time having to wear her play dress to school because she soiled the other. Times were tough, it was the thirties, Old Trunks is certain she was not alone.




She talked about going to Mae's family farm and playing with the animals and how a rooster wound up in a stew pot because he knocked her down and scratched her. She liked Mae's mother.




She referred to her birth mother as 'mother' and her step mother as 'Mae'.




Who knows what sort of molding 23 months in the TB San south of town did for her or to her back in the late forties and early fifties. We do know that by the time she was well, the leanest years were over for the two of them.




We do know that while in the San mother did a lot of reading. She stated that her knack for decorating came from reading magazines. Perhaps in her idle hours of rest, she conjured up all sorts of combinations of houses to be beautiful.




And when she did start decorating houses, she did, indeed, have an eye for placement and committed to color combinations beyond the normal. There were no white walls in our homes!




I will always remember her as having a closet filled with the newest styles and rummage sales to oust the old and make way for the new.



I remember her dressing up to go to the market and out to dinner. She wore dresses at home until I was in fourth grade and decided pants and shorts were comfortable.




She had an exactness about her. Her hand writing never changed from elementary school drills to the last of her letters. Her hair was never twisted in knots in the morning, and her clothes were always well fitted and she wore them well. As for the house and meals, they were well cared for and meals were promptly served at 7:30, 12:05, and 5:30.




When mother sat down to do a paint by number or a seed art design, she had a pattern in front of her and followed the pattern. Our difference was that if you had a huge area with the same seed, why not dump it in instead of using a tweezers one piece at a time? In a paint by number, why not make your own snow drifts?



Mother was not a enforcer. She did not expect me to do paint by number like she did. She did, however, expect that I had my own supplies. We could work across the table from one another but not on each other's work. I am making a hard point about this because it is important for parent's to be themselves and allow children to be so. One of the things missing in our relationship, where some necessary parameters. Or where they?



Mother didn't feel like it was the responsibility of the children to do the housework or cooking. She may have felt this way because of HER responsibilities. She felt her job was to the family and to the house. That was her job. And she did it well. When she was ill and gone again in the late fifties, the slack was picked up, once again by my grand parents.



She worked three days outside of the home once. It didn't cover the cost of the clothes she bought to work in the chicken processing plant. When she would state she was going to work, daddy would say she was going to look odd pulling up to the nursing home in her new Cadillac, wearing a fur coat and diamonds to wash dishes. If that sounds cruel to you, perhaps it is, but mother would stop ranting. And for stay at home mother's who didn't have a lot of connection with the outside world, it is understandable.




Mother was a Girl Scout leader for a few years, as well as being involved in the adult side of the program. She understood the need for the program and was a great leader. The Girl Scout laws were something the two of us agreed on. Getting her to sign off on a badge meant you really knew your stuff. More about this when we talk about planting a garden.







Mother didn't get mad on a daily basis during my child hood but what she did do was 'save it up' and every six months or so she would rant for 3 days and 2 nights about everything that had ever happened, leaving out no detail no matter how small. Otherwise, she was tolerant of what was going on around her; occasionally she would comment in a positive or negative way.



She became a widow in 1981 and managed her self very well for the nearly twenty years she would continue to live as a solo person. In the last four years of her life, I visited her often from Fargo.




I had held a mystery inside of me for years, always looking for that wave length that was identical to hers. It wasn't until the latter years when she said to my Sweet Thomas, "Do you understand her? If you do, tell me what she is all about." And Tom told her and she said she didn't know that.




If you have a child who you wish to be in pinafores and lace stockings and they prefer mud puddles and experiments, it just isn't going to change. You have to look at your child(ren) and have a clue what they are all about and try to see their vision. Fortunately for me, my three children have neon signs on their foreheads that blink and play music or I may have missed it too!



The important thing is, before she died, we did have that conversation. It had nothing to do with understand each other, it had to do with saying we were sorry for not understanding each other. It had to do with taking the opportunity to say we loved each other. Let's hope all of you who read this can say you had an adult to adult relationship with your parents, and quality, rather than quantity is there.



I was not a child left behind. We all find someone who has identifying points for us to make a connection. We will identify. For me, the saviors were my grand parents who accepted and nurtured regardless. Although I seemed like a teen without borders to Tom, (with very strict parents), I was not. I was just pushing buttons, jumping curbs, and finding out that life only has boundaries that you make for yourself.




Commit to life.









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