She certainly hadn’t planned it. Miss Beemer ran into Gustav’s mother quite by accident. They just happened to be in Springfield shopping on the same day. After a few minutes of small talk and trying on several pairs of gloves, Miss Beemer asked the question as casually as she possibly could, being careful to place the inquiry in an unobtrusive position in the conversation as a way to make it seem less important than it was.
Before she spoke, Miss Beemer reached over and put on a pair of gray kid gloves, and while looking at them, she held them up and asked, “What do you think of these, Mrs. Tildholme? I’m not so sure about the buttons. Oh, and how is Gustav? Have you heard from him lately?” She looked at her gloves again. “No, these are far too fancy,” she said, and took them off again, her heart pounding, waiting for her answer.
Mrs. Tildholme studied the gloves and said, “Yes, I agree…too many buttons. Oh, Gustav.” Then she sighed and shook her head. “That boy. Now he’s gone all the way up to Oregon, lumberjacking for some big outfit. He says he’s making a lot of money, but I wish he’d come home, even for a visit.” Suddenly, Mrs. Tildholme’s eyes lit up with an idea. “Oh, Miss Beemer, would you do me a huge favor? Gustav thought the world of you. Could you write him and tell him to come home? He’d probably listen to you. Young people have a mind of their own these days. They don’t listen to their parents, but they might listen to their teacher. Would you? I have his address.”
The very next morning, Lucille sat down at the small desk in her room and, after a moment, picked up the pen, dipped it in the ink bottle, and began to write.
Dear Gustav,
Hello from Elmwood Springs. I hope you are well. Your mother tells me that you are now a lumberjack. It sounds so wonderfully like a Jack London novel. You have such a good mind. I do hope you are keeping up with your reading….
She crumpled the page and started again.
My Dear Gustav,
Hello from an old friend. Your mother and father miss you terribly and so do…
Dearest Gustav,
This letter is a much-belated hello from your old teacher, Lucille Beemer….
Dear Gustav,
I know it has been a long time since we last spoke, but I think of you so often and always with great affection. I wonder if…
Dear Gustav,
I am so sorry that our last meeting was such an upsetting one. But you must understand that my position as…
She suddenly stopped writing. Oh, Lord. What was she doing? Gustav was not a child. He was a grown man now. She couldn’t write to a grown man and tell him that his mother wants him to come home. And with the new, exciting life he was living now, he might not even remember who she was. Writing to an ex-student of hers in such an intimate way was most inappropriate. It would probably embarrass him to receive such a letter from some silly old maid teacher he once knew. He might even laugh and show it around.
Trying to set her feelings down in words and then seeing them on paper in black and white made her realize how utterly hopeless the situation was. Gustav had obviously gone on with his life. There was nothing she could do, short of making a complete fool of herself. She could see now that she had been living with some made-up dream that, one day, Gustav would come home and tell her that he still loved her.
Just then, she heard a knock on her door. “Miss Beemer, it’s Sonia, the housekeeper, ma’am. Do you have any trash to be taken downstairs?”
“Oh, yes, Sonia. Just a minute…come on in.” Miss Beemer crumpled up the last sheet of paper she had written on, dropped it into her almost-full small wicker wastepaper basket, and handed it to her. “Here you go.”
As Sonia was emptying Miss Beemer’s discarded papers into a larger waste can, she asked, “Busy grading papers?”
“What? Oh, yes.”
“Ah. Well, as they say, a teacher’s work is never done. People just keep having babies, don’t they? But God bless you for what you do. My little one will be with you next year.”
“Yes, I know, and I’m looking forward to meeting her.”
“See you tomorrow,” said Sonia, as she closed the door behind her, leaving Miss Beemer sitting alone at her desk with her empty wastebasket, looking out the window, facing reality. Facing the lonely life ahead of her. But at least she had her students to keep her busy.
1909
As usual, on the Fourth of July, while the ladies were busy setting out the food for the big picnic, all the men and boys were heavily engaged in a serious game of horseshoes. Suddenly, there was a great roar from the men. Katrina stopped and watched in amazement. Her daughter, Ingrid, the only girl in the game, had just pitched another perfect shot.
Ingrid was so different than she had been at that age. So independent. There was no telling what she was going to do with her life. Ingrid was a first-generation American girl, and the world was changing. There were even rumbles about women getting the vote, something Lordor was all for. He said, “If any addle-brained drunken bum off the street could vote, why not the ladies?”
While Lordor loved having a daughter, his neighbor, Henry Knott, was not happy that he only had girls. He often told Lordor that he wished he had a boy to take over the farm someday.
Lordor agreed that it would be nice to have his son take over the business, but Teddy did not want to be a dairy farmer. He was more like his mother and loved to bake. His dream was to own his own bakery one day. And Lordor didn’t mind at all. Some of the best bakers in Sweden were men. He even bought Teddy a white baker’s hat. He just wanted his children to be happy. And as he once told Katrina, “You either love cows or you don’t.”
As the years went by, the dairy farm continued to do well. So well, in fact, that they sent off for even more cows and built four new barns. They didn’t know what had caused it. It could have been something in the soil in this part of Missouri or in the clover they ate. Or it could have been the special cows that Lordor was breeding. But everyone around agreed. The milk and cheese that Lordor’s cows produced was the sweetest. So, they decided to name the farm Sweet Clover Dairy.
While Teddy did not show any interest in the dairy business, their neighbor boy, fifteen-year-old Ander Swensen, did. And he absolutely idolized Lordor. According to some, Lordor was the best dairyman in the state, and Ander wanted to grow up and be a dairyman just like him.
Since Lordor was his best friend, Lars Swensen asked him if he would take Ander under his wing and teach him the dairy business from the ground up. Lordor was more than happy to do it. He liked Ander. He was a sincere boy, a fast learner, and a good worker. And so Ander moved in with the Nordstroms and did not mind a bit. He loved working with Lordor every day. And there was another reason. A pretty girl named Ingrid.
The next letter Katrina received from her friend Anna Lee contained surprising news—something that Katrina would never have expected to hear.