I know this picture isn’t of very good quality, but I just love the happiness and silliness in it. The kids at the top of the steps are my cousins and I love how I’m looking at them like, “it’s been fun; gotta go – see you later!”

This picture of me and Dad has always been my favorite. This was a different man than the one I eventually knew. Happier times; delightful times.

The farm where I grew up

I grew up on a farm outside of a small town with a population less than 150. My dad was farm-proud; a second-generation family farmer. My mom was from a small North Dakota town near Minot. They’d been married two years when they adopted me.

"Who are these people?" She wonders. My adoption day Aug 68

At home, at last

I remember small glimpses from my first four years; I remember my mom sewing and crafting and taking me along to town for shopping. I remember when my little brother Darrin joined our family when I was two. I remember time spent with my aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents. I remember addressing my mom as “Delores,” instead of “Mommy” and her giving me a look.

I'm in an antique stroller that Dad still has.

I remember making gifts for my dad while he was working in the field: I’d fill a shoe box with marshmallows and scribbles I’d made on paper, and he’d always act extremely pleased when I presented these to him.

At Auntie Bunny's home in Sacramento

I remember making “movies….” I’d arrange items on the ironing board set up in our dining room on laundry days, and then turn out the dining room light and invite my parents in to view the scene while I narrated. I remember my parents taking Darrin and I to real movies at the outdoor theater near Crookston. They’d make popcorn at home and bring it along. Darrin and I would stay awake in the backseat of the blue Ford we drove back then until the kiddie feature – a cartoon (I recall Woody Woodpecker) – was over, and then we fell asleep under blankets and wouldn’t wake up until Dad started the car to drive home. I remember dreaming once that my mom got stopped by the police because I was lying in the backseat of the car and the police thought I was dead and that she had killed me. When I woke up from the dream, I told my mom I couldn’t sleep because I had a bad dream, but I was too afraid to tell her what the dream was about.

Mom, Darrin and I on my third birthday..wonder what I'm saying?

In August of 1972, when I was four, I woke up late one night to discover my parents were both gone. My Aunt Vivian – came out of my parents’ bedroom where she’d been resting when she heard me fussing. She told me my mom was sick and at the hospital with my dad. My brother was crying in his crib. The next morning I watched as my aunt washed the sheets from my parents’ bed. There was either blood or vomit on them; I can’t remember. Most of this is a blur. I remember my dad’s car turning off the gravel road onto our drive. Darrin and I were on the living room floor playing under the supervision of my aunt and grandma. Dad came into the house saying and crying, “She’s dead, she’s dead, your mommy’s dead.” I remember looking very hard at the carpet.

Me about 2 years old

Details during and after this are so vague. I do remember at the funeral, my dad lifting me up to Mom’s coffin and telling me to touch her and say goodbye, and I whined and squirmed in his arms trying to get away. I remember lots of people being around, and then suddenly, it was just me, my brother, my dad, and my Grandma Law. I used to ask, all the time, when I’d see a structure in the distance while we were travelling that had some mystery to it, “Is that where my mommy is now?” I’m sure it was a torment to my dad. I remember sitting at my mom’s grave stone and laying pine cones all around it so she’d have something to eat if she needed it. A game of the imagination; I knew people didn’t eat pine cones, but maybe dead people did.

My adoptive mom died of hemorrhaging from a cerebral aneurysm. For over 20 years, the circumstances of her death were a mystery to me. After she died, it was if she’d never been. No one talked about her much; Dad didn’t talk to me about her at all that I remember. There seemed to be a pact of moving forward. Her clothes were given away or thrown. Her other things were given back to her family in Langdon. I have wished fervently most of my adult life that I could talk to Dad about her, but I just can’t. It’s always been that way. When I was in my late twenties, I reunited with my aunts and uncles from Mom’s side of the family after having been alienated from them for two decades. I got close with my Aunt Viv, and finally dared to “interview” her about that mysterious night that Mom died. I learned that we’d had a late supper after Dad came in from harvesting the wheat, and then she tucked Darrin and I into our beds. Shortly after that, she and Dad were lying in bed when she complained about not feeling well. She became very ill and lost consciousness. An ambulance came to take her to the hospital in Crookston, and that is where she died. I can’t imagine the terror my dad went through. I can’t imagine the grieving, the mourning, the loss of his dreams that evening. I can’t imagine.

Grandma, Darrin, me, Dad, and Aunt Bunny about a year after mom died

One question I asked Aunt Viv during our interview was if I seemed to understand, at the time, what was happening. She said that she had taken Darrin and I for a walk outside before Dad came home from the hospital, and during the walk, I had asked her, “What am I supposed to do about a mommy now?”

This is Grandma Lyda and Grandpa Eli Law. One of the few photos in which they are together and smiling. I never was to know Grandpa; he died before I had the chance. Later, when I was in my mid-teens, my Grandma took out all her old photos and destroyed the majority of them in which Grandpa was pictured.

This is my dad and his family. My aunties were very important to me. They had distinctly different personalities. Helen, or Bunny, was my favorite; I had a special bond with her. Elaine was the baby of the family and everyone called her Baby. She was loud and funny and got away with speaking her mind.

On one hand, there’s the little girl who grew up with Batman and Robin as best friends and roommates. As she grew, she wrote songs, became a rockstar, an actress, artist and writer, and became famous. She’s had affairs with musicians, had her books featured in Oprah’s bookclub, has won Oscars and Tonys, and there is nothing she cannot do well. Everyone loves her; everyone admires her.

On the other hand is the tangible person who grew up with difficulty and during her childhood, often had only her imagination for company and comfort. She has felt alone, left out, yearning. She is a dreamer, an idealist, and she lives inside her head, both to her benefit and detriment. She has difficulty coping with sadness and her happiness sometimes frightens her. She believes in Karma and struggles to know herself and to be herself. She often feels fragile and unknowable.

The intersection where these two sides meet is where I live. Between my imagination, my heart, my dreams, my insecurities, my hesitancy, my failures and triumphs and everyday life…is me. And who I am I to say which side defines me most? I reconcile the two; without my imaginary, fantastic interior life I would not be who I am today. Nor would I be were my history not what is has been. I am grateful for both…or rather, I work at gratitude for both. I am still learning their significance and impact and what they might mean for my future.

I think my most important need is possibility – that anything might happen, that any dream might come true. Whether something manifests itself or not has become secondary to needing to believe it could.

My 100^th Birthday Story is the culmination of me from past to present and also my hopes for the future. It is my reality – all of it – and it encompasses both dreams and happenings. An honest look at my life will always encompass both.

Thank you for visiting my life.