Linnea

It’s not often a person gets invited to a 100^th birthday party.  In the year 2000 my husband turned 57 and I turned 43.  Since our combined ages was 100, we threw a party, but it wasn’t quite the same as the one I attended in Minnesota last Saturday.

Linnea, the mother of my friend, Barb, turned a hundred years old April 23rd.  I met Barb in 1979 when we were both living in Oregon.  My introduction to Linnea was via the boxes of homemade Swedish cookies she sent Barb every year at Christmas.  Linnea and her husband, Rudy, wrapped each individual little morsel in plastic wrap then carefully packed them in boxes which were sent on the train out West so Barb and her friends could have a little taste of Linnea’s Swedish childhood.  Since she was no longer a Sunday School teacher or Campfire Girl leader, Linnea mothered Barb, her only child, as best she could - long distance.

Rudy died shortly after Linnea’s 80^th birthday and from what I’ve seen, she hasn’t aged a bit since.  She’s a little spitfire with a lot of life left in her.  She’s most thankful these days her eyesight is still good, her hearing is sharp, and she’s pretty mobile - just at a slightly slower speed than years past.  She spends her days cleaning house, petting the cat and participating in as many activities as she can at the retirement center were she now lives.  We’re all thankful her mental capacity hasn’t slowed down one bit.

I’ve known Linnea for only 35 years, so I couldn’t help but ask questions about the 65 years she’d lived before we met.  She talked about her childhood in Sweden and how it was her family came to move to America. Her mother moved to Minneapolis as a young woman and lived there six years before moving back to Sweden to care for a sick brother.  It was there her mother met her father and years later finally convinced him to move to Minneapolis - The Promised Land.  He was in Minnesota only two years before returning to Sweden to take care of some business on the farm and he never returned.  He tried, but U.S. immigration wouldn’t let him back in the country because he’d been out for too long, so Linnea’s parents remained separated and never saw each other again the rest of their lives.  “I don’t know how we managed without him,” she says, followed by this parenthetical comment - “I have this wonderful thing in my head where bad stuff just sort of disappears…”.

When asked about the best days of her 100 years on earth she says “they all were” but the day she got married and the day she gave birth to Barbara were extra special.  The only thing she’d do differently was to “be nicer to everybody.”  And her secret to a long life?   “Well… drink skim milk, get lots of fresh air and don’t over eat.”