Remembering Grandpa Sundeen

When I was a young teenager, my family went "up North" to spend weekends with our family friends, The Franzens, at their parents' cabin / home.  It was so cool.   On a big piece of property, they were situated at the edge of Little Stone Lake, north of Two Harbors and west of Lake Superior.   There was a sauna down by the dock and a bunk house up the hill from the cabin.

The kids (and there were plenty of us) were sent to the bunk house at night and the adults had the cabin.  It was really great.  At that age, to sleep in a different building than my parents was just, "too cool."  The bunk house had an old Victrola record player along with plenty of records.  And it still worked.  Tons of comic books from the 50's and 60's, a pot bellied stove and many bunk beds lining the walls.  The musty smell, combined with wet wool (our mittens and scarves), burning birch logs in the stove and freshly showered kids still comes to mind.

The times up at the cabin were magical, life affirming and life changing...for everyone who came to stay.  One year (I think it was 1974 or '75), we were "snowed in."  The winter's worse storm hit while we were at Grandma and Grandpa Sundeen's, sleeping in the bunk house and dreaming big dreams of adventure, thanks to the comic books.  I remember the snow was banked higher than the windows; we had to dig our way out.  Banks and banks of snow covered the lake.

The only way to civilization, which in that neck of the woods (litteraly), was the country store, an hour or so down the main road (one of which grandpa built) which was a mile or so down the driveway!  So the kids and moms stayed tucked inside and the men took the snowmobiles, two to a sled.  Along the railroad tracks.  They knew these led them to the WhistleStop in Brimson where rations could be purchased and contact made with the outside world.

Later that week, we all got out on the snowmobiles and at one point I remember we stopped along the tracks  (the only place to ride where the snowmobiles wouldn't sink into the powder)  to look at two tall, and I mean tall, wolves sitting with a kill - deer - between them and the black and white birch trees behind them.  They were about 100 yards away...beautiful and eerie...all at the same time.

Eventually roads were cleared and we were on our way home and stopped out on the peninsula of Lake Superior and went over to the Maritime Museum and discovered it had closed and so we began exploring.  There was a motel where all the windows were smashed on the side facing the lake due to the storm.  How bizarre.  We climbed frozen waves that were at least 10 -12 feet high along Lake Superior.  Yeah.  Insane.  Life back then was so complicatedly simple.  My parents and their friends were living life large and we road their coat-tails.  It was great fun for all!

There was another time in the summer when we were all taking turns in the sauna early in the evening, and all the girls decided to dance down by the lake, bare naked in the moonlight.  My mother remembers it well, "You girls were little... and we adults were just sitting in the kitchen talking when we caught a glimpse of you running around outside and it was dark so all we saw were those little white butts running around!"  Wow!  That was fun.  running around after baking in the steam of a wood-burning sauna.  WOW!  What memories.  And these are just highlights.  Not to mention the berry picking with grandma, the quiet moments of playing games or just sitting and drawing (for me).  Stories of Grandpa being caught on the roof because a bear decided to knock down the ladder and squat.  I think this is lore....Something I heard later in my life; stories recanted at my mom's kitchen table!

All great times in my teen years...times of laughter, tears and moments of becoming...becoming a teenager, becoming a young woman...becoming a friend to my mother and her best friend, my second mom, D.J. (Grandpa and Grandma Sundeen's daughter).  Grandpa helped to forge the freeways, highways and bi-ways throughout the northern woods of Minnesota and The Dakotas.  He was quite the maverick for his time.  And Grandma was the quintessential Sweedish mother, wife and grandmother for her time.  :)  Loved her Ginger Snap cookies.  :) yum.  I think Mrs. Franzen made Krumkake Cookies, yum, yum, yum.

Grandma passed away quite a while ago, but just two days ago, Grandpa made his exit.  They truly loved each other.  :)  hmmmmmm.  The word that just keeps coming up in regard to Grandpa is "Gentleman."  And that he was.  I just remember his laugh.  It was always a quiet one but it was full.  A laugh that had meaning...which is in honor of his nordic ways of being.  I also remember the jokes.  A joke book in the john, (ha! haven't used that phrase for ....decades!), jokes at breakfast, jokes during the football games, jokes at dinner....always fun and laughter for all to be had.

Thank you Grandpa!

In memory of Grandpa Milton Sundeen, thank you for sharing your home, bunk house, and laughter with us little rug rats!  You are forever a part of me.

I would like to list two of my favorite poems in memory of our loved ones who leave us for their next way of being:

Afternoon on a Hill  by Edna St. Vincent Milay I will be the gladdest thing    Under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers    And not pick one. I will look at cliffs and clouds    With quiet eyes, Watch the wind bow down the grass,    And the grass rise. And when lights begin to show    Up from the town, I will mark which must be mine,    And then start down! I have always thought this poem was about  moving from this world to the next, transcending  the existence of body and into the next way being.   :)  It's such a dainty little poem, perhaps this one  would be better, one by Dr. Seuss comes to mind: “How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon.  December is here before its June.  My goodness how the time has flewn.  How did it get so late so soon?” Peace Out, Deeba in Jakarta