August 29, 2020

Family was important to Eva Carlson, my grandmother, because she was robbed of hers at age seven. In 1922, Grandma, her mother, and five younger siblings were taken from their two-room log cabin home nestled in the woods near Deer River, Minnesota. Her mother had become mentally ill from a high fever, and the children were fending for themselves, eating mayonnaise from the jar and wild berries growing in the woods.

June 15, 2020

Seconds. That’s all it took—and he was gone. While waiting in a check-out lane at Walmart, my three-year-old son Jordan begged for a treat. Who could blame him, tempted by rows of eye-level candy? Ignoring his pleas, I unloaded my cart. At the next glance, he was missing.

July 7, 2020

When my parents married in 1962, they moved to the old farmhouse where my dad had grown up. Actually, he’d never left home and, at eighteen, wasn’t fully grown either. My grandparents had upgraded to a used Liberty single-wide trailer and relocated within walking distance of the home place. True love could be the only reason my mother began this new chapter of life in this antiquated house.