MEMORY FOR MIKKEL

When I was a young girl I lived on a small farm.
Do you remember visiting it and climbing the big hill?

You liked the flowers that grew in the grass.

I liked to climb that hill.
I loved the flowers.

I loved to look down into the valley and out across it and the river and hills to the far away mountains. Tractors and combines just over the river looked like tiny toys.  To ride over there on our horses took 2 or 3 hours and I knew that to get to the mountains we had to drive all day in a car - they were so far away that the brown rocks appeared blue - but I could see those mountains when I stood on that hill behind our house.

The world is so big and yet so small too.

Many flowers grow in the sparse grass even though the only water comes from rain.

One of my favorite flowers is the Alberta Rose.
It blooms and makes red 'rose hips' (those look like big berries) all year long - in the spring and the summer and until the snow freezes it (and then the red rose-hips are pretty in the white snow) .

Rose pink peeks out of the grass and tall tangled thickets of rose briers where ever and when ever there is a little bit of water. Pink even pops up in the gravel along the edge of roads, where the dirt and rocks are so dry and so hard to grow that only one or two flowers grow on tiny bushes that are just a few inches tall.

Papa-pa took some pictures for me when we went to visit my mom and dad last week. We stopped the car and he sat on the ground by the road.

We did not have smooth paved highways by our farm.  The roads were covered in gravel to help them to not be muddy and some were just tracks in the dirt.  Lots of the roads had grass growing in the middle where the tires of the cars do not go.

I loved to walk along the road (or climb the hill) and see the roses.  There were bright pink roses, light pink roses, and very rarely a white one.

a unusual white wild rose that Papa happened on

They smell so good!  Sometimes I would pick some petals and just hold them so I could inhale that wonderful smell again and again. I would pinch them (to make the smell stronger) and hold them to my nose as I walked.  There were so many that I could just get more anytime the ones I had were too bruised and worn out.

When you were just tiny you would stop to ooh and aah over flowers.  You were not even a year old and would toddle along holding my finger and stop to love up the flowers.

You are very strong and tough.  We try to teach you to be gentle. When you are so strong that can be very difficult. We taught you that if you squeezed flowers too hard they would not be pretty anymore.

Mikkel, always remember to try to be gentle.  Be gentle to everyone, all the time.

We love you very much.
Happy Birthday.