Hey Maze,

I thought you deserved a blog post from me since I’ve had the pleasure of reading so many from you. I tried writing just a regular blog post, but got all up in my head about what to say even though no one will read it. I realized that I was here starting to write because of you so I should just write to you.

It’s been a little over two weeks since you left and I’m like you, I don’t actively miss people much. It feels like you are at St. Olaf even though you are 4,000 miles away. I will see you in less than two months when we visit and between the Marco Polos, texts, family texts, photos and blog posts, you are here with me virtually. And I’m so truly, genuinely excited that you are in Spain studying, exploring, traveling to so many amazing places, meeting new people and having an adventure. And to add to all of that, so many times when we are together I feel like I annoy you with my voice or questions and when you are away we have an easier relationship. After saying all of that, I do miss you. You are my little girl and I wish you would just stay here forever with us and be my best friend. And I know you feel sort of similar. But we both know that’s not how life works and if that reality played out it would be very weird and sad. You are meant to go off and do your own things, have your own life. Thankfully I get to be a part of it. I just miss the physicality of you, the living, breathing presence of you here.

I’m not here to wax or wane about missing you or whatever, I just think that sometimes because dad is the “missing you” person one could think that I don’t care or don’t miss. I think for me the missing is just overpowered by all of the good stuff and dad’s more active form of missing, so my missing gets lost in the shuffle. I don’t want to be the person who is holding you back from flying, so perhaps I error on the side of pushing you away too much. It’s hard to find the balance I guess.

On to differetnt topics. Grandma Kaye took dad, myself and Tyler out for dinner to Martina to celebrate dad’s birthday. She ordered a glass of wine and I almost crapped myself. In all of the years that I’ve known her, which is all of my years, I’ve never seen her order a glass of anything that contained alcohol. I’ve seen her partake in a glass of wine that someone else has purchased for her or put in front of her, but never ever have I witnessed her ordering such a think unprompted. Goes to show that people can surprise you whatever their age : ). The rest of the dinner was lovely. Dad was in charge and ordered several things that we all shared. Our server was top notch and we all had a nice time chatting. Of course we wrapped up the dinner with two panqueques, cause how could you not?

I told you over text that another person was shot and killed by ICE here in Minneapolis over the weekend. I can’t bring myself to watch any of the footage that captures the shooting, but I have read a lot about it. This man was on the ground with his hands behind his back when he was shot 10 times by ICE. That’s an impossible thing to justify even if you give ICE all of the benefits of all of the doubts. Tensions are high and people are scared. In spite of all of the negative, seeing everyone come together to help those people who are scared to leave their homes fills me with pride for Minnesota. It’s truly remarkable how many different people, aid organizations, restaurants and stores are gathering supplies, money, groceries and bringing them to the people who need them.

I was at Bridging this morning and Jean (she’s your favorite one) was back for the first time in 12 weeks. She broke her ankle in early November and today she was finally healed enough to come and work. It was really nice to see her and catch up. She has a friend who has cancer and she was telling me this harrowing story about what this woman has gone through over the last month or so. It’s easy to get down about my own health challenges, but when you hear stories like that it reminds me that I have nothing to complain about and instead I should focus more on being thankful for my relative health.

Axel got home from the hospital on Saturday and the Lundeen’s had Lucas and Stella over so that Michelle and Hector could put all of their care and effort into getting him situated and comfortable being back at home. Every picture that they share of him he looks so sad. Grandma reminded me of how bad she felt after her hip surgery and she imagined that he is in similar pain. I just wish him a speedy recovery. He’s the sweetest and his path is so often difficult. The kid could use a win or two.

This weekend we are going to head the to cabin and Tyler will drive us there. It will be his first time driving 70, but he’s now driven on the highway a decent amount so I don’t think it will be too big of an adjustment. I’m guessing dad and Tyler will spend lots of time in the hot tub and I will spend lots of time in front of a puzzle…so it goes : ). Tonight dad has his book club. He listened to 15 minutes of his book and decided it was boring so it will be another book club where dad hasn’t read the book.

Speaking of dad, he got his book The Yearly Thing in the mail today. He was pretty excited about it and brought it with him to work so he could show the guys in his book club. I looked through it a bit this afternoon and came to the conclusion that he did a good job with it. I had a hard time understanding what could possibly be interesting about turning his newsletter into a book, but he could see it and I think he was right. Why is he right about so many things (candle lids being just one of the things)? It stands alone as a worthwhile thing and as an archive of the Weekly Thing it is very successful.

Well I think that’s going to wrap up this first letter/blog post to you. Perhaps I will write a few more as time goes on.

Love,

Mom

PS: The first picture I included is us at Yum a couple of days after the 20th anniversary of our first visit to Yum. Dad had wanted to go on Thursday which was the actual 20 year anniversary, but I didn’t remember that it was on the calendar and made dinner by mistake. I sort of felt like the anniversary wasn’t worth celebrating since you weren’t here, but dad was really into it. So on Saturday night we made our way there and dad took several pictures of the event. And as you can tell in the picture, I got eyelashes again. The second picture is of the vigil in our neighborhood on Saturday night. Dad and I went after dinner at Yum. It was very nice, small, peaceful and we sang lots of repeating songs including Peace Like A River. There were small gatherings all over the city.