The Invention of Lefse by Larry Woiwode

Author:Larry Woiwode [Feedbooks]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781433527395
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Don’t mention meat!” Hilde held her stomach that bulged so big Mette knew a baby rested in its infant’s curl inside . “Ma,” she said, “there’s hardly half our milk left. It must have spilled when Jed jumped at Papa’s shot.”

“Is cream on top?”

“Some, yes.”

“Churn it.”

Mette churned and churned, watching a pair of matching wooden paddles spinning inside a glass jar, and then hands that could only be her pa’s had hold of her.“Honey, you’re asleep.” He lifted her and she felt his silky, giving beard soft on her cheek. “Time for bed.”

He carried her to a corner, held up the sheet once encircling her dress as she changed to her nightgown, and then carried her to the sitting room, dim and quiet except for the fire, and settled her on a bench where her cousins slept. Mette breathed in the summer aroma of heated pine, and said to her papa, “Will you tell me a story?”

“It’s late, dear, and I’m feeling, O, so—”

“Bad?”

“Ja, but not so bad, either, now.”

“Hey!” Grampy called. “Does big little Mette crave a story?”

“I asked Papa to tell me one.”

“Get your skinny little body over here!”

“Da-ad!”

Mette’s papa carried her to the rocker and set her in Grampy’s smoky smelling arms. “I got a bushel of energy for all I don’t eat,” he said, starting to rock, clang, stamp! clang, stamp! “So open your ears to my story. Or are you too old? I don’t know anymore how old you are, but you’re big!”

“O, Grampy, you know.”

“All my daughters, the three oldest, your ma especially, liked these stories of mine, and knew when to give up sleep and sit for a story. So let me tell you the story of a girl, and I’ll call her Mimi Obersdatter.”

“Grampy, that’s awfully close to me!”

“All my names are. It’s about a girl, and the story is in Norway. Here, wait, before I go on you got to lean on my shoulder, there, like that. So now. Well, now, where was I going?”

“Mmm,” Mette said, sleepy. “The story—”

“Mimi Obersdatter!”

“Mmm, close to me.”

“She starts her morning in Norway at the century of my birth, the twenty-first, back in 1896—”

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