A special prize for answering the earlier quiz...

...goes to Gayle, who sent me a quick email in response to my previous entry to say that “I'm almost positive it [Grandma Orstad’s name] is Myrtle Lucille, not Lucille Myrtle.” Huh? Who knew—besides Gayle?

I tried to double-check this information by making a three-way call to Mom at Rehab Center of ABQ and to Aunt Phyllis, Mom’s sister, in Park River. Both agreed that it was EITHER Lucille Myrtle or Myrtle Lucille.

So I made another call to the ND Division of Vital Records, spoke to the same woman, Courtney, I’d talked to earlier, and got her promise to note the alternative name for Grandma on the search request for Mom's birth certifcate.

Courtney said that we should expect the certificate to arrive by tomorrow. Whew! One step closer to getting Mom’s ID in time for our 8:15 a.m. flight to Minneapolis this coming Thursday.

Eeeeek! My mother has no ID!

And do you know what that means? She can’t board a plane without one. No matter that we have tickets—she, David, and I—to fly off to Minneapolis in four days, the first leg of our journey to North Dakota.

David and I have been digging through every drawer and box of records in our respective homes that might possibly contain Mom’s old New Mexico ID, her social security card, an old Medicare card—any proof of identity that will let us complete the transaction I attempted last Saturday: to get her an ID and a handicap placard at the Motor Vehicle Department.

Neither David nor I snapped to the fact that she’d have to have a government-issued ID to show at the airport until that moment.

So early this morning, I called the North Dakota Division of Vital Records to find out just what we could do to get Mom’s birth certificate, the most difficult piece of identification to acquire at this late date. It turns out we can get the certificate expedited to us by tomorrow if David faxes the request form, his power of attorney document, his photo ID, and some money to the Vital Records office by 10:00 Central Daylight Time today. Hallelujah!

David then called Mom at the Rehabilitation Center of Albuquerque to find out Grandma and Grandpa Orstad’s middle names so he could fill out the birth certificate request form. Okay, sibs: Quiz time! What are our maternal grandparents’ full names? (Answers below.)

I also have a call into the Rehab Center of ABQ business office to see if they have any documents or cards that would help us prove Mom’s NM residency and her ownership of her social security number.

I believe we’re going to be able to get Mom an ID before Thursday. We'd better. I promised Mom we'd go if we had to walk--and one of us push her wheelchair.

Answers to the quiz above: Elmer Martin Orstad and Lucille Myrtle Thompson are our grandparents’ full names. Sorry, no prizes for correct answers.

My mother’s pilgrimage to North Dakota

One day back in March or April of this year, my 85-year-old mother told me she’d like to see the farm in northeastern North Dakota where she grew up “one more time.” She and I were sitting in her room at the Rehabilitation Center of Albuquerque, the nursing home where she’s lived since early 2007 after several falls and other health events made it dangerous for her to live alone anymore.

“Well, okay,” I said, mostly kidding, “let’s go to North Dakota for the 4th of July this year. Park River [a town near her family’s farm where she and my dad had lived during the early years of their marriage] is having its 125th reunion then, so we could see a lot of people we know at the same time.”

To be honest, I doubted she’d even consider it since, in previous years, she’d refused my enticements to visit this relative or that in other states.

This time, however, after a quick look of surprise that turned to revelation, she replied with warmth in her voice, “Yes! Let’s!”

Still, I was skeptical, thinking she might be humoring me. But I emailed my five siblings to tell them what she’d said.

To make a long story short—if it’s not too late for that—several of her children (all of us between 63 and 45, mind you) who spoke to her in the next several weeks confirmed her desire to see the farm where she’d been born and raised. At that point, I started to make the necessary plans.

And so, on July 2, 2009, Mom, my brother David, and I will fly Northwest Airlines nonstop from Albuquerque, NM, to Minneapolis, MN, arriving there around noon. Then we’ll rent a car and drive 304 miles to Grafton, ND, where we have reservations at the AmericInn Motel for the next four nights.

Grafton is a quick 17.1 miles on Highway 17 from Park River, which—with a population of 1,535 as of the 2000 census—has only one motel. I’m told the Alexander House Motel in Park River has been booked for the last year-and-a-half by folks planning to attend the reunion. But, with help from my sister-in-law (-okay: ex-) Gayle Hove King, I found lodging at the Grafton AmericInn.