From Solveig's journal

[pegkerr]

I said I wasn't going to do this.

But hell, I can change my mind. I'm throwing you a cookie. This is what I wrote this morning. I don't even know if it'll go in the book. I figure it's short. Don't say I never did anything for you. (Note: for those of you who aren't from Minnesota, "Mor" is "Mom" in Norwegian and "Mormor" is what you call the maternal grandmother.)

From Solveig's journal:

When I came to pick up Ingrid today, I found a note on the door saying that they'd walked down to the kiddie pool at the park. So I drove there and found them basking in the sun beside the pool. Ingrid was soaked, of course, her hair a mess of tangles, and she was totally happy. When I walked up, Ingrid was telling Mor that she'd grown an inch in the past two months. Mor held up her hand so that Ingrid could put her palm against it to compare sizes.

I had such a strange feeling, looking at their two hands together, Mor’s speckled
with age spots, bony at the knuckles, and Ingrid’s so small and soft. It took me a
minute to realize why. Seeing their hands that way made me remember back to an
afternoon that I spent with my Mormor when I was a girl myself, a couple of years
before she died. We were playing a game of double solitaire, and I noticed for the first
time the spots on her hand and asked her where they came from. "That happens when
people get old," she told me simply.

I looked down at my own hand. It isn't small and soft and plump anymore, the
way it was when I was a girl. The skin over my knuckles is still smooth, and there are
no age spots on it yet. I suddenly had a picture in my mind of some day in the future
years from now, when I'll be with Ingrid’s daughter, and my hand will be the one gnarled and speckled with spots.

And Mor will be gone.

I reached out and squeezed both their hands with mine, and then drew Ingrid’s
away. "It's time to go," I said.

Peg