By Sydney Glasoe Caraballo
A 6-year-old girl sitting below me in the bleachers turns around, looks up at me, pops a red Skittle into her mouth and says, “Sugar is my thing.”
I tell her I’m fond of sugar as well. “I eat other things too,” she says, “But sugar is definitely my favorite. Hey, do you know anyone playing?”
I let her know that her distant cousin and my daughter are playing on the basketball court together. Hayden, who also informs me that her name rhymes with Aiden – another cousin who lives here in North Dakota – tells me she has traveled all the way from Minnesota to watch this game. She and her family are visiting relatives and spending time on the farmstead that her great-great-grandfather, Charlie Fortier, built and where his grandson, Jay, now farms and ranches northeast of Wildrose.
I tell Hayden that I knew her dad when he was just a baby and that one of her great aunts is a dear friend with whom I grew up. She raises her eyebrows, eyes widening, and says, “Really?”
I top that by telling Hayden that her grandmother used to babysit me. The eyebrows furrow, eyes squinting up at me in disbelief. Her reaction could be due to her grandmother aging more gracefully than me; my statement might seem unbelievable. Hopefully, her response is a mind blown by all the connections between her and this middle-aged, random lady she decided to befriend at a basketball game.
Later that evening my daughter will go with Jay’s daughter to babysit Hayden and her siblings at the Wildrose home of her great-grandmother, Marlene Fortier. I forget to tell Hayden that Marlene was my kindergarten teacher and one of several Wildrose ladies that held stand-in mom status with our generation of neighborhood girls.
I also don’t think to tell her stories about her great grandfather, Farrell “Bud” Fortier. He and my father both farmed and ranched and sat together at one basketball, volleyball game and track meet after another while watching their daughters. One favorite memory is when they drove together from Wildrose to Grand Forks for the 1992 state track meet to cheer on their daughters who ran the two-mile relay together. (Bud’s daughter also qualified in multiple individual distance events). Burly, barrel-chested and blessed with the gift of gab, Bud and Art quickly struck up conversations with other parents and fans in the stands. When another parent verbally assumed Bud’s daughter and Art’s three daughters had qualified in shot put and discus field events based on the physical structure of the stout farmers, Bud and Art quickly corrected him that their four girls were long-distance runners. The fan’s look of disbelief was probably similar to that of Hayden when I told her that her grandmother was my babysitter.
As the varsity girls’ basketball team warms up, I get up to visit another Minnesotan and former classmate who has arrived with his family to watch his niece play. He and his brother had a heated shop at their farm where my sisters and I would go to play a friendly game of HORSE and scrimmage with the boys when we were children.
Later I cross the gym to the opposing side during the six games of basketball played at Ray to visit with rivals who became friends more than 30 years ago when we used to play the game. When I return to our cheering section, we are surrounded by multiple families and dear friends with longtime farming and ranching ties. That evening I stop at the Wildrose Mixer to visit with Hayden’s parents, two of Marlene’s visiting daughters and the Fortier families who remain and maintain the family legacy of ranching. We also celebrate the birthday of a friend, Michelle Dhuyvetter, who was a classmate of my aunt and whose son plays basketball with my son. Her husband and family operated the last dairy farm in Divide County and farm full time. Another son of theirs has moved back with his young family to farm.
While less than 2 percent of Americans farm and ranch, our community is blessed to have fifth, sixth and seventh generations return. Community is strong here. Memory, story, and familial ties bind us to the land, livestock, legacy and each other. I think of Bud in those moments that Hayden strikes up a conversation with me – how much he is missed and how his same wry wit and gift of storytelling lives on in this sweet and funny 6-yearold.
The ties that bind us, one generation after the next and in between, connect and sustain. An affirmation and resolution.
That night as another new year draws closer, Hayden asks my daughter to sit beside her at bedtime. She tells Riley Jo that she is a basketball player too, that she loves visiting the farm and many other things, until she reluctantly drifts off to sleep with unsaid stories that wait to be shared.