The Choice

Stormed raged outside against the wooden walls of the small cabin. Anna pulled her shawl around her shoulders and stared at the flickering candlelight on the rough-hewn table. It was a date in the year 1885, while winter settled heavily over the Dakota Territory. Outside, the wind carried the promise of change; inside, Anna wrestled with a choice that would alter the future of her family.

Ten years before, Anna arrived in America as a young, eager Norwegian desperate to carve a new life. The trip had been long, and the land unforgiving, but she and her husband, Erik, had created something out of nothing. Their farm was very small but a throb with life, children healthy, and visions of wealth tangible. So life was hard, but it was theirs, hewn from the raw and unyielding land. The hard times had made them closer, stronger.

But now stood a letter from her brother, Lars, in Norway, saying their mother was sick and pleading for Anna to return. Anna felt the ache of her past from within her heart. Ever the responsible one, the caretaker, she had always been that way. But this time she was the out one, and she was now faced with a quandary—whether to return to the family she left behind or live with the one she built.

Erik was very practical and was sitting facing her. He said with even a softer tone, "Anna." "The journey is dangerous. The winter ice, the sea crossing-it's not certain you'd make it in time."

She looked at her husband with his calloused hands that built their house, his tired but warm eyes that have shared every hardship with her. Above them, their two boys slept in the loft dreaming of the spring planting. She had once made her choice - long ago - when she left Norway's familiar shores. Could she leave them now for something in her past?

The candle flickered with ghostly shadows on the wall. She imagined her mother's face, frail, yearning. The past and present were going to battle inside her. Memories of childhood flooded back: her mother's hands weaving wool, the smell of fresh-baked bread from their old place, lullabies sung softly in the night. She wished to be beside her mother, comforting her, knowing, however, that torment couldn't drive out the years of separation.

Anna walked to the little trunk that contained her most treasured possessions and, searching through it, found a faded photograph, one of the few she had of home. There was her mother smiling on the paper, frozen in time, young and strong. Not the woman now lying sick in Norway but the one who had always told her to be brave and seek a better life.

Tracing her fingers on her mother's face, she sighed. "I cannot go," she whispered, "but I will write."

At that moment, she felt both loss and release. She would carry her past with her, but she could not return to it. Rather, she would move forward, making sure that there would be no empty sacrifices.

While the storm still raged outside, Anna dipped the pen in ink and steadied her hand. She would write her mother a letter of love, of strength, and of empty promises whose legacy would live on even across the ocean.

She paused, finally starting to write. She described the rolling plains, her first planted crops, and her children's laughter when playing in the fields. She told her mother how she had learned to bake like she had, and that she had sung to her sons the same lullabies as her mother to her. The memories she carried would never fade; they would become part of her new life.

Finally, she put down the pen, and her hands shook. Outside, the storm was slowing down, and the candle's flame remained steady. Carefully Anna placed the letter in an envelope, sealing it off with wax. A prayer followed, one that had soared above the vast ocean, hoping that somehow her mother would feel her love despite the distance.

On the morrow, she would take the letter into town, send it on its way, and as she came back home, she would look ahead, not back, for her choice, no matter how painful, had been the right one. The land he had grown to love, the family he had built-these were his present and future. And the past he would honor not by returning to it, but by keeping it alive in his heart.