लेखक: Marilyn Clare

“A student in Expository Writing, Professor John Harkness, at Augsburg College, Minneapolis, Minnesota, announced we were to write a fable. This unexpected assignment prompted deeper exploration of Lake Harriet, where I lived, and the elf house. Missy Mouse Meets THom Elf fable, imaginary in thought, suddenly become a real story.” I lived at Lake Harriet, Linden Hills, in Minneapolis, MN since 1981 with my daughters who graduated from the neighborhood high school. Having lived there, I became acquainted with neighbors, business owners and made many friends. It is claimed as “home;” a place that I am totally in love with. I worked as a professional hairstylist at an upscale salon, but a career change meant to remain the area. I traveled more than twenty miles one way because I liked the area and I traveled to the area, additional, on the weekends to do my shopping. Career change meant many things, but most of all I realized a college education would change my life. After I moved to Lake Harriet, a cousin visited and brought several boxes of family history and memorabilia. She had gone to the Wisconsin State Historical Society and found stories of our ancestors, but it stopped there. My question to her was, “what is our story.” I wondered how we could have several boxes of papers and things with the story unassembled, she had no plan to sort and document or write. Bit I did. I spent the next twelve years sorting, researching, documenting, calling and writing to family members, connecting with Roots Web and Ancestry.com and posting my contact information at these sites. In my hand at the beginning I had the names and addresses of fifty only family members outside my immediate family; this was in the year 1997. By 2002 I invited new found family for a reunion. Nearly five people attended. By that time I had our story for both sides of my family. With all written on two hundred-fifty pages I sent a manuscript proposal to Wisconsin State Historical Society. Within a few weeks a letter of response was sent. Not disappointed by their rejection because they also told me what was needed, “write your story for a broad audience, ” and then I wondered how? One call to Augsburg College confirmed me as their student within two months in their Weekend College For Adults. My long standing passion and desire was to further my education in English as a writer. My first class taught me I was on the right track to fulfill my dream. I carried with me and used personal stories growing up on a farm in Southwest Wisconsin to college and have written several essays. I am holding my grandfather, Peter Bremmer’s story of having owned a dance hall in the late 1920s through late 1940s. I had an affirmative plan to write a fiction based on his story. With the English portion of the program complete, writing Missy Mouse Meets THom Elf was mostly for fun, however, this story began four years ago. I began with the fable assignment in class and when the fable took form successfully and I saw a bigger picture of the story because I continued in writing courses and I lived at Lake Harriet. I was at the lake every day. I learned of the elf house when I first moved there through a friend. I walked the nearly three-mile trail and met many people. Each one had something about the lake that they liked and shared their experiences with me. I have believed that walking is more conducive to meeting people than running. But we all have our reasons why we do things and where we do them. Missy Mouse character developed as I used my imagination. Imagination developed as I continued my English courses. The story, over all, is about me and about the difficulties of life’s changes. My two daughters, Michelle and Margo moved numerous times over several years. Sometimes our moving was very difficult. And then when we moved to Lake Harriet, something about the element fantasy midst everyday realism, I was able to dream dreams of the things I wanted in my life and have them come true. I mean that there is something about Lake Harriet, Linden Hills that the freedom to expl