(from) First Promises: 21

32 the minnesota review Greg Nelson (from) First Promises 21 Dad taught me to think and work and believe. The Minnesota farm boy who was ten when the Depression hit who with his parents, five brothers and two sisters sat up straight in church every Sunday who worked his way through high school and college sixteen hours laying asphalt every summer day and graduated number one in his class the first Nelson to finish college in America also taught me baseball and humor as we waxed the car and raked up leaves on Saturday morning. In a different world I'm my father's son. Mom taught me but her restlessness, her desperate cries in the night at some nameless fear when Dad was at sea taught me something I can't trace back to the source. Teacher, comforter, lover of Frost, in and out of character she made me hear her sense of the real—how tender, how private and impossible. The sound of rain falling on everything. ...