By April in Duluth is a liar.
It tells you spring is coming — the light shifts, the days get longer, you find yourself thinking about the garden — and then it snows six inches overnight and you are shoveling the driveway in the dark at seven in the morning while Sven watches you from the front window with an expression that communicates, very clearly, that he is glad he is not you. He is a wise dog.
Paul took the left side. I took the right. We met in the middle, same as we have for twenty-seven years, same as we will for however many years come after this. It is not romantic. There is nothing romantic about shoveling in the dark in April when you thought you were done with this two months ago. But Paul handed me a cup of coffee when we came back inside — he’d started it while I was finishing the front walk — and I thought: that’s it. That’s the whole thing right there. After twenty-seven years, the coffee waiting on the counter is the romance. You stop needing the gestures when you have the coffee.
I called Mamma on Sunday, as I do every Sunday.
She is eighty-five and still living alone in the house on Fifth Street where I grew up, which makes everyone nervous except Mamma. She says she has lived in that house since 1962 and she will not leave until they carry her out, and even then she will put up a fight. She is five feet two inches of Swedish stubbornness and I come by my own stubbornness honestly. She sounded sharp. She told me about the lutefisk supper at church — “the cod was acceptable but the mashed potatoes were from a box, Linda, I could tell” — and I did not point out that she can always tell, that she has been telling for eighty-five years, that her ability to detect a boxed potato from across a church fellowship hall is one of her most consistent and least useful talents. I just said “I know, Mamma” and meant it.
She asked about the grandchildren. She means Anna’s kids — Sophie, who is finishing her junior year of high school down in Minneapolis and has become, by all accounts, a serious and slightly terrifying young woman; Jakob, who is sixteen and interested in nothing except video games, which Mamma finds baffling and slightly sinful; and Lena, who is thirteen and has decided she wants to be a marine biologist, which is an ambitious thing to want to be when you grow up in a landlocked state. But Mamma said “the girl has vision” and I agree. The lake is not the ocean, but it teaches you that water is bigger than you are, and that’s the beginning of something.
Peter called from Chicago on Tuesday. He sounded tired.
He always sounds tired lately, and when I ask how things are, he says “fine” in that flat, compressed way that means “not fine, but I do not want to discuss it, and please do not push me, Mother.” I do not push. I am a nurse. I have learned when to push and when to hold still and wait for the patient to come to you. I hold still. I wait. I ask about work, which he answers with slightly more energy, because Peter loves his work the way his father loves shipwreck history — completely and without apology — and it is the one place he sounds like himself.
I have opinions about his wife. I have had opinions about his wife for years. I keep them in a sealed container in the back of my mind, the way Mamma keeps her good crystal — not on display, not discussed, simply stored. I was raised not to say unkind things. I have been keeping these particular unkind things to myself for a long time, and I expect I will continue to do so, because Peter did not ask for my opinions and would not welcome them, and because a mother’s job is not to be right. It is to be there when the call comes.
I am always there when the call comes.
Elsa sent a photograph from Voyageurs on Thursday — a sunset over Rainy Lake that looked like someone had spilled orange paint across the sky, the trees just black silhouettes at the bottom, the whole thing enormous and still. She is twenty-one, my youngest, working as a park ranger up there in a cabin with no reliable cell service, happy as a clam. She is the most like me and the least like me at the same time: she has the Johansson stubbornness, the practicality, the deep attachment to this cold and particular part of the world. But I wanted safety, always. I wanted to know where the walls were. Elsa wants sky. She wants to stand at the edge of something large and feel small in the right way. I understand this better than I let on. I just never wanted it for myself.
I looked at that photograph for a long time. I showed it to Paul and he said, “She got the good light,” and I said, “She always does.”
That evening I made wild rice soup.
This is my own recipe, not Mamma’s. Mamma never cooked much with wild rice because she considered it “not Swedish” and therefore slightly suspect — she applies this same suspicion to anything not Swedish, including, it must be said, Paul, who is technically Norwegian on his mother’s side, a fact she has mentioned approximately once per year since our wedding in 1988. I have stopped counting. I have started considering it an anniversary tradition.
Wild rice is Minnesota, not Scandinavia, which is why I love it the way I love this state: complicated, particular, not for everyone. It takes a long time and it rewards patience. It goes thick and creamy in a way that feels like the opposite of April. It makes the kitchen smell like autumn when there is snow on the ground and you are not yet done being tired of snow.
The recipe is simple in the way that honest things are simple: butter and onion and celery and carrots, flour to thicken, good chicken broth, wild rice that you have to cook separately because wild rice does not hurry for anyone, and then cream. Heavy cream. I know some people use half-and-half and I understand that, and I do not judge it, and I will not do it. I am a Scandinavian woman. We do not fear dairy. We have never feared dairy. Fear of dairy is for people who have not spent a winter in Duluth and do not understand what it is asking of you.
You cook it low and slow, which is the instruction I give for almost everything that matters. You do not rush the rice. You do not rush the broth. You wait for the moment when it all comes together into something thick and golden and warm, and then you call your husband in from the living room where he has been reading about men who drowned in this lake a hundred and twenty years ago, and you set two bowls on the table, and you eat.
Paul had two bowls. I had one and a half. Sven sat at Paul’s feet the entire meal with the focused, philosophical patience of a dog who knows exactly what he is waiting for. Paul slid him the last spoonful from the second bowl when he thought I wasn’t looking. I am always looking. I have been always looking for twenty-seven years. I do not say anything because Paul’s face when he gives Sven a spoonful of soup is one of the private small pleasures of my life, and some pleasures you protect by pretending not to see them.
Outside, the snow was still coming down. The fog horns on the lake were going. Somewhere on Fifth Street, Mamma was probably in her kitchen, putting the dishes away, not from a box.
I washed the pot and felt, for the first time all week, like myself.
The soup that brought me back to myself that night is one I’ve been making for years—my version of a Minnesota wild rice soup, the kind that asks nothing of you except a little time and a willingness to stand at the stove. I make it when the lake is loud and the week has been long and I need something that feels like it has always existed. Here is how it goes.
Minnesota Wild Rice Soup
Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 1 hour | Total Time: 1 hour 20 minutes | Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 1 cup uncooked wild rice
- 3 cups water (for cooking the rice)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt (for the rice water)
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 medium yellow onion, diced small
- 3 stalks celery, diced small
- 3 medium carrots, peeled and diced small
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
- 6 cups good chicken broth (homemade if you have it, low-sodium if you don’t)
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground
- Salt to taste
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped (optional, for serving)
Instructions
- Cook the wild rice. Combine the wild rice, 3 cups of water, and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 45 to 50 minutes, until the rice has opened and is tender but still has a little chew to it. Drain any excess water and set the rice aside. Wild rice does not hurry. Start it first and let it do its work while you build the soup.
- Sweat the vegetables. In a large heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the onion, celery, and carrots and cook, stirring occasionally, for 8 to 10 minutes, until the vegetables are softened and the onion is translucent. Add the garlic and cook for one minute more. Do not rush this step. The sweetness you are building here is the foundation of everything.
- Make the roux. Sprinkle the flour over the vegetables and stir to coat evenly. Cook the flour mixture for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. It should smell faintly nutty. This is what will make your broth thick rather than thin, and thick is what you are after on a cold night.
- Add the broth. Pour in the chicken broth slowly, whisking or stirring as you go to prevent lumps. Add the thyme and black pepper. Raise the heat to medium-high and bring the soup to a gentle boil, stirring occasionally, then reduce to a low simmer. Let it cook for 15 minutes, until it has thickened slightly.
- Add the rice and cream. Stir in the cooked wild rice. Pour in the heavy cream. Stir everything together and let the soup simmer on low — do not boil it now — for another 10 minutes, until it is thick, creamy, and the rice has fully integrated. Taste for salt and adjust as needed.
- Serve. Ladle into bowls. A little fresh parsley on top if you have it, but it is not required. Eat while it is hot, by the window if you have a good one, with someone you love across the table if you are lucky enough to have that. If you are cooking for fewer than six, this soup keeps well in the refrigerator for four days and reheats beautifully with a splash of broth to loosen it.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 310 | Protein: 8g | Fat: 18g | Carbs: 30g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 620mg