Emerg Infect DisEmerging Infect. DisEIDEmerging Infectious Diseases1080-60401080-6059Centers for Disease Control and Prevention3323248AD-101010.3201/eid1010.AD1010Another DimensionAnother DimensionClose CallClose CallHansonPhebeAddress for correspondence: EID Editor, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Rd NE, Mailstop D61, Atlanta, GA 30333, USA; email: eideditor@cdc.gov102004101017591759Keywords: Spanish FluPhoebe HansonClose CallPoemPoetryAll my life my father refused to talk abouthis boyhood in Norway. "No," he'd say whenI cajoled him for details. "I'm an American now."The only thing he'd ever talk about was how he'dended up in Minneapolis at Augsburg Seminary,the story of his "close call," as he referred to it.He was the only one of his three brothers and sisterwho emigrated. "He broke our mother's heart," my aunttold me when I visited her in Norway many years later.She gave me the picture she'd taken the day he left, theday after Christmas, 1920. He's impossibly young, alreadywearing his life-long uniform — black suit, vest, white shirt, tie,ready to go off to America, even if his mother'sheart is breaking, because he had to fulfill a promisehe made when he got the Spanish Flu, summer of 1918."Twenty two million people died," he was fond of telling me,"twice as many as died in World War I, but I didn't die.When I was choking and close to death, my mothercalled the village doctor who performed a tracheotomyright on our kitchen table and I promised then I'd serveGod forever if He wouldn't let me die. It was a close call."Close call, I say, echoing my father, now dead these 20 years.How close he came to being one of the 22 million, how healmost didn't make it to America, almost didn't spend asummer in Duluth, preaching at the Norwegian Seaman'sMission, almost didn't meet my mother whose youth groupwas serving coffee and cake after the service, almost didn'tmarry her, almost didn't make love with her that warm Juneevening of 1927, the night I was conceived, in the white frameparsonage in Bagley, Minnesota. Close call. Close call.Phebe Hanson (b. 1928)
From Why Still Dance, Nodin Press, 2003.
Reprinted with author’s permission.
Suggested Citation: Emerg Infect Dis [serial on the Internet]. 2004, Oct [date cited]. http://dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid1010.AD1010