For each of us, there are some people who intersect with our own life and change it–forever and for the better. For me, LaNelle Olson was such a person. Today,on her ninetieth birthday, she is still very present for me. Indelible.

In Northfield, Minnesota right now, the weather is betwixt and between as summer slides into fall. And nothing feels just as it should on this overcast, humid-but-dry, green-but-crisping afternoon.

Many of you, too, knew LaNelle and were important presences in her world. If you didn’t happen to cross paths with her, you can learn the bones of her life through this obituary. I would like to share here a little of my how my own life has been interwoven with hers since the day I met her in November of 1985.

I recall vividly the moment I met her because I was knocked back almost physically by her high-voltage smile. (Anyone who has spent time with her knows exactly what I am describing!) She took a chance on me and hired me to work for her in the Development Office of Carleton College. New to Minnesota, I was so happy to have a real job (a living wage! health insurance! a beautiful campus! even a campus apartment for one term!) Little did I know that this opportunity would shape the whole rest of my life. Working for LaNelle provided me with a true profession, one that gave me skills and confidence and credentials that later allowed me to help dozens of non-profits in Minnesota and elsewhere. She was the master, and I the apprentice. I learned my livelihood at her knee.

LaNelle was the soul of generosity, always more comfortable giving than receiving. A few years after we had both retired from Carleton, I asked her if I could make her a quilt. Of course, I was thinking of a bed-sized covering. She felt she had enough bed clothes, but was enthusiastic about the idea of a quilt, so she asked me to make a small wall hanging for this corner of her bedroom.

Without LaNelle and her job offer, I would not have found Northfield, a place where my formerly peripatetic life was eventually able to sink deep roots. When I think how many other friends I have made in this special town, I see how friendships grow exponentially, in an organic, branching way. Without her, how many people so central to my life, would be unknown to me. (LaNelle and her husband, Ken, moved to Northfield–whose motto is “Cows, Colleges, and Contentment,” in the early 1960s and settled into a house on Manitou Street. She told me that when they were first arrived they could hear cows mooing when they sat in their garden. Is it any coincidence that “Manitou” is usually translated as “Great Spirit”? I think not.)

More importantly, however, she was my steady friend, and steadily modeled grace in adversity, the importance of a sense of humor, and the joy of giving. Below are just a few examples:

In August of 1988, when Tim and I married, LaNelle officiated at our wedding. At my wedding shower, she gave me a pair of enameled crane earrings–the card read: ‘A par-a-dox’–to symbolize pairing and long life. She gave us both a large platter by local ceramic artist Charles Halling. That card read “From Love, to Love.” And we treasure most the videotape of her reading our hand-crafted vows that included excerpts from Emerson, Shakespeare, and The Little Prince.

When she went on a journey to Turkey, she knew her itinerary would include a visit to the house of Rumi, the Sufi mystic poet of the thirteenth century, whose poems meant so much to us both. She asked me if she could bring anything back for me. I asked her for some dust for Rumi’s garden. (She brought that along with a tiny Persian carpet for my dollhouse.)

Almost eleven years later, in 1999, when Tim and I had moved back to Northfield and Julia was born, LaNelle was there for us. She visited that first day in the hospital for a moment, and every day after, for the whole summer, she came and held Julia for two hours so I could nap and Tim could get some work done. I felt a little guilty about this, but LaNelle was in her element. She called this gift of baby-holding “Julia Zen.”

Until Julia was in school, LaNelle came to babysit at least once a week, walking with Julia around Northfield, hosting her at her own house, or playing games and singing here at our house. Without that extended family luxury, I would not have been able to teach my Friday morning yoga class or keep up my end of Heartwork Yoga Studio (in its original incarnation, with partner Lynda Grady.)

In more recent years, we’d take outings for ice cream or to see Christmas lights or to look at how the fields and trees were changing color. And we’d celebrate her birthday, on or near the day. She loved ice cream and nuts, and so we would have plenty of both!

Her regard meant the world to me. Yet, soon after the above photo was taken, LaNelle’s worsening memory challenges meant she no longer recognized me. She was as ever happy and gracious and contented, but for me it was very painful to have her see me without recognition. I did not know how to be in her presence, so I did not see her for some time, though I thought of her often. I took it hard…very hard…and went into a season of mourning for the connection I felt had been lost. Little did I know that she was still teaching me important life lessons.

Last January, after a (seemingly) chance conversation with a friend new to Northfield–who had met LaNelle at her new home at Three Links Care Center–I was encouraged to begin visiting again. (Thank you Patricia and Marco the Therapy Dog!) I am so very grateful that I had the chance to be with her again in those last weeks of her life. No, she didn’t recognize me. Not at all. But she was still glad to see me. She still had her own brilliant smile and quiet heart. Quite simply, I still recognized her. That was enough. More than enough.

Her last lesson to me, as I see it today, was to take the hard things more easily in stride. To let whatever needs to go, go. To let whatever needs to come, come.

I would like to close by sharing, though this link, a poem by Rumi to which LaNelle introduced me, in a translation by Coleman Barks. It is called, in English, “The Guest House.” I keep a copy of it on my refrigerator and read it every day.

And this, a recipe for the dessert that was her specialty in LaNelle’s own hand, written the year I met her, shortly after her beloved husband, Ken, died. The name says it all.

Thank you, dear LaNelle, for being a part of our lives, and for loving us so well. Happy Birthday!