She was born in 1889 in a small rural town in southeast South Dakota and in 1915 a nod and a smile to a proposal of marriage sealed one of the most important choices she would make. Vows were shared in a small clapboard church in her hometown of Harrison. A buckboard bore them a few miles east to her new groom’s hometown of Edgerton in southwest Minnesota a few miles east. A new country bride deeply rooted in the prairie, she strapped on the sometimes grueling, sometimes rewarding rural life of farming. She cooked, mopped, dusted, wash boarded and dried clothes, canned, tended to the massive vegetable garden beside the barn, fed the barnyard creatures that provided eggs, meat, and milk. She liked the twice daily chore of milking the family cow for the respite of quiet solitude in the normal frenzy.

Nellie and Richard faced challenges commonly presented by geography, climate, and community, so some choices were almost made for them instead of by them. The technology of the day was changing farming but it remained a labor-intensive venture, so children were needed to share the burdens. Nellie added a child to the challenge in the first year of marriage and three more – one every two years thereafter. Not that pregnancy and birth was more obligation than choice only; Nellie loved her three sons and one daughter and treasured each new arrival. Yet with a brood aged 6, 4, and 2 years and an infant, the doctor suggested that, because of Nellie’s health, further childbearing was ill advised. Some families she knew had children aplenty. Her own father was one of fourteen children. Nellie accepted the doctor’s assessment with both relief and sadness. A farm family of six settled into stable agrarian routines.

A litter of piglets in double figures was a surprise. So was a dead owl electrocuted by a thunderstorm’s bolt of lightning. So was a dandelion arrangement carefully gathered by preschooler hands and heart and presented to her with a child’s smiling flourish. But as she was preparing herself in for the approach of the family’s observance of the youngest son’s birthday, Nellie, now older and frailer than before, was surprised to be told that her exhaustion and nausea was simply another pregnancy.

Consternation accompanied the doctor’s announcement. A suggestion that she would best consider ending the pregnancy for her own sake was met by guilt and fear. She had promised the doctor and failed and now the prospect of suffering – and maybe much more – raised its awful head. Those who farm are weaned on life and death in the barnyard and beyond. Many friends and relatives joined the doctor in encouraging her to end the pregnancy. Though others whispered love and kindness while in support of the other option, Nellie spent sleepless nights and preoccupied days, wringing body and soul in a wrestling match of ultimate consequence. It toughened and tuned her. She chose to give life to the child inside her. In 1928 she bore a fourth son whom she named after herself. Shortly after that son’s first birthday she died from complications brought on by the pregnancy and birth.

Our lives unfold from the choices we make. The good ones are obviously good yet sometimes turn out to be bad. The bad ones are obviously bad at first but sometimes turn out to be beneficial. For me and my house we will rest on the promise that grace pilots us through this maze of choices. Did Nellie make the right choice? I’m not sure. Nor is the contrived debate between the “pro-lifers” and “pro-choicers” helpful to me here.

In the end I am thankful for the choice for which she gave her life. That child was my father. His five children, fifteen grandchildren, and twenty-four great grandchildren credit their very existence on her choice.