Bittersweet Bliss

by Ruth Glover

  By ten or eleven a boy was riding a rake, gathering together the hay from the meadows and from around the sloughs; cleaning the barn; hauling stone boats of manure to the fields and unloading them; handling a pitchfork taller than himself; handing his father tools when he repaired or oiled machinery; lending a hand at countless tasks, constantly working at the side of his father, learning the ways of the farm.

  Mothers taught their daughters the rudiments of housekeeping; after all, they too would be wives and mothers someday; the well-being of their family would depend on them. Baking—first biscuits, and eventually, when their small muscles could manage it, bread. Washing clothes—sorting, scrubbing, bluing, starching. Ironing—beginning with handkerchiefs and serviettes, hefting the irons around while standing on a stool, suffering many a burn, many a weary arm. Every girl knew how to milk a cow as well as her brother did, how to harness a horse, how to light a fire.

  The work was there to be done, and they did it; eventually it became automatic. They put their clothes on in the morning, and they went about their chores. When they had eaten breakfast, they walked to school. Sometimes they plowed their way to school, the drifts of snow being unbroken by previous walkers or riders. They walked home or struggled home, to work again.

  But not a bush child grew up without fond memories of happy times, the comfort of a warm home, the association of good friends. Not a bush child but what blessed his parents for choosing the life of a homesteader; not a child but loved Bliss and counted as home every farm within its boundaries.

  Children made their own fun. They fashioned rough bows and arrows; they made their own bats and balls; they made whistles. They played tag, hide-and-seek, run-sheep-run, pom-pom-pullaway, and mother-may-I; in winter they played crokinole and checkers. They built log forts in summer and snow forts in winter. They exchanged or bartered gooseberries in the spring and hazelnuts in the fall. They made heaps of snowballs in the winter and engaged in some of the greatest battles the world had ever seen. They slid down hills on whatever was available—sleds if they were so fortunate as to have them, boards, shovels, hides. They made snow angels; they built snowmen.

  In winter, by the light of a coal oil lamp and huddled close to the side of a blazing heater, they read. Bliss children were good readers. Every magazine, every book that found its way into the district went the rounds from home to home, as prized as rare gems. Puzzles were made from magazine pictures pasted on cardboard and cut into pieces; checkerboards were handmade, the pieces sawed from a small, round limb. Button boxes offered endless fascination.

  Especially favored was the child who had a parent with imagination, if not skill, who could contrive gifts for Christmas—something whittled by a father, something sewn by a mother: a tiny wagon, a toy rifle, a few building blocks; a rag doll, a ball, a pair of mittens, a scarf.

  Across all the years, Ellie’s vivid imagination, her lively interest, her ability to make something from nothing, had been responsible for a trail of fun, frolic, experiments, and accomplishments, touching and enriching not only her own household but those of her friends. One year she and Vonnie, Marfa, and Flossy had made a gift for each Nikolai child—and there were about seven of them at that time. With many meetings and plannings and scurryings to and fro, with materials gathered and lists written and rewritten, they sewed, for the small children, something that resembled an animal (no one knew quite what it was, though the mane of yarn hinted at a lion), soft and cuddly, cut from old scraps of flannel and stuffed with batting. For the older children, various puzzles and games with enough mazes and directions to keep them absorbed for hours. The awe of the Nikolai children on Christmas morning that year could only be imagined.

  Children—hardworking, inventive, imaginative—were an important part of the community, keeping hope alive with their eager spirits and never-failing expectations, bringing cheer, music, and games into the most remote cabin, and making all the hard work and effort worthwhile for the overworked homesteader. Children were the future; children were cherished; children were important.

  With no children on the Bonney farm, Ellie had it all to do herself, the small chores as well as the big ones. Time and again all day long, every day, she made trips to the woodpile or to the well. There were the chickens and turkeys to feed, the eggs to gather. Although her father did the milking, there was the milk to care for, the butter to churn. There was bread to bake—six loaves at a time. Every Monday there was the washing to do, the ironing every Tuesday. In between times there was the canning of the vegetables as the garden flourished and produced; there was the making of jams and jellies, the storing of summer’s bounty in the cellar. There was the mending, the darning.

  Through all the long, hard summer, Ellie was rather desperately grateful for the unrelenting round of things to do. Rising early, she worked until late and went to bed exhausted, seeking the oblivion of sleep, dreading the intrusion of the nightmares.

  Bliss’s summer was notable for three things: a birth, a death, a wedding.

  The first was natural enough. And expected. Marfa Polchek—to the interest of the community that had first hoped, then grieved, with her and with George through three previous pregnancies—had grown increasingly uncomfortable, alarmingly puffed, reduced to a waddle, but she had remained consistently cheerful.

  “Everything will be all right; you’ll see,” she maintained in the face of her husband’s anxiety, her friends’ concern, her mother’s hovering solicitude. It was a confidence born out of prayer.

  Marfa had been through too many disappointments, shed too many tears, to trust in luck. A casual Christian most of her life, she had, early in this pregnancy, tied the frail craft of her faith to the Rock, and there she anchored, buffeted and storm-tossed but weathering every storm.

  Marfa raised a tumult of protest from people and pastor alike when she dared quote, as her scriptural portion, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given” (Isa. 9:6a).

  “Marfa, Marfa,” one and all admonished, “don’t you know that’s a prophecy, a promise of Christ’s coming?”

  Though at first Marfa had been tempted to bristle and become defensive, she had learned to smile and to stand firm against this assault on her anchor. “But I can appropriate it for myself, can’t I?” she asked, and who among them, including the pastor who was always encouraging them to stand on the promises, could tell her otherwise, expounding that certain Scriptures were not for her?

  “Doesn’t the Bible say,” Marfa asked reasonably,“that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God? So isn’t all of it available to me?”

  “Well, yes,” they would respond guardedly, not knowing whether this might lead to some heretical doctrine. Bliss Christians were strong on the Word and in believing in “rightly dividing the word of truth.”

  “And doesn’t it say it is ‘profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness’?”

  “But,” someone pointed out triumphantly, “it also says that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation!”

  Driven by their superior knowledge back to her original stand, Marfa insisted, “It says all Scripture, and this one is mine.” And who among them could take that refuge from her? So they held their peace, while fearing and trembling for her faith should there be another dead baby and another grave in Bliss’s cemetery.

  As with all of them, whether in childbirth, injury, agony, or even death, Marfa had received no medical consultation, examination, or advice. For years the only help available had been from the Mounted Police medical officer, but finally a doctor had settled in Prince Albert. Poor overworked man that he was and skimpily equipped to handle the traumas of these backwoods, he was apt to be gone when a sick person struggled to his office for help or a lone rider galloped up pleading with him to put bag in buggy and hasten to a bedside many miles away.

  Grandma Jurgenson, Bliss’s midwife, had little confidence in doctors. “Him and his pills!” she castigated. “T
hinks they’ll cure everything, and they cure nothing!”

  Creaky and old as she was, Grandma Jurgenson never turned a deaf ear to a plea for help. Not only was she midwife and doctor to the area but undertaker as well. And for Marfa and George she had laid out and prepared three babies for burial.

  Still, called a fourth time, and though it was in the middle of the night and though she was eighty years of age, Grandma Jurgenson rose from her bed, dressed herself, picked up her bag of potions and medicines, and climbed creakily into the buggy with George.

  “We’ll stop and tell Ellie,” George said, chirruping to the horse, whirling the buggy out of the yard and down the road. “Marfa wants her there.”

  Grandma Jurgenson was agreeable. She knew her days were numbered and that someone in the community would need to take on the job, a job that had fallen to her because of desperate need. She had found no way to back out ever since she had sewed up the first bull-gored farmer.

  And who better to take over for her than Ellie Bonney? Hadn’t Ellie, since childhood, mended every broken bird, splinted every dog that limped, soothed every tearful child, fed every wayward cat, and rescued every baby bird that tumbled from its nest?

  “I’ll drive myself over,” Ellie told George when he came to the door. “I’ll need a few minutes to get myself together and hitch up the horse.”

  Before she left the house, she put her head into her father’s room, making an explanation and reminding him that there was a pot of beans bubbling in the oven overnight.

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone,” she said. “After all, it’s not a first baby.... It could come easily and quickly.”

  Not so. Marfa struggled the rest of the night, struggled all day, struggled until the dawning of a new morning.

  Though Grandma tried to shoo the worried George out, as was right and proper, he never left his wife’s side. Fortunately there were enough young Polcheks around to take care of the chores, for those were far from George’s mind.

  Grandma knew all the tricks of her trade—the breathing, the pulling, the pushing. And still they were not enough. That was when Ellie, new as she was to childbirth, stepped in with her bottle of laudanum. She would not, could not, bear to see her friend suffer.

  “It isn’t right!” she insisted. “And surely it isn’t good for her. She’s worn out. Why not let her get some rest between pains? Why not lessen the pain if we can?”

  Grandma Jurgenson raised her eyebrows. “It’s natural,” she objected. “Pain’s natural. Women understand that they bear their offspring with pain; it’s supposed to be that way, has been ever since Eve ate the apple.”

  Having respect for her elders, if not Grandma Jurgenson herself in this particular matter, Ellie bit her lip and refrained from an impatient “Oh, bosh!”

  Aware of her inexperience, Ellie was careful about overriding the older woman’s hard-learned expertise. But in her heart of hearts she considered herself a modern woman, beyond the old wives’ tales of former years, eager for any advances in medicine or health care.

  Grandma, fond of both Ellie and Marfa and more than a little uneasy about another disastrous birthing experience for Marfa, shrugged and subsided.

  And, the old lady had to admit, Marfa’s thrashing and struggling calmed considerably after Ellie doled out the precious soother, a “stupefier,” the tincture of opium available to one and all—without oversight or restraint, as often as wanted, as much as was wanted—by an obliging catalog.

  Although it may have slowed the process, it certainly made it easier. Ellie soothed her friend’s fears, smoothed her forehead, rubbed her limbs—anything and everything she thought might be encouraging or helpful. And eventually nature, though grudgingly, took care of the rest.

  At dawn the miracle took place—a new life was thrust, screaming and kicking, into the world. A living, breathing human being—not here one moment, here the next moment. Irrevocably here, for sixty years, give or take a few, whether good or bad, whether happy or miserable, whether loved or despised; to count for something or to count for nothing; to live a life of service or selfishness. And eventually—to reproduce in the endless cycle that was called generations.

  As for now, little George Bonney Polchek was greatly desired, greatly loved, greatly blessed. Whatever he would or would not become, he started well, not something everyone can count on.

  Exhausted, wan, and weak, Marfa resisted the curtain of sleep and medication that lured her to rest and held her son, cradling him on her breast, baptizing him with her tears.

  And thanking God. Thanking him for the fulfillment of her Scripture.

  And Ellie, almost equally weary, turned homeward. But with empty arms, empty heart.

  Rest was not to be hers. Not then nor for days to come. Tears were hers in abundance.

  Birdie was astonished on the occasion of her first goose plucking.

  Knowing only that her bed was wonderfully soft and comfortable, warm and cozy, she hardly understood the reason for it, and the procedure not at all. Feathers were feathers, weren’t they?

  It was to be her first summer in Bliss. Waking with no school duties to look forward to, no children awaiting her instruction, Birdie had sighed luxuriously, turned over, and gone back to sleep. Rising leisurely, she found Lydia hard at work, going from one task to another like a machine. And with no end in sight. Barely was one task completed when another called. Besides the regular tasks of the well-ordered week: washing, ironing, mending, churning, cleaning, baking; and the normal routine of the day: breakfast and dish-washing, dinner and dish-washing, supper and dish-washing, and the regular chores sandwiched in between, there were the extras that could be done only during good weather and “before the snow flies.” Extras such as berry picking, canning, whitewashing, curtains taken down and washed, stretched, and rehung, quilts washed and dried and put away for another cold season.

  And bed ticks refreshed or replaced.

  Ticking, a tightly woven material almost as heavy as canvas, and almost always striped, was purchased by the bolt. Cut to the size of the mattress, it was stitched to form a bag of sorts, ready to be filled and sewn shut. There was no mystery about the ticking.

  It was the feather procedure that boggled the mind of Birdie Wharton. Never again would she snuggle into a feather bed without a keen awareness of the human-and-goose cooperation it took to assure comfort and warmth; never again would she complain of the odd feather or two that managed to protrude from the ticking, to prickle and annoy.

  She had never given a thought as to where and how the tick got its contents. Perhaps she had supposed the feathers were garnered every time a bird was killed, collecting slowly until enough had been saved for a tick.

  While Birdie watched, Lydia produced a strange contraption she called the “goose bonnet.” It was a small wickerlike cage that fit over the head and bill of a goose, and its function was to keep the goose from pinching its handler while it was being plucked. Plucking—obviously a procedure a goose resented, though it was not injured. Or so Lydia maintained.

  The feather-gleaning was done when the birds were molting, losing their feathers naturally. Plucking at this time was fairly easy and wouldn’t harm the bird. Or so Lydia claimed.

  Getting custody of the bird itself was the hardest part, and here Birdie, after watching Lydia’s fruitless efforts, offered to help.

  First the geese were herded into a pen; then, one by one, they were cornered and subdued though they put up a battle, honking madly, wings flapping, necks craning, bills slashing. One almost had to get astride the broad back, Birdie discovered grimly, and clasp the silly creature with one’s knees in order to clap the bonnet on it. Finally, holding the resentful creature in a tight grip, it was hefted off the ground—no small task in itself—and presented to Lydia for the plucking.

  “Don’t worry about them,” Lydia said, noting Birdie’s strained face as the birds struggled in her clutch. “I think they must appreciate help in getting the feathers off
. You’ll notice I don’t nearly take all of them, just the ones that come off readily.”

  But Birdie was not convinced, and she watched sympathetically during the picking and plucking and then as the outraged bird was released to waddle its bulky and somewhat denuded body away, hastening back to its cronies, complaining loudly of its treatment and perhaps apologizing for its disheveled appearance.

  “This part,” Lydia said, cradling a goose and pointing out a certain area, “is called the rump, and it’s covered with the best of all—fluff. That’s what it’s called—fluff. This on the keel,” she pointed out a portion of low breast, “is good, too.”

  “Fluff? Keel? I never knew geese had anything but a bill and a breast. Oh, and webbed feet, of course.”

  “This is the nostril... the bean... the dewlap... the shank... the pinion coverts and the wing coverts—”

  “Coverts?” Birdie asked, transfixed by the anatomy lesson.

  “Means hidden, or sheltered.” Lydia didn’t know much about book learning, but she certainly knew her geese. With her hands occupied as they were, she blew upward, dislodging a feather that had settled on her nose.

  A windless day had been chosen for the job; even so, feathers spread everywhere, stubbornly resistant, it seemed, to going into the sack. The choice soft and downy feathers, for pillows, were kept separate.

  “They still have to be washed and dried,” Lydia explained, pink of face and rather tense of mouth from her exertions.

  Washing feathers? The very thought was more than a bewildered Birdie could comprehend at the moment.

  And so she was relieved when Lydia, weary and wearing a festoon of goose down on her shoulders and in her hair, suggested a cup of tea.

  Brushing themselves off, scrubbing the grime and oil from their hands, the two women sought the kitchen gladly and the kettle simmering there.