Gifts of the Spirit
Patricia Eilola
North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.
St. Cloud, Minnesota
Copyright © 2016 Patricia Eilola
Cover art © iStock/Getty Images
Cover design by Elizabeth Dwyer
All rights reserved.
Print ISBN: 978-0-87839-808-9
eBook ISBN: 978-1-68201-042-6
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First edition: March 2016
Published by
North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.
P.O. Box 451
St. Cloud, MN 56302
www.northstarpress.com
Also by Patricia Eilola
Fabulous Family Hölömöläiset
A Finntown of the Heart
A Finntown of the Soul
This book is dedicated to the memory of my mother-in-law, Suoma Marie Eilola, who was like a second mother to me, and to her oldest son, my husband, Vern, who served as my “assistant editor,” patiently recording the changes on the proofs and never losing his patience throughout the long processes.
With all my love to both of them:
To Suoma, who may be somewhere reading this book,
hopefully giving it her approval.
To Vern, who is my best friend, my love, my second self,
my soulmate, and my partner.
Table of Contents
Prologue
1: The Influenza
2: More of the Same
3: Reality and Escape
4: A Sad Christmas
5: School
6: Our Native Language
7: Lappalas
8: A Week’s Work
9: Ceremonies
10: Beliefs Number One
11: Beliefs
12: Risto
13: Grandmother
14: Memories
15: Home
16: Arvo
17: Aini and Arvo
18: Arvo Still
19: The Wedding and Its Aftermath
20: Pregnancy
21: Nonny
22: Polio
23: Ronny’s Folly
24: Susie
25: Problem Solved
26: A Problem Unsolved
27: Bliss and Abyss
28: Recovery
29: Good News
30: Ronny
31: Losing Ronny
32: Happiness
Postscript
Prologue
When it occurred to me to start writing about my life, at first I was very hesitant.
Who am I to do that? I thought. I had read books all my life, and it had never occurred to me that I could write one.
And then I thought, Why not? It’s not as if women aren’t allowed to write or that their writing isn’t taken seriously as it was for George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) and Jane Austen. I have read a lot of books by women writers: most recently the latest in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. I could never tell stories as she has, I realized right away. Nor could I do novels like Tess Gerritsen or Patricia Cornwell. I don’t have their background to draw on.
All I have are my own experiences. Are they worthy enough of note to be recorded for everyone to read?
Of course, everyone wouldn’t want to read them. Perhaps Finnish people, I thought, hopefully. Perhaps people who had lived as we did on a farm. Perhaps people who remembered the Lappalas of Unitarian fame. Perhaps other people who know what it means to be in love so totally and wholeheartedly that nothing else matters except the loved one.
Maybe even another woman, one who, like me, has lived a “normal” life, facing challenges as they surface and finding the courage to do what needs to be done during those times.
I remember a quotation my daughter-in-law once shared with me, she who writes all the time and has encouraged me to join the league of women who write not because they want to but because they have to. They must. Something within them—within me—says that I need to write.
“After all,” as she said when she gave me a copy of the passage she had memorized:
“All things to nothingness descend,
Grow old and die and meet their end.
Man dies, iron rusts, wood goes decayed,
Towers fall, walls crumble, roses fade.…
Nor long can any name resound
Beyond the grave, unless ’t be found
In some clerk’s book; it is the pen
Gives immortality to men.”
I’m not exactly seeking immortality, but I would enjoy putting the truth about my life onto paper. My daughter-in-law will enter it into her laptop computer and perhaps send it off to a publisher with a kind word of encouragement. And in the meantime, I shall enjoy myself, writing.
I think I’ll begin with the flu epidemic of 1918 because that was the first time my courage was tested—really tested—twice—first at home and then at a neighbor’s.
1: The Influenza
The symptoms began slowly with Mother, who, although running a fever, refused to lie down. Aini, my older sister, did lie down with what she said were a sore throat and body aches. She told me, “I’m absolutely exhausted,” and she looked it. The way she acted worried me, but I kept telling myself all would be well if she’d only lie down for a while.
But next came Ronny, my older brother. He rushed in from the barn after doing the morning milking, dropped the buckets of fresh milk on the table, and hurried outside again where I heard him vomiting. He then ran for the outhouse, where he sat for hours it seemed, alternating vomiting with diarrhea. By the time I was able to coax him into the house, his nose was bleeding, and his eyes were bloodshot, but the worst of the vomiting and diarrhea had abated, and he seemed glad to lie down in the boys’ bed with my littlest brother Eino, who didn’t seem to feel well either. He complained of a sore throat and a headache and told me rather vacuously that his whole body hurt.
Mother, although obviously very ill, insisted on running the milk through the separator, and ordered me to put the cream and the milk down onto the shelf Father had built during his better days atop the well, where they would stay cool. She tried to take some of the cream to make into butter but was so exhausted that she fainted. I had to try to drag and lift her onto the big bed next to Aini. I managed to finish the butter, using the wooden piece that fit into the crock full of cream. It seemed to take forever for me to push the wood up and down, up and down, until pieces of butter formed. Then Mother poured the pieces into a round flattened wooden bowel, used a piece of wood shaped like a ladle but without any holes in it, and pressed the rest of the liquid out of the butter. Finally, she shaped it into molds also made of wood with a decorative cover so that the butter inside looked pretty. But there was no time that day for decoration. I put the butter into a glass dish, covered it, ran it into the well, where I filled a pail with fresh, cold water and hurried back inside to put one wet washcloth on Aini’s head, another on Mother’s, and a third on Eino’s.
I thought of trying to get hold of Dr. Raihala in Virginia, but since we didn’t have one of those new-fangled telephones, I knew I had to rely on my own wits, which at that moment were not working at all. I felt beyond terrified… worried about Mother and Aini and Ronny and even mys
elf. What if I got sick, too? Who would take care of us?
Since there seemed to be no answer to that question except me—Maria Seraphina Jackson—I finally got going, trying to do what seemed necessary as quickly as I could.
Next to Ronny I set a pail on a towel for him to vomit into, which he did. I was afraid of diarrhea but was grateful he’d been able to hold his bowels so far.
Things that day went quickly from bad to worse. Mother and Aini began to cough so violently I feared they would soon bring up blood. They couldn’t lie still in bed but moved constantly, seeking a cooler spot, trying to ease their aching heads. I tried to keep a glass of fresh, cold water on the table on each side of the bed to ease their sore throats, but every time I lifted one of them up to sip on the water, she fell back in agony, holding her head.
By nighttime I was beside myself. The cows needed milking again, and they had to be gathered from the field. I needed to shovel the fresh manure from behind their stanchions and lay down new hay for them to munch on. And there was dinner to make—although that task seemed unimportant at the time with my mother and my brothers, and sister so ill.
Hurriedly, I pulled on a shawl and my outside boots, called “Koira” the dog, and headed out into the field. Thank God for Koira, who really earned his keep that evening. He gathered the cows together with yips and barks and sent them on their way while I helped, using the bell Mother had taught us was their signal that fresh food was coming.
The milking seemed to take forever although I usually enjoyed resting my head on Bessie’s soft flank while I pulled her teats rhythmically, filling the pail that sat between my legs. Every milking I blessed Mr. Leinonen, who had made the special small stool for me to sit on when I milked.
That night I let the manure lie where the cows dropped it, filled their troughs with fresh hay, and hurried back into the house where I found that Ronny had thrown up again and Mother and Aini had both messed the bed, in agony still from their head and throats.
I had to work hard to keep from gagging. Thank God I had stoked up the kitchen stove before I went outside and put a pan on the top to heat. For a long moment I stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the bedroom, wondering where to start. Ronny seemed to have fallen into a heavy sleep although his bucket needed emptying, so I began with Mother and Aini, pulling off their clothing, trying hard not to get any of their poop onto the bedspread, and, using some rags from the kitchen, wiped down their rears. While I was in the process, another spout of greenish liquid spurted from Aini’s rear. The smell almost drove me away until I remembered Vicks Vapo-rub. I put a fingerful under my nose and then continued my task.
Once I got their clothes off and each one cleaned as best I could, I helped them into clean nightgowns and forced each one to stand for a second as I opened the bed. They fell against the cool pillows as if I had opened the doors of heaven. I put a layer of rags under each of their butts, hopefully to catch any more drainage. Then I helped each to take a sip of water and placed a fresh cool cloth on each one’s head.
By then Ronny had awakened and soiled himself with both vomit and diarrhea. He was so loathe to have me clean him that I had to get very firm: “We’ve been going to the sauna together ever since we were tiny,” I told him, “so you don’t have anything I haven’t seen a million times.”
That seemed to comfort him, for he allowed me to help him divest himself of his outer clothes, vomit, diarrhea, and all, and wash himself as best we could. He usually slept without any night-clothes, but that night I dug into Father’s chest and found an old nightshirt, for by then Ronny was shivering from cold. I piled the extra blankets from Mother’s and Aini’s bed onto him along with a knitted woolen comforter Mother had made the previous winter. He still shook with cold, but the vomiting and the diarrhea seemed to have ebbed so I hurriedly grabbed all the soiled clothing from the floor along with his pail of vomit, and ran through the kitchen outdoors where I emptied the soiled clothing as best I could, vowing to set up the wash tubs tomorrow. Tomorrow, I thought, wondering if it would ever come and what it would bring. In the process I checked myself all over to make sure I didn’t have any kind of rash, looking down my throat using the mirror in the sauna. I was able to use the outhouse normally. All of that was a huge relief. At least one of us had stayed well.
Little did I know that “tomorrow” would be a replica of today… only worse. Aware that none of the others would be able to eat, I cut myself some bread from the loaves Mother had made that morning, thank God, slathered them with butter and raspberry jam from the dwindling stores we had put up the previous summer, warmed the coffee Mother had made for breakfast, and sat down to think the situation through and to plan.
First of all, I realized I had to stay well. Were I to become sick, too, we would be in an awful mess. So I vowed to warm the sauna and keep it hot, to take a hot sauna every morning and every night, to eat meals whenever I could, and to try to sleep whenever there was time.
But there was very little time.
As I came in from the sauna, having set the soiled clothes to soak in cold water, and taken enough steam to keep the bugs—whatever was causing the horrors my family was enduring—away from me, I heard Mother and Jennie moaning and Ronny vomiting again. Little Eino lay as still as a stone, hardly moving at all. That frightened me most of all.
I had to dig down deep that night, but not nearly as deeply as I would the next week or so, for the horror went on and on until it seemed for a while as if there would be no end, as if I would spend the rest of my life in a half-awake, half-asleep stupor, trying with all my might to keep my loved ones alive and as clean and comfortable as I could make them.
All I had in the pharmacopeia of Mother’s aid kit was Vicks Vapo-rub, a cup for drawing blood, and some patent medicines she had bought from travelers—elixirs whose main ingredient, I soon discovered, was alcohol. I had never tried “cupping” and doubted the validity of the treatment. (What would drawing blood from weak people do but make them weaker?) But I did keep myself well-dosed with Vicks and tried to get Mother and Aini and Ronny to swallow a teaspoon of one of the elixirs. Nothing, however, did any good. I finally decided to fix a beef broth out of one of the cans of venison we had put up during the previous fall. I mixed it well with onions and carrots from our cellar and added potatoes, too. Once it had all cooked down until there was visibly nothing left that was onion, carrot, potato, or venison, I strained it using cheesecloth and set the broth back on the stove to keep warm while I disposed of the solids. Instead of pouring them into the slop pail, which I would then have to empty, I gave it to the cows, who seemed to be perfectly happy with that alternative to hay.
In addition to keeping the sauna and the kitchen stove hot, despite the outside temperature, which was rising steadily, I had to keep up with the milking, eventually clean out the manure, adding it to the pile outside the barn, and pull down fresh hay from the hay loft. Instead of letting the cows out into the pasture to graze, I had Koira help me get them into the horse paddock, which was now empty since Father had taken or sold all the horses and brought hay to them, a back-breaking job. This eliminated the time needed to move them to and from the pasture, and I desperately needed every second.
I finally developed a schedule, which I continued day and night: in the morning, I checked Mother and Aini to make sure there hadn’t been any accidents. If there had, I removed the rags, wiped them carefully to make sure that they didn’t develop any rash, and replaced the rags. Every other day I tried to change the bedding, rolling both of them onto one side while I made up the other side, and rolling them back so I could finish the job. Then I wiped each of them down with cool water and put them into fresh night-gowns. The sheets and any soiled rags were added to the pile I had soaking in the sauna. Then I replaced the cool cloths on their heads and tried to make each one take as many teaspoonfuls of water and warm beef broth as they could manage. When they began
to show signs of vomiting, I quit in a hurry.
Then I hurried to Ronny, whose vomiting and diarrhea had been largely replaced by a sore throat, a headache, and—instead of a fever—a shivering cold that I couldn’t manage to warm despite the temperature in the house, which had become almost unbearable from the extra heat generated by the wood stove, which I kept stoked all the time, fearing that if it went out, I would really be lost. Finally I thought of putting bricks from the outside pile—there to someday use to replace our wooden homestead—into the oven until they were warm, wrapping them into towels, and placing them down Ronny’s sides and his legs. I thought of lying down next to him to share my body warmth, but as the days slipped by—one after the next—I realized if I lay down, I would fall asleep and never wake up—or at least not wake up for a long while—so I forebore.
Eino gave me the least trouble. He didn’t vomit or have diarrhea. He didn’t seem to have a sore throat or a headache. He just lay there quietly—the boy who kept everyone in the neighborhood on his or her toes because of his shenanigans—as if the life were being sucked out of him bit by bit, and he had no energy to continue to breathe. I worried about him most of all, especially after a rash appeared on his face and rapidly spread to his arms and body. It didn’t seem to itch. At least he didn’t attempt to scratch it. Perhaps he didn’t have the energy. At any rate, once I had Mother, Aini, and Ronny settled, I always sat down next to him, held his hand, offered him water and broth, which he manfully attempted to drink. Most of it ran down his chin. As I touched his hand, it felt burning hot, and a touch of his head proved that he, too, had the fever. I added him to my list of patients needing cool water, vowed to bathe him all over in cold water as soon as I could, and hurried to my next task.
Once I had gotten the clothing into the sauna, I dumped it into a washtub of cold water, lugged pail by pail from the outside pump, until I thought it had soaked enough to get rid of the worst of the stains. Then in another washtub, I scooped water from the kiuas (the water side of the sauna stove), where it had heated to boiling, then scraped bits of Mother’s lye soap into that washtub, and, using the scrub board, rubbed each article up and down until I considered it clean, wringing it out as tightly as I could, before dropping it into a third washtub we used for cold water rinsing. From there I wrung it out again and hurried outside to hang it onto the clothesline Father had strung from the house to the post he had dug into the ground, placing a t-shaped board atop it so Mother could string lines from side to side. (It remained long after he had left as a reminder of the good he could do when he was of a mind.)
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