“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I’m nothing.… Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.… So faith, hope, and love abide, but the greatest of these is love.”
I stood in awe at hearing those words and recorded them to remember for all time. It was exactly what had been lacking between my mother and father. They had not loved each other—or at least my father had not loved her. He was not “patient and kind”; he was “boastful and arrogant.” It was my mother who, in her own way, “bore all things and endured all things.” I finally understood why she had cried at his funeral. At one time she must have loved him—deeply and truly and with all her heart. My heart ached for the agony he put her through—not just the physical cruelty, but the emotional despair, the opposite of love, the kind of use he made her endure, which was the absolute opposite of what love was supposed to be.
I vowed then I would never marry until I could vow all of those things to my husband and be able to trust that he felt exactly the same way about me.
By the time the weddings were over, a small group of people from the Virginia church—a young couple—the Wilbert Makelas and their new baby—with her parents, the Koskis, came to have him baptized, a ceremony performed by both of the Reverends Lappala—one holding the baby, the other holding a bowl of water and a flower.
Reverend Risto talked about the meaning of water, which he said was one of the elements of earth. “Water,” he said, “is necessary for life. Without it, we cannot exist. And so it is fitting and proper that we dip this child’s head in it, as a symbol of the forces that move the earth and that keep us alive and healthy.”
“The rose,” Reverend Milma said, “is indicative of the beauty of the earth and all of its plants and animals. Beauty surrounds us if we only take time to look for it. I pray this child will learn to enjoy the beauty of all things as I now draw this rose across his face. See—he catches the sweet scent and follows it with his eyes. Even at his young age (he was only a couple of months old), he is able to enjoy the beauty of nature—to seek its essence and to draw it close. But he must beware of the thorns. For life—like nature—is filled with them. They don’t hurt him now because we have sheltered him from harm as loving ones do. We who love him—especially his parents and his grandparents who are here now to witness this ceremony—will guard him from the thorns of life until he is old enough to learn to protect himself.”
“And so, with the power invested in us by the Finnish Unitarian Church, we name this child William Walter Makela.”
Just as the weddings had moved me, so did that baptism, which again was entirely different from those I’d watched in the Finnish Lutheran Church.
Later that day I was really glad I had changed because Milma entertained a small group of women from Virginia who were, I later found out and could have guessed immediately, formed the kerma kerros—what Mother would call the “cream” of Virginia society. Thank goodness for Grandmother, who had been extra busy that morning while I was dawdling in my room, reading, and dreaming about the kind of life I hoped to have. She had walked me through the serving before they came. She sat down with them as did Milma. They spoke in Finnish about the things that were normal for them—not only their children and their homes but also their “help” and their recent social gatherings. Evidently they got together to play a card game they called bridge every Thursday afternoon, and they recounted with great pleasure the results of that Thursday’s game. To Mrs. Savolainen (whose husband owned Savolainen’s Jewelry), Mrs. Ketola (whose husband owned the Ketola’s dry goods store), Mrs. Reid (whose husband owned Reid’s dry goods store), and Mrs. Raihala, the doctor’s wife, I served iced tea, cucumber sandwiches, cookies, and the tiny iced pieces of cake Grandmother had set aside after she made them that morning.
It was the first time I had ever felt like a maid in the Lappala’s home, but it was gratifying to hear, afterwards, the comments the ladies had made, which the Lappalas passed on to me. They had mentioned favorably my demeanor, my dress, my serving, and overall the good impression I had made on them. Even if I were “just a maid,” it was wonderful to hear I had done my part well, addressing the Reverends Lappala and Grandmother (Mrs. Tikkanen) by their titles rather than by their first names.
The children, with whom I had hoped to begin to develop some kind of relationship that day, I had shepherded outside, promising them treats if they did not bother the grownups. They came inside only long enough to be introduced to the ladies, who knew them and asked to see them.
Thank goodness I had made sure they were immaculate and nicely garbed for the occasion, for which I earned an extra “thank you” from Milma and for which I gave Grandmother an extra hug.
By the time that evening came, we were all exhausted. Dinner that night wound up being sandwiches with a raspberry tart for dessert. The reverends retired to their office to work on their sermons, and Grandmother went to bed.
I tried my first overtures to the children.
“Tellervo,” I began, for she was sitting reading in a chair next to the fireplace, “I have begun reading Silas Marner, and I am puzzled by Chapter nine. I can’t quite see how it fits into the novel, and I’m having trouble keeping the characters straight.”
Obviously coming from a supplicant, the comment opened the door a little to Tellervo, for she was able to explain the chapter. “Use voices,” she advised. “That’s what Father said to do when I hit that chapter and had the same trouble you’re having,” she admitted graciously. “It helps a lot to read it aloud, changing voices with the different characters. Here, I’ll show you how,” she offered.
Gratefully, I settled myself onto the hassock in front of her chair and, opening the book to that chapter, listened to her reading. As she changed voices for each character, I came to understand what she had meant.
Thanking her profusely, but not obsequiously, I hoped, I went on with my reading. She had been engrossed in Ivanhoe so I asked her what it was about. She told me, going on at length about Brian de Bois Guilbert (pronouncing his name in the French way), about the Knights Templar, and about the controversy between the Normans and the Saxons.
I was fascinated by the history and asked her to suggest a book that would explain the Norman invasion. She went to the bookshelves, drew out a book, and put it into my hands. “This’ll explain it far better than I can,” she admitted, not a bit grudgingly.
And so I had begun to interact with Tellervo.
Next came Daniel, who was sheer joy to be around. He was—to everyone around him—the same joyous child, always loving, always ready with smiles and hugs. When I went down on the floor with him to push his trucks and make “vrooming” noises and to move his trains going “choo-choo-choo,” I had him right in my hand. He was so easy to love that even Tellervo and Risto—to a point—adored him. Risto still reverted to his older brother identity whenever we were in their room. “He just can’t seem to keep out of my things,” he complained… constantly. But even he—instead of berating Daniel—just lifted him back to his own side before going on with whatever project he was currently involved.
Since he had left the door open that Saturday morning, I had entered, quietly and carefully, ready to ask him about his current jigsaw puzzle.
The minute he saw me, however, he had turned his back and refused to ask me in or even to allow me admittance.
But later that evening, Tellervo suggested, “Why don’t you go upstairs and ask Risto about the situation between the Saxons an
d the Normans? He’s setting up his soldiers to re-enact the Battle of Hastings.”
And so that night I made my first inroads into the world of young Risto. He had dozens of toy soldiers, and he was busy making a forest out of sand and pieces of the tips of spruce and balsam trees forming two slopes with a valley in between. Off in the distance, he had drawn a picture of a beach, with a lot of wooden ships (made himself out of bits of wood) pulled up.
When I asked him about what he was doing, it was as if a floodgate had opened up. He began by telling me about King Edward the Confessor, who was so beloved a king that no one could consider he might die, and so no successor had been named. There were three candidates: young King Edward of Saxony, King Harold of Danemark, and the Bastard William of Normandy, who wanted to be called the “Duke,” but his father had never married his mother.
First Risto marched some of his Saxon soldiers (to be Saxon one had to carry a shield, which he had fastened out of pieces of tin) north to meet King Harold.
They met on a bridge, which he had also constructed out of wood over a stream that he had colored blue.
“I’m here to take England,” King Harold said, in a deep, important voice.
“I’ll give you six feet of it,” King Edward said equally firmly.
In the battle that ensued, the Saxons defeated the Norsemen (who were wearing fur coats). He acted this out for me, using his soldiers.
“But little did he know that William the Bastard (“I have my father’s permission to use that word,” he explained) had landed. When he landed, he fell. Some of his soldiers were appalled, thinking this a bad omen. But he had saved the day by grasping sand and standing up swearing, ‘Thus I take England!’”
“Now,” Risto explained very seriously to me, “the Saxons and Normans are going to fight in the Battle of Hastings, which will decide the Fate of the Nation, for if the Saxons win, England will still be England, but if William wins, the French will take over.”
“I can’t wait for the battle,” I said, almost jumping up and down.
He looked extremely gratified by my enthusiasm and promised to let me know when he was ready for the battle to begin. “First,” he said, “I have to prepare the Field of Battle.”
“Oh, I think you’re doing a marvelous job,” I said, honestly. His comprehension of the history was really impressive, and he made it clear to me I could almost envision the fight between Harold and Edward.
“Thank you so much!” I said as I added, “Good night.”
It had been an altogether very full and yet very satisfying day. I felt good about the interaction I’d had with Tellervo and with young Risto, but I wasn’t quite sure about the part I had played in the rest of it.
That afternoon had irrevocably seemed to separate me from the family unit. Oh, Milma and Risto especially had treated me very well as had Grandmother, but when it came time to entertain company, I had been relegated to the position of “maid.”
I understood—or tried to understand—the reasoning behind the change. I had, after all, been hired to “help.” It was just that, until that day, my help had been an integral part of the normal workings of the house. Of course, I was there to wash dishes and clothes, to iron, to work with the children, not on their manners, which were already impeccable, but on their responsibilities as members of a family. Of course I was expected to learn as much as I could from Grandmother about cooking and baking. I knew that. I had not been aware until after the fact about how I felt as a real “servant,” dressed like and acting like a “maid.”
Somehow I had to work at its not making me feel—demeaned, as if I were of less value than the others because I was common and uneducated in the “finer things in life.”
I felt as if I had been torn in half—with half of me pleased with the way the day had gone and the other half of me—kind of—depressed.
Sitting in my room in my nightgown after taking a sauna (I had been the last one in), I thought about my place in society and about my future.
I think it was the first time I had ever given serious consideration about what I wanted to do with my life, and I realized that, because I had not gone to high school, a lot of doors would never open for me. I could never be a nurse or (my secret dream) a teacher. I could never be a minister like Milma and probably never live my normal life in the surroundings in which I was now living.
It had proved to be a daunting, difficult, and rather devastating realization.
But, I told myself, whatever the future did hold for me, I would make it the very best I could. I could keep a house clean, and I was learning how to make it beautiful. I could learn to cook and to bake and prove my mother and Aini wrong. I had made friends—at least had begun the process—even with unfriendly people as the children had been.
I vowed that night to make the best out of whatever life handed me. I thought I had proved I had courage; now it was time for me to add both knowledge and wisdom.
In later years I was to hear the following words said often. I wish I had known them back then: “God grand me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
During the days, weeks, and years to follow, I would find myself tested again as I had been that evening so long ago in ways I had not anticipated. I prayed I would prove myself worthy. I often fought with memories of that awful night when I had been responsible for a death, and I prayed that, given the circumstances, whatever power judged our actions in this world would not find me wanting.
10: Beliefs Number One
And so it went through the long summer days. Gradually Tellerv, young Risto, and, of course, always Daniel became accustomed to having me around and began—very slowly at first—to treat me as an older sister rather than just a maid.
Tellervo and I enjoyed discussing the books we were reading. She always read the chosen one first, and I second, which turned out to benefit me because everything was very fresh in my mind.
That summer we went through Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as well as the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, both of us convinced that Becky would one day give in and fall in love with Tom. I couldn’t relate to Huck Finn at all. He seemed so apart from our daily lives that although I read the book, I didn’t find much in it to discuss or even try to remember other than his relationship with the slave. We agreed—after reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin—that slavery had offered a violent and horrible picture of a part of the United States. That, too, was new to us. Afterward we reread Abraham Lincoln’s “Second Inaugural Address” and decided to memorize the “Gettysburg Address.” I loved memorization and had done so much of it that I found it easy to remember. It was the one way in which I surpassed Tellervo.
Once I brought her my copy of One Hundred and One Famous Poems, she, too, began to memorize her favorites. Soon we had a contest going. Each Sunday evening we’d both recite to Milma, Risto, and Grandmother and young Risto (and Daniel, of course, who had no idea what we were saying) the lines that we had memorized. They gave a prize to the one who had learned the most. At first, I led every week, but then, I already had a wealth of memorization at my fingertips so to speak so I asked Milma and Risto to suggest some other poets for me to study and to memorize from. They brought me into the world of Robert Burns—not only his “To a Mouse” and “To a Louse” but his longer poems. I loved “My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose.” Risto opened my world to the wealth of writing by William Wordsworth—his longer poems like “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” with which I absolutely fell in love.
Young Risto did, in fact, tell me when he was ready to reenact the “Battle of Hastings,” to which he invited his parents, Grandmother, and Tellervo, too. We all exclaimed in wonder at the way he had fastened sticks and strings into longbows for the French archers and round pieces
of metal into shields for the Saxons.
He had one of the French archer’s arrows go into King Edward’s eye, which broke the Saxon shield line and allowed the French to be victorious.
And after that, he went on to explain the changes that victory wrought in England—the giving of Saxon lands to French soldiers, the Doomsday Book—in which every single person, cow, pig, farm, and hostelry was recorded, the Bayeux Tapestry, which he showed us pictures of from the Encyclopedia downstairs.
All of us marveled at how well he had done. He received an enthusiastic round of applause and a special treat—ice cream! The Lappalas owned an “ice cream” maker into which they poured heavy cream. By adding flavors like vanilla or fresh raspberries or blueberries or even chocolate syrup, they changed the taste of the ice cream. That night young Risto made the choice—chocolate! We ate it sitting on the veranda.
Daniel, too, was growing. He had learned to walk soon after I joined the family, and he was into everything! One of my tasks was to keep an eye on him, and that was a full-time job!
When I did the dishes, I gave him pots and pans to bang around. He loved to play with them, fitting the tops onto the correct bottoms, and making the noise of a cymbal when he hit the tops together. While I dusted the bedrooms and washed and waxed the floors, I tried to keep him occupied outside in the hallway with his horses and his teddy bear. I “did voices” with his Teddy—talking back to him using the words he had used. His vocabulary grew by the minute it seemed, primarily because someone always read him a bedtime story. All of us enjoyed doing that so much we almost wound up with a contest—Who could read to Daniel tonight?
Gifts of the Spirit Page 12
