Gifts of the Spirit

by Patricia Eilola

  There was more to learn included in that day, but I’m ashamed to admit when we got home we (the children and I) actually rejoiced in our ability to contradict the beliefs Grandmother held. We sought her out and told her what we considered to be “the truth” about Jesus. She covered her ears and ran away from us, going into her bedroom, and staying there even when it was time to make dinner.

  I don’t think Milma had any idea what we were doing—at least at first.

  Once she realized, she chastised us severely. Then she went to her mother’s bedroom door, knocked, was admitted, and stayed there for what seemed to us to be a long time. When she came out, she gathered us together, saying, “You need to apologize to Grandmother for flaunting a belief that’s different from hers,” and demanding that we “think carefully about the rest of what you learned today.”

  “Are you acting as Unitarians should?” she asked us.

  We hung our heads. “No,” we answered shamefacedly. “We were doing the opposite. We were making fun of her beliefs because they’re the opposite of ours.”

  “You must think carefully about what you’ve learned about Unitarian­ism. Once you’ve done that, then go to Grandmother and speak to her with its words in mind. Are you really trying to live together in peace? Are you really serving mankind in fellowship so that all souls shall grow into harmony with the divine?”

  That was the end of our foray into religious discrimination. We went to Grandmother’s room first as a group and then as individuals to beg her pardon for acting as we had been. I remember telling her, “I’m truly sorry I flaunted our beliefs to you since they’re so different from yours. That was neither kind nor thoughtful of me. I apologize with all my heart.”

  “Thank you,” she answered graciously. “I admit I was hurt by your words, but they’re behind us now. We need to be together as a family, honoring each other’s beliefs as we hold on to our own.”

  That did it for me. I felt awful I had intentionally hurt her feelings and, aware I was doing that, had continued to do it anyway.

  I think it was about that time I also started to recognize the early signs of age in Grandmother. Oh, she still made her delicious bread and cardamom biscuit and Christmas breads, but she tired more easily, her ankles swelled after a day in the kitchen, and sometimes it seemed she worked to catch her breath.

  Milma gathered us together one evening after she had gone to bed and told us we all needed to help more with the housework. “My mother’s getting too old to scrub floors and even to help doing laundry,” she said. “We can’t continue to ask these things of her.”

  I immediately volunteered to do every single bit of the laundry. “I’ve been essentially doing that anyway since I came, and I can easily tell Grandmother that on Sunday nights I will put the white clothes to soak in boiling water with shavings of soap and a little bit of bluing to make things whiter.”

  Unlike at Metsola, which seemed a magical place, filled with every con­ceivable convenience, the parsonage had no washing machine. Washing again involved filling a boiler with hot water, setting it onto the stove to warm, and sorting the clothes—whites first, then gentle colored things, then the regular colored things, then the rougher clothes, and finally the rugs—before putting them into the hot water, which cooled as I got to the colored clothes. I had to use a laundry brush and the washboard to get everything clean, just as I’d had to do at home. Grandmother had been helping me wringing out the clothes, but I could do that by myself or possibly with Tellervo’s or young Risto’s help.

  Risto offered to carry the baskets out to the line and help hanging the wash. That was kind of him since the baskets were very heavy and the lines almost too high for me to reach.

  “After I do the washing, on Mondays, I shall scrub the kitchen floor, the side entry floor, and the steps,” I continued.

  Risto, who tended to be a little spoiled because he looked and acted so much like his father, also offered to take over sweeping the living room and dining room and the front porch and shaking the rugs. He even offered to use a mop whenever a more thorough cleaning was needed. That was a huge accomplishment for him, one his mother praised very highly.

  Tellervo said she was old enough to dust “without breaking anything.”

  “And we can take care of our own rooms,” I suggested. “Milma, you have so much church work I think you should be excused from doing any housework.”

  “No, Maria,” she said. “I’ll do my part. I’ll take care of the master bedroom and my office. As for the cooking… well, we shall have to continue to rely on Grandmother—and on you,” she said indicating me. “But whenever she is in the kitchen, whoever is free should go in to help her.”

  And so it was agreed. I had originally been hired to do much more work than I had been currently doing. Mostly, I had wound up being in charge of the children, making sure they were playing nicely, not roughly, and that they were careful not to hurt each other by word or deed. It was time and past time for me to start doing my share of the work.

  Milma had continued the practice of reading aloud to the three children before they went to sleep. I sometimes crawled in beside Tellervo so I could hear the stories, too, and sometimes I fell asleep there and woke up halfway through the night only to have to climb up to my own bed. Milma never woke me up.

  The change came about so smoothly we didn’t even think Grandmother was aware I was now doing all the washing and ironing, Risto was taking care of the floors (except for the kitchen and the back entry), and Tellervo was handling the dusting. But one afternoon after she had taken the bread out of the oven, Grandmother sat down, wiped her hands on the dish towel that she kept handy, and admitted that she was tired. “I don’t know what I would do without your children’s help,” she said.

  “And we’re glad to be helping you,” I answered with all my heart.

  While we worked together in the kitchen, she often reminisced about her life—the way it had been in Finland, her journey to Virginia, and the way she felt about life here and at Metsola. I got the idea of writing down her memories, urging her to sit and talk to me while I ironed. After I finished a part of the work, I’d record what she said, asking her questions to flesh out the lines of what had happened when. She enjoyed sharing her memories, and I loved recording what she said.

  Her life in Finland had been hard, she admitted. “I was the oldest girl in the family, and so it was left for me to do whatever my mother didn’t have time to do. That was good in that it taught me how to cook and bake and care for the house, but as the younger children were born and she had to spend more and more time caring for the babies, I wound up being a surrogate mother to some of my siblings.” She sighed. “That was one reason I chose to have only one child. I knew how much work babies were, and I knew how much work it was to take care of the house and prepare meals.” Then she sat still and thought for long time.

  “My husband died quite young.

  “We had moved to Helsinki before he died and so I was separated from my family, all of whom lived on the border in Karelia. I was only peripherally aware that my brothers fought against Russia during the Winter War. Two of them died,” she said, her eyes drawing in on themselves, her thoughts clearly in the past. “In Helsinki, although we were bombed, we didn’t have to leave our homes as my family had had to do,” she continued, “and it was about then my husband died. I was left alone in a big city during wartime with no family to turn to for help, and Milma just a baby…”

  I asked her how she’d managed. She answered with a tremulous smile, “Just by taking one day at a time.”

  She often became so involved with her memories and with my recording of them that a whole afternoon would pass without our being aware of it. Then I had to rush to get dinner on, and she would help me, although I did more and more and she, less and less.

  When it was time for us to leave for Met
sola the following spring, the bulk of the packing and organizing fell on my shoulders. Grandmother had always taken care of it all, but increasingly, she was unable to do more than care for her own room—although I added scrubbing her floor to my list of things to do, and Tellervo did her dusting.

  With Risto gone—for he had been asked to serve on a number of committees for the Boston Unitarian Church—Milma was overwhelmed with the task of keeping two congregations—the one in Virginia and her fledgling one in Alango—busy and happy. She spent hours working on her sermons, often delivering them to whichever of the children was working in the living room or to Grandmother and me in the kitchen, just to see how her thoughts would sound.

  Sometimes we were able to give her small suggestions she said she appreciated more than we knew. I know it kept us informed and made us feel important. Religious education needed to be organized at both churches. She needed women and men, she often added, to teach Sunday school, and it was up to her to come up with the curriculum that would keep the children ranging in age from pre-school to teenagers interested and involved.

  In addition, she had to face the meetings with the church boards of directors. When her husband had been there, these had become very festive, involving sumptuous meals in Virginia and at Metsola, and extending far into the evening—with the members socializing and getting to know each other, which was important, she said.

  That final year Grandmother managed to put together two delicious meals—one for each of the church boards. I served them and cleaned up afterwards. But it was clear the effort involved in making them was not worth it because Grandmother tired so easily.

  By Christmas of the third year of my being a part of their family, we limited the productions for the church boards to cookies and coffee. That seemed to work almost as well, for they stayed long into the evening, depleting our store of Christmas cookies and pulla and downing cupful after cupful of coffee. Milma came into the kitchen after the last person had left and collapsed. Her mother had long since gone to bed, and I was finishing the cleanup.

  “You know, dear child,” she told me that night, “I don’t know what we would do without you. You’ve managed to keep this house an oasis of peace for me and the children. And you’re too young to be shouldering all of this work!”

  I sat down with her, poured us each a cup of coffee (the dregs of the pot), set out a plate of Christmas cookies, and commiserated. “It is a lot of work,” I admitted, “but I truly love everything I do to make you and the children happy. You’ve made me feel so much a part of your family that I really and truly love everything I do. And it isn’t all that much—not with the children helping.” I looked at her directly. “I think it’s good for them to learn to be partly responsible for keeping up the house.”

  “I do, too,” she said, helping herself to one more cookie. “For a long time we just depended on my mother to keep the house intact. I agree it’s been wonderful to have the children learn they’re not always going to have things done for them. Even Tellervo! I can’t believe how seriously she takes her dusting.”

  “And Daniel and Risto, too, are such a big help. Their appreciation of what I do—and yours—make it all worthwhile.”

  “I’m so glad,” she said, getting up and smiling. “Now, let me wipe the dishes as you wash, and you can tell me what you think of our board members.”

  I grinned. “The board members from the Alango church seem a lot more appreciative of what you do—that we do—than does the Virginia board.”

  “That’s because they’re all hard workers. They recognize hard work when they see it. Some members of the Virginia board…” she signed, “. . . are so well-off themselves they’ve forgotten what it’s like to really work for a living.”

  That was a huge admission for her to make, and I doubly appreciated her willingness to entrust me with such a sensitive comment. “I promise never to tell anyone that you said that,” I said.

  She gave me a hug and said, “Don’t you know that? I trust you with all of our family secrets, and I know you’ll never divulge them to anyone!”

  “I won’t,” I asserted, feeling honored. What went on behind the closed doors of that house was sacrosanct to me. I would never breathe a word of it to a living soul, not even to my mother.

  The big secret we shared and kept among us always was what happened to Risto.

  12: Risto

  About a year before Milma began her Confirmation class, Reverend Risto had received a letter he shared with his family and me, of course, since it was over the dining room table at dinner.

  “Dear Reverend Lappala,” it began, “We’re a fledgling group of Unitarians working without a pastor. We live in a small community called Hillsboro about forty-five miles north of Fargo, North Dakota. We heard of your work with the small congregation in Alango and are hopeful you would consider coming to visit us—to help us arrange to get a pastor and to conduct services. We have three couples who wish to be married as Unitarians and four babies whose parents would like them baptized as Unitarians. We have also had two recent deaths of members and would very much appreciate having their committal service done by a Unitarian minister.

  “It is true that we are not considered to be church people by many of the Lutheran members of the community. But we are not Communists, or Hall People, if you know what I mean. We began our church with two couples who moved here from St. Paul, Minnesota, which has a large Unitarian population. Many of us were discouraged by the rigidity of the beliefs Lutheran people in our area adhere to, and a relatively large circle of us meets regularly in our homes and/or in one-room schoolhouses in the area. We do not have enough money right now to build a church, but we believe if we were to engage the services of a pastor, even for a brief time, a church might become a reality.

  “Please consider our request as an honor due your fine reputation as a caring and resourceful minister.

  “Sincerely,

  “Jacob Farmington, Chairman of the Unitarian Church Board.”

  “So,” Reverend Risto said, looking around the table at each of us, “what do you think I should do?”

  Milma answered first, slowly, obviously considering the request very seriously. “Both of our churches are enjoying summer recess right now,” she began. “Thus it would not hurt our local congregations if you were to leave. How long would you be gone?” Trust Milma—ever practical—to consider the whole question one step at a time.

  He answered, “A month, perhaps? At least long enough to get some feeling for the group so I could, perhaps, be of help in their struggle to find a full-time minister.”

  Grandmother nodded. “It certainly speaks well of you that your name has reached so far. And they do sound very serious.”

  The children, of course, wanted none of that plan. “We’re going to move to Metsola for the summer soon. We’ll miss having you there with us.”

  “I wonder if there would be any problem with the Lutherans if you were to go there,” I threw in, aware of the rift that existed between the Lutherans and the Unitarians in the Alango area. “I’ve worried about the hard feelings many of the Lutherans hold toward us. They’d burn down the schoolhouse we’re using as a church if they thought they could get away with it.”

  “There is that to consider,“ Milma nodded. “How angry would the Lutheran population be if the Unitarians were able to get a minister?”

  Reverend Risto sat back, obviously considering that question seriously. “I do not think I’d be in any real danger. If there were people rabidly against the Unitarian beliefs, I think the community would be aware of them and would have warned me about them.”

  Milma’s suggestion was sound: “Why don’t you write a letter asking about that possibility and offering to come if there isn’t any danger.”

  “Then, that’s settled.” Reverend Risto headed for the office to write the letter. Th
e rest of us forgot the whole business while we enjoyed the process of getting ready to head to Metsola. We had to pack enough food to last us a few weeks, until we could start gathering from the garden the members of the Alango congregation had already planted, assuming the children—or Milma, Grandmother, or I—could catch fish to provide us some of the meat for our meals.

  Otherwise it was mainly a matter of gathering the children’s summer clothes, which had been packed away when we had returned to Virginia late the previous August and to try them on to see who needed new ones and whose could be “handed down.” Even Tellervo dressed in boys’ clothes back “in the sticks’” as she teasingly called it.

  This was my first time to make arrangements for the trip since Grand­mother had handled everything the June before. The children wanted their favorite books and toys, and their parents were receptive to their bringing almost as much as they wanted because going to Metsola was a vacation, a time to give themselves to doing what they wanted to do, not what they had to do, as they did the rest of the year. Neither the Alango nor the Virginia churches held services during the summer although, of course, Risto or Milma continued to minister to couples who wanted to be married or have their children baptized or to families who had suffered a death and wanted a Unitarian minister to perform the funeral service.

  Grandmother was, of course, considered in all of the planning: therefore, she had a voice especially I planning the meals. We would buy milk, cream, eggs, and butter from a local farmer, and we could probably find one who would be willing to shoot a deer or a brace of partridge for Grandmother to fix. She always fried the tongue and liver, which the children absolutely refused to eat. Their likes and dislikes were duly noted, and alternative meals supplied whenever they were needed. Grandmother made delicious egg sandwiches, which were as healthy for protein as a part of a deer or partridge. The partridge she wrapped in bacon, filled the center cavity with butter, and baked in the oven. The venison she fixed in a variety of different ways, each one tasting delicious because she removed every speck of tallow just as Mother did so that even the children enjoyed eating the roasts, which she often prepared with a small pork roast alongside, and the chops which she dipped in flour and browned on top of the stove and then set inside the oven with green peppers to cook with them. Even I, who despised venison because it had seemed to be the only meat our family ever ate, could not tell the difference between the venison she fixed and the beef.