Gifts of the Spirit

by Patricia Eilola

  Mother absolutely loved the gas stove. It had four burners on the left and an oven on the right with a warming oven atop the whole. We ordered it from the Montgpmery Ward catalog for the princely sum of $53.95, and by that time we had spent so much money that we decided to add the “oven heat regulator” for an extra $8.00. It had taken us days and actually weeks to decide whether to order that one or the one for $45.85. But the difference in oven size and overall quality made us just “go for it!” as Arvo put it. “In for a penny, in for a pound,” Mother had added, and so it was decided. We also decided to pay cash for it instead of the $5.00 a week payment plan, which, in the long run, would save us almost the extra $8.00.

  When it was delivered, Mother couldn’t wait to try it. She found that the extra $8.00 had been more than worth the money because she could set the oven temperature and it would hold at that temp while whatever she had in the oven baked.

  With the wood stove, baking temperatures had been “by guess and by gosh,” as Mother put it. She had become so expert at the exact amount of wood needed in the fire box in order to maintain a consistent temperature that we rarely wound up with anything burned on the bottom. I hadn’t been so lucky. The change from the gas stove I had used at Lappalas to the wood stove at home had caused me no end of grief. Finally I had just asked Mother to handle the baking end of whatever I was making, and I knew it would come out just fine.

  One problem we encountered as soon as we set up the gas kitchen stove was that we no longer had a good source of heat for the house. The wood stove had served as a furnace.

  To offer us another source of heat, Arvo unearthed an extra wood stove Father had bought to heat water in his tanning shed. It had been left there, used to heat our laundry tubs but not much else.

  Arvo cleaned it of every speck of rust accumulated over the years and set it up in one corner of the living room. It meant we would have to carry wood across the living room floor all winter, but at least we’d be warm.

  I was pleased with the way that Arvo set it up. He built a frame of wood around it, far enough away so it wouldn’t catch fire and yet would keep the children from touching the hot stove. He also managed to find flat rocks which he laid down across the floor, matching their edges and cementing them together so the stove didn’t sit on the wood floor. Somehow he fitted stones up the walls, too, so the whole area had the look of a fireplace. It turned out to be absolutely beautiful. Visitors commented on it, and several of the women asked Arvo if he could come to their houses to make a similar arrangement.

  But he was too busy. The children played happily in the fenced-in area he had built in the yard with the sandbox in the center. Off to one edge stood a big maple tree, which he had enclosed within the fence, too, so the children could climb its fat branches. The trunk had divided itself into four sections about two feet above the ground. From that spot in the center little Nonny led pirate ships toward the Gold Coast and drove teams of horses across the fields and down the roads. Once Susie was big enough to climb up, too, he graciously shared his special spot with her and allowed her to bring her doll there. It was the site of many a tea party.

  Such was the life we lived during the Roaring Twenties. There was no “roaring” at our place on Korvan Kylla, but there was a lot of happiness. Before we knew it, Eino was going into his senior year of high school.

  Eino wasn’t either big or strong. In fact, although none of us wanted to admit it, the bouts with influenza and polio had left him a little weakened, and he struggled with carrying wood and water to the sauna and with chopping larger chunks of wood into smaller kindling. He had faced the fact that he had better graduate from high school and go on to some further schooling so he would qualify for a good job—one that didn’t depend on a strong back but instead on a strong, intelligent mind.

  He did do very well in school—bringing home A’s in everything but mathematics, which I was ill-prepared to help him with. It had been the only area I’d struggled with in eighth grade and had worried about getting through on the examinations. Surprisingly, it was Arvo who grasped the concepts that puzzled both Eino and me and wound up being a tutor to his younger brother.

  It all happened as things sometimes do—by happenstance. One night when Eino was battling with an algebra problem, Arvo had pulled his book over, read the directions, and completed the assignment with no trouble at all.

  “Where did you learn algebra?” I had asked him, puzzled.

  “I guess I got a little bit into it while I was still in school,” he admitted, “and since there were two grades in one room still in Virginia back then, I heard the older kids trying to solve equations. It just seemed so easy to me I couldn’t understand why they were having problems. Even beginning geometry made such good sense to me I got ahead of myself in math, although I didn’t get so far in history or reading,” he laughed, poking some fun at me because of our early-marriage reading sessions, which had continued even after we had children.

  “Oh, you,” I scoffed, aware he understood almost every single word I was reading, and the ones he didn’t, he’d take time to look up in my dictionary. His reading ability had multiplied during those evening sessions until sometimes I caught him with a book in his hand. I once heard him laughing out loud at Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. “What’s so funny?” I had asked him.

  “Have you read this whole book?” he had asked, still grinning.

  “No,” I admitted. I had been saving it for our winter’s evenings.

  “Well, there’s this hilarious scene where the fellow had one woman under his bed, another in his closet, and a third knocking at his door.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I exclaimed, knowing I was blushing but unable to stop.

  “Here. Read it for yourself.”

  I did and blushed. He was right. Right there in the middle of a British classic by Henry Fielding.

  “Well, I never…” was all I could manage.

  “Maybe we ought to what-do-they-call-it ‘censor’ our reading?” he laughed.

  “Absolutely not,” I snapped. “If it’s a classic, we’ll read every single word, regardless.” And I left the room in a huff.

  He teased me about that scene endlessly, and he had been right, of course. Just because a book was a “classic” didn’t mean it didn’t have some “mischievous” parts in it!

  For days, Arvo had pored over the Sears & Roebuck catalog listing of homes for sale. But no matter how much Mother continued to make by selling her milk, cream, and eggs (and her now-famous pulla) to wealthy townsfolk and how much Arvo made with his trap lines and how much we saved by eating the deer and partridge and wild turkeys Arvo shot and by planting a garden that seemed to get bigger every year, there was no way we could afford even the down-payment on either a car or a new house.

  But we could dream… and dream we did during those early years of our marriage. We were even more in love than in the beginning, I thought as I went about the day’s work, still cleaning the separator, helping Mother with the cooking and baking, and keeping ourselves and our house so clean a visitor could eat off the floor. Dreams were the stuff of which our lives were made—not unreachable goals, but step-by-step achievements we could follow that would lead inevitably, we believed, to a better life.

  Life continued apace, and I soon found myself ready to give birth for the third time. The memories of the nights spent reading with Arvo and our good times together gave me the strength to get through it. This one not as difficult as Nonny’s nor as easy as Susie’s.

  Irma and Mother and Arvo saw me through with me screaming bloody murder and swearing at him that it was all his fault I had to go through this hell again and it would be a sunny day in hell before I’d go to bed with him again!

  Of course, all of that anger faded as soon as we saw the baby—another girl—this one with Nonny’s sweet nature from the very beginning. Putting
her head to my breast, she turned to nurse immediately, and offered Arvo a satisfying burp once she was through. We named her “Elsie Elaine” for no particular reason. We both just liked the names.

  She was as good a baby as Nonny had been, sleeping through the night after a month or two, nursing every three to four hours, one breast at a time, doing her big jobs at a regular time so we could again use the poddy chair instead of having a dirty diaper. She took to her dad right away—cooing and smiling the minute she saw him although she was happy with me or Mother holding her. But she clearly preferred her father.

  We felt comfortable letting baby Elsie out into the fenced yard to play once she was toddling. We knew Nonny would watch out for her, and she loved the sandbox where she built roads and houses and made stick people out of bits of branches.

  Altogether life was wonderful during those years. I look back on them with joy. Except one incident, which I shall never forget.

  25: Problem Solved

  Not until Nonny was about six did he give us any trouble, and then he gave us a scare serious enough for us to fear for his life—after the fact. The children had long ago been warned to stay away from the creek that ran between the grocery store and our house. It had two bridges—one large one on Highway 25 big enough for a motor car or a team and wagon, and a smaller one we used whenever we needed to get something from their store.

  Just in case warnings hadn’t been enough, in addition, we had made it plain that dire consequences would visit any of our children who went near the big bridge, which, of course, made that one the far more desirable.

  Never in his life had Nonny been disobedient; so, that afternoon, when he and his friend Freddie Paavola asked if they could walk down the road aways to look for pretty rocks, we had said, “Yes,” but with the clear qualification, “but don’t go near the big bridge. Not on it or near it or anywhere around it.”

  They had both solemnly promised to obey. But children will be children, and that day they were busy daring each other. First it had been to see who could walk a length of wooden fencing, then who could run faster from the house to the road, then who could hop farther and skip farther, and finally each one dared the other to go down by the bridge.

  It was spring, and the creek was running high. But I had been confident Nonny wouldn’t disobey me and go anywhere near it—so confident I hadn’t even taken time to look out the kitchen window to check where they were. Arvo had been plowing the fields that day and had come into the house for lunch, exhausted. The day had been unseasonably hot—nearly ninety degrees we were to find out later—and he had sweated through his work shirt and undershirt and his pants and drawers. In the process of getting him re-dressed, I hadn’t checked outside to see where Susie was either, supposing she was within the fenced-in area with little Elsie, as she usually was. She rather liked being the one “in charge” when Nonny had a play-friend over for an afternoon.

  But true to her nature, that afternoon she had taken it upon herself to follow the boys, trying to sneak up behind them and get in on whatever they were doing—some mischief, she clearly had hoped.

  Thank God she had done that. For once in her life, her disobedience had a wonderful—a marvelous—a great result. Instead of being paddled, she was made much of because she had been responsible…

  But as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself.

  The boys had dared each other to go down to the edge of the creek, and, even aware of the danger they had been warned about again and again, first Freddie and then Nonny had turned off the road and, one after the other, slipped and slid down to the edge of the creek.

  “I’ll bet you don’t dare put your foot in there,” Freddie had taunted. Or so we were told afterward.

  “I do, too,” Nonny had said, pulling his overalls up so they wouldn’t get wet.

  Neither of them had any idea of the swiftness of the current, nor had they been aware of how quickly it could catch them.

  Once Nonny had one foot in, Freddie matched him.

  Then Freddie had said, “I’ll bet you don’t dare put both feet in!”

  “I do so,” Nonny had responded.

  Before either of them knew it, not only were both of his feet in the water, but the weight of the wetness on his overalls had pulled Nonny all the way in.

  He didn’t know how to swim, of course. We were farm people, and none of us had spent any time at a lake.

  The current caught him right away, tossing him upside down and rightside up again, pulling him toward the edge of the bridge and the churning water.

  Freddie, terrified, had simply yelled, “Help! Help!” But he had had no idea what to do.

  Thank God just at the moment when Nonny was heading for the bridge, his arms splashing, flailing, Susie arrived. Taking one look at what was going on, she acted. Grabbing a branch fallen from a nearby maple tree—a big branch almost too heavy for her to hold—she pushed it out toward Nonny.

  At first it didn’t reach, and then when it did, Nonny couldn’t hold onto it.

  “Help me!” Susie had told Freddie, who had just stood there, frozen with fear.

  “Help me push this branch over so he can reach it,” she ordered, and he had taken hold of the same end she was holding.

  Between the two of them, they managed to push it into the water, where the current caught the end of it, too.

  There was only a second to spare before Nonny would be pulled under the bridge and out of reach, but somehow in that second he caught the end of the branch and held on for dear life.

  Susie and Freddie had pulled him toward the shore until finally they were able to grab his hands and yank him free of the current and onto the edge of the creek bed.

  For a long moment, he just lay there. Then he started coughing and vomiting up big mouthfuls of the creek water.

  In the meantime Susie had raced home, yelling at the top of her lungs, “Come to the creek! Nonny fell in and he’s coughing and I’m scared!”

  Freddie just stood there, helpless.

  In minutes—although it seemed as if time stood still and yet sped up so quickly it felt as if the creek had caught us, too—Arvo, half-dressed, and I were there. We both grabbed for Nonny, Arvo reaching him first, not sure for a second whether to hug him or to give him the licking of his life. All I could do was to hold him and say over and over again, “Thank God! Thank God!”

  Of course we asked what had happened, and the truth came out in bits and pieces from Nonny, who was still coughing and soaking wet although the sun was so hot he was drying out even as we rushed him toward the house.

  Susie was the heroine of the hour, and she basked in our gratitude as we told her again and again how proud of her we were! Of her quick thinking and quick acting! Nonny had been aware the whole time that Freddie had just stood there until Susie came and that it was her idea to use the branch.

  Had she not been there, had she not been thinking quickly, had she not acted on impulse to do exactly the right thing, we could well have lost our boy.

  The episode lived on in family lore for years, with Nonny always upset with himself for not minding our warnings and Susie basking in the limelight.

  For the rest of that day, after Freddie had been sent him in disgrace although with our understanding that, of course, it had been difficult to decide exactly what he should do and, of course, he knew he shouldn’t have dared Nonny into doing things they knew were wrong.

  I do believe the Paavolas gave Freddie a good spanking when he got home, filled with despair because of Nonny’s near loss. We were tempted to give Nonny the same accountability. But the truth of the matter was that we were so relieved he was all right that neither of us could bring ourselves to punish him. We did, however, have some long discussions about dangers and about remembering warnings and about what could have happened.

  That night at din
nertime, Arvo said the prayer. “Dear God,” he began, “we thank you for this day with all of its trials and tribulations. It has been our day to learn lessons. I think we have all learned them well. Jesus, who was a great teacher, would have been proud of the fact that we have all gained from the experience—Nonny, with his life; Susie, for her courage; and Mother, Mommy, and me, for letting our guard down. We were reminded to be ever watchful of our children—of where they are and what they are doing. Thank you, God, for being with us this day and for being a part of all we do and all that we are—including those parts of us that need teaching, and those of us who will continue to try to teach. Bless this food, which Mother has prepared, and may God Bless Us, Every One!”

  He had remembered Tiny Tim’s Christmas message from Dickens’s The Christmas Carol, which I had read aloud to the whole family just a few months before and which truly suited all of us on that day.

  I don’t think Nonny ever again disobeyed us. Susie—well, she’s another story—but we learned that day she really did care about her brother, no matter how hard she tried to say she didn’t.

  And Elsie, blissfully unaware of the whole mis-adventure, pounded her spoon on the table and asked for “Num num!”

  That trapping season, Arvo decided to keep the pelts of the animals he trapped, to tan them himself, and to help Mother and me make capes out of them—or small coats, for Elsie, for example.

  Mother figured out how to cut a jacket for Elsie out of a rabbit skin. Using the heaviest thread she could spin, she joined two smaller skins to make the front and two others to make the sleeves. We didn’t have a way to close it in the front, but the skins were large enough so the front overlapped. To make the outfit complete, Mother also furnished Elsie with mittens and a hat. She looked absolutely adorable in that outfit—like a small bunny herself—for her dark hair and eyes made the perfect foil for the brownish-gray of the rabbit skin.

  Of course once Elsie had an outfit, Susie wanted one, too. That was harder to make because she, of course, was larger, but Mother cut out pieces of deer hide to make a full-length coat with again an overlapping front and sleeves. The deer hide wasn’t nearly as warm as the rabbit skin so she made Susie a hat and mittens out of mink. They were gorgeous—so sleek and dark brown.