“And God is love,” he repeated.
It was a lesson I finally learned and thankfully never completely forgot again. Love surrounded me then and for the rest of the days of my life.
And I never ceased to be grateful.
28: Recovery
Back then, who had ever heard of “post-partum depression”? I had experienced what it was first-hand, but there were no words to describe what I had been going through.
Thank God for Milma, who—alone—sensed the darkness of the abyss that had surrounded me, shared her experience with it, and drew me back into the realm of the living.
For a time, after I had described what had happened in the amount of detail Arvo would understand and would not frighten him to death, he remained careful of me, handling me gently and encouraging the children and Mother to do the same.
I was so grateful to be grateful again that I still struggle to find words that are adequate to suit the situation. No one at home was aware, thank God, of the depth of the blackness that had surrounded me or of the tempting call of the abyss, offering peace and oblivion, an end to constant worry. I vowed never again to allow myself to get that close to the edge, but I was also aware of the insidious nature of the darkness that crept up on me not only at night but sometimes during the day unexpectedly when I was not busy with daily chores.
I tried hard to stay busy every waking moment, jumping out of bed instead of cuddling with Arvo, hurrying to the kitchen to beat Mother with the breakfast preparations, rushing to the baby the second I heard a cry, and with everyone, being very aware of their presence and the blessings of their very being.
Worry about Ronny and Eino I simply pushed to the back of my mind, knowing I could not control what was happening to them any more than I could change what would happen to the rest of my beloved family—except by being very alert and very careful.
The visit to Milma had helped enormously. To hear her first-hand knowledge was to gain a modicum of wisdom with relation to my own despair. But I would be lying if I said that everything turned “normal” again right away and that I always felt happy.
I still had days when I held on for dear life, clinging to Arvo or Mother or to one of the children. But, thank God, every day I felt stronger, more able to withstand the normal vexations and problems that every day brought, more able to deal with problems directly, rather than burrowing under them, as if hiding myself would change whatever was wrong into something right.
But neither hiding myself from the truths about life nor keeping myself busy served to prevent accidents.
The day, for example, when Elsie broke her arm began as every other day had begun—with pancakes for breakfast (the thin Finnish kind for which I used a special pan), the normal washing of the separator parts and the dishes and, since it was a Monday, the preparations for washing the clothes we had hauled into the summer kitchen the night before, putting the white clothes to soak in hot bleach/lye water. We still hadn’t purchased the washing machine advertised in the Wards’s catalog that had saved me so much time at the Lappalas. Arvo had said we would buy it for sure with the results of his next winter’s trapping. But that was months away.
Between now and then were many months of hard work, with Mother and me taking turns scrubbing the soiled clothes on the scrub board, wringing them out by hand before dropping them into the first rinsing water and then again before the second rinsing water and once again before dropping them into the basket, which we carried outside to hang the clothes on the line. Winter or summer, spring or fall—on the line they went. During the winter, they froze solid, and we had to bring them into the summer kitchen or the kitchen of the house, where Arvo had hung lines, for them to finish drying.
It was back-breaking work, and we were grateful when the amount of farm work eased and Arvo was able to help us. He was, of course, much stronger than either Mother or I and thus was able to wring more water out of the clothes. I had suggested that we use the forked poles I had seen at the Haualas, and the idea had caught on immediately so that we were always able to push the lines up as far as they would go to catch the most wind.
That Monday we had trudged toward the summer house, the last basket of dirty clothes held between us, when we heard a cry from the fenced-in area where the children played.
It was a cry of pain, and we dropped the basket where we stood and ran toward the sound. It was little Elsie, holding her arm against her side, crying, “I fwell down.”
Nonny and Susie, one on each side of her, were “helping” to the extent they could, but every time one of them moved her shoulder or her arm, she cried out again.
“My God, I think she broke her arm,” I cried, reaching her and trying to disengage a small somewhat dirty hand from its grip on her other arm.
“It huwwts!” she told us, tears making rivulets down her dirty face.
“She was just playing on the tree,” both Nonny and Susie affirmed. “We had just turned our backs to get her dishes,” (we had bought some old tin dishes from a farmer who had given up and was heading back to Finland, which were perfect for the children to play with—not breakable and not good enough for our kitchen table) “when all of a sudden we heard this… thud… and when we turned around, she was lying on the ground, holding her arm and crying.”
Arvo had hurried in from the field to find out what had happened, and as we looked at each other, trying to decide what to do, we thought the same thing at the same time—Irma!
I asked Arvo, “Which would be the fastest way of getting her here—Nonny running across the fields or you driving the car?”
The second he heard me speak, Nonny had started to head toward Makelas, running with all his might.
“He might make it there faster,” Arvo said, “but if I follow him with the car, I can bring her here. We can’t expect her to run over the fields, too,” although both of us knew she had done so many times in the past when we had needed her “right now!”
In the meantime, I hurried first for Elsie, to try to hold her without hurting her—an impossibility. And then, hearing Junior start to wail, no doubt in response to the crying he had heard, I rushed toward the cradle we had set outside on the grass so he could get fresh air and yet not miss his nap time. Usually he slept right through all of the children’s playing, but something in Elsie’s voice had alarmed him, and by the time I picked him up, his little face was red from squawling and his little hands were clenched into fists. “There, there,” I soothed, “the world hasn’t come to an end. Your sister Elsie has just broken her arm. We have sent for Irma, who might be able to set it, and you can just settle down and go back to your nap.”
I don’t think he understood my words, but the tone of my voice must have been comforting, because the screams slowed, turned to hiccups, and finally he just looked up at me with his big blue eyes, as if to ask, “Why all the fuss, then?”
Telling Elsie to sit still and adjusting my dress to give him access to my breast, I sat down on the grass near her holding him while he nursed. As usual, once he had burped, he fell asleep again, this time still with little fitful hiccups in his breathing.
“Now you see, young lady,” I said to Elsie, “you’ve really caused a commotion. What on earth happened?”
In her tentative rather lisping voice, she told me, “I just fwell. I I was sittin’ in the twee, an’ the next I was on the gwass, an’ my awm huwts somefin’ awful.”
“I know it does, love,” I said, with what I hoped was reassurance. “Soon Irma will be here, and she’ll make it all better.”
“For suuwe?” she asked.
“Well, almost for sure.” I had to be honest. I knew Irma had set many a broken arm or finger or ankle in the past, but so much would depend on the difficulty of the break. If worse came to worse, we’d have to pile all of the children in the car and drive to Virginia to see Dr. Raihala. I knew for
sure that was the worse option because no matter how carefully Arvo tried to drive, any ride in the Model T was herky-jerky because of the gravel roads, which were not all that well kept up. The jolting would hurt Elsie’s arm even more than it hurt now. We could take Highway 25 to Buhl and the trolley to Virginia, but that would mean dressing everyone up—at least in something other than the work and play clothes we were wearing.
We were relieved with Irma jumped out of the passenger side of our car as Arvo brought it to a halt not that far away from the fenced-in area.
Suddenly I worried about the proximity of the two and then tried very hard to quell the rising fear, which I knew was irrational. Arvo never drove the car without checking to see where the children were. I’d have to check with him to be sure. But not now. Now we needed to help Irma as much as we could with our “wee pumpkin.”
Elsie was as roly-poly as Susie was stiff—a strange equivalent, I thought, with their personalities. And then the fleeting thought sped by, and I concentrated again on Elsie.
Irma had experimented with the arm, trying it in various positions to see which hurt the most and which Elsie could manage without much pain.
“I don’t think it’s a bad break at all,” she announced as we hovered near—all of us, including Nonny and Susie and Mother and Arvo and me. “In fact, if I can just get her to hold it… just so…” We heard a kind of click, and the arm seemed suddenly to look normal.
“I think if we put a splint right here,” she pointed to the lower bone, beneath her elbow, “it’ll hold her arm firmly. Arvo, could you find me a small piece of wood just about six inches long?”
He had one ready.
“Now, if I could have some gauze bandage…”
Mother produced a roll.
“I’ll just wind the splint onto her arm like this,” and she showed us. “If we could get something to hold it now… like a scarf or a larger piece of cloth to make a sling.”
Mother produced a cutting from a sack of flour she had intended to use to make underwear for either the girls or Nonny.
“I’ll just tie it around her neck and that’ll give the arm the support it needs,” she said, looking up at us. “When you take her into the sauna, be sure not to get the splint and the wrapping wet, or if you do, perhaps you could bind it up just as I did. And keep her quiet for a few days,” she advised, “to let the bones begin to heal.”
“Of course,” I said. “We can read and do sums and maybe even play the marble game. Nonny, would you take care of her while Mother and I do the washing?”
“Me, too,” Susie insisted.
“Yes,” I said, “You, too. Between the two of you, can you manage to keep her occupied for a couple of hours?”
“We can even bring a blanket or a rug outside to sit on so we don’t waste the nice day” was Nonny’s suggestion.
“Anything you do to keep her quiet would be very helpful.” Irma praised the two of them and dug three pieces of penny candy out of her apron pocket, giving one to each of them.
“Thank you,” they chorused without a single hint from me.
“God Bless You,” I told Irma, offering her a cup of coffee and a piece of pulla. “And there aren’t words again—enough words—to tell you how grateful we are.”
“Well,” she said, “I know you have washing to do. So do I, so if Arvo would be kind enough to give me a ride home, I’ll say goodbye. And you’re so welcome,” she said, giving me a big hug.
“Don’t you worry now,” she whispered to me. “Everything will be just fine.”
How did she know? I wondered. But then somehow Irma always seemed to know exactly what was going on in each of our minds. I’ve wondered, looking back, if she had a kind of mental telepathy or if she was just such a caring person she instinctively was aware when someone wasn’t feeling quite right.
“I’ll tell you sometime,” I promised.
“Whenever you feel like it, I’m always here,” she said to me as she climbed back into the car and waited for Arvo to get in, too.
I never did share my experience with the abyss and with how close I had come to taking my own life with anyone other than Milma—not even with Arvo, although he pestered me and questioned me about what had been wrong. Had it been something he’d done? he asked me.
“Absolutely not,” I reassured him. “It was just… well… you know when something kind of… gets to you… and you don’t know… exactly what it is… well, that’s kind of what happened with me.” I knew it sounded lame, but it was the best I could do at that moment. And the moments went by, growing into days and weeks and months and finally years, and I kept my own counsel, touching base with Milma now and then, “just to talk,” I told Arvo.
As time went by, he came to accept that need and, if not to understand, at least to, well, accept it as he did most everything that concerned me.
I did tell him I thought having my tubes tied and knowing there would never be another baby—even though I knew we couldn’t afford even the ones we had—had been more difficult than I had expected.
Typically, it was Nonny who wound up spending the afternoon with Elsie while Susie spent a few minutes with her and then, happy that the dishes were not being used, went off by herself with the dishes in hand.
To help Elsie with the pain, Mother had dug out her bottle of laudanum from her medicine chest, and she gave her a teaspoonful. Of course, she fell asleep almost right away—on the daybed in the living room where we had moved her after Irma left.
Nonny sat with her all afternoon holding her head on his lap and patting her head, twirling the curls that escaped her braids, and in general just being with her while Mother and I went back to the washing.
Every few minutes, however, I returned to the house from the summer kitchen—just to check, I said to Nonny. He seemed to understand that need in me and nodded every time I came in to indicate she was still asleep.
When she awoke, crying a bit from the pain, Mother gave her a tiny dose of laudanum—barely a quarter of a teaspoon—not enough to make her fall back asleep but enough to take the edge off of her pain.
It was then that Nonny really took over. He started reading from A Child’s Garden of Verses. He had begun with “Bed in Summer,” one of all three of the children’s favorites because it asked the question they asked so often during the time the sun was still up and it was bedtime. “And does it not seem hard to you, / When all the sky is clear and blue, / And I should like so much to play, / To have to go to bed by day?”
Elsie particularly enjoyed the poem about the boy who was left alone to play because hie friend Tom had hurt his knee.
“I bweoke my awm,” she said, looking up at Nonny as if for confirmation.
“Yes, you did,” he said, “and you are being very brave about it, too.”
They all liked “The Cow,” happy that “The friendly cow all red and white, / I love with all my heart.” And, since Arvo had built them a swing out of ropes tied to a slab of wood and attached to one of the huge limbs of the big tree, they had all memorized “The Swing”—‘How do you like to go up in a swing, / Up in the air so blue? / Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing / Ever a child can do.” Once Elsie saw the picture, she and Nonny had recited the poem in unison. I heard them with pleasure during one of my trips inside.
After lunch, I put all three of them down for an afternoon rest. I had learned from Susie not to call it a “nap” because she insisted she was too old to have to take one.
But often as not the three of them all fell asleep, usually in a heap on our big bed. Sometimes one of them would bring a toy to bed and play quietly with that or with a book while the other two rested, but I was surprised and gratified they mostly took advantage of their “quiet time” simply to be.
Mindful as I was during those days when I was still working at escaping from the
threat of the abyss, I began to spend some time every day quietly. I was trying very hard to learn just to be—quiet, alone or with Arvo, not mending or knitting or sewing as Mother was wont to do when she sat down—but just there—savoring the moment. Sometimes I read parts of the Bible. I allowed it to open wherever it would and read the pages “sent to me” as Milma had suggested. Sometimes I prayed—always taking time to be thankful for the love that surrounded me—for Arvo’s everlasting and utter “adoration.” There really was no other word for the way he seemed to feel about me. For the children’s safety and health and happiness, and for Mother’s unending kindness and invaluable help.
Moreover, I realized that one of my fears—that something would happen to one of the children—had come true and I had been capable of dealing with it efficiently and effectively. Thus, although worries continued to bother me from time to time, I gradually became able, by and large, to set them aside in view of the larger picture of happiness and contentment our family enjoyed.
Although freedom didn’t come in an instant, it did gradually arrive. And then I had another reason to be thankful.
29: Good News
When we finally heard from Eino, we felt a sense of great relief. He had found a relatively high-paying job working in a store near the campus selling books—textbooks and regular books. That meant he would be able to purchase the texts for his classes at a reduced rate, which would be a huge saving. The owner had a room behind the store he rented to Eino for $1.00 a week. He paid Eino $4.00 a week so the amount of rent seemed fair. It had a small kitchen with a two-ring gas burner and a small icebox so he could handle his own meals, which was also an enormous saving.
The first letter just informed us about his job and his living conditions, but it was all good news so my worrying had been for naught.
He had also applied and been accepted at Hamlin, at Macalester, and at the main university. The total cost, unfortunately, was about $250.00 a year—or $4.00 for every credit class. Assuming he took sixteen credits a quarter, the cost would be multiplied by three or come to about $190 a year or sixty-four dollars a quarter. Considering he was paid four dollars a week—almost three that he could conceivably save—he could only set aside about $36.00 in twelve weeks. It would take him a year to save about $162.00 and another six months to save $81.00 or, eighteen months to earn $243.00. It seemed as if he’d have to wait at least a year and a half of doing nothing much but working in order to afford even one year. And, unless he could keep working while going to school, he’d have to scrimp and save every cent in order to pay for his second year.
Gifts of the Spirit Page 33
