On the
Canadian Prairie
Atop a
Throne of Cordwood
Very
clearly, in memory, I see the girl I was at fourteen, beautiful and
determined, leaving the blue house where she had grown up.
I see
myself in the back of a truck, perched atop a pile of logs soon to be cut
for cordwood. The two men inside the truck, transporting the wood to
be sold in a distant village, show no concern for any danger I
might face traveling over bumpy roads, balanced precariously on that
heavy load. As the truck heads down the long driveway, the girl I
was looks back at her home for the last time.
When I think
of that moment, I feel both sadness and compassion for that naïve,
determined girl. I understand now that, while none of us can know what
lies ahead, the way we set off, the spirit in which the journey is
begun, will determine if we see the path ahead through a glass
lightly, or darkly.
They say that
character is destiny. Clearly, my character at that young age was still
forming. Perhaps I knew what I didn’t want to become more clearly than
what I did want. A spirit of defiance was enough to propel me down
the road. While my body rocked and bumped down the drive away from the
blue house, something in my core felt steady and sure even as it moved
into the unknown. Now, approaching fourscore years on earth, I see
that departure in a different light. It tells me something about goodbyes and
how important it is to always say, “I love you.”
In the
kitchen, as I prepared to leave, flies buzzed in and out of the torn
screen in the window, drawn by the unwashed pots and pans in and around
the sink. Moth er stood kneading bread dough over and over, refusing to
look up at me. This was not how I knew her to be. My childhood memories
are full of Mother putting my hands in hers and then looking directly
into my eyes with such loving kindness, or simply patting my head
softly. It was her way of connecting. Through the simplest gestures, she
transmitted an unshakable belief in her children. Her love gave each of
us a positive sense of self so that we were assured of success, no matter
what obstacles we might face. Yet today, the last day that I would
ever live in the blue house, the sudden end of my childhood, Mother would
not look up. Without her loving, assuring eyes connecting with mine, for a
moment my confidence was shaken.
My sister
Linda recalled when she left nearly ten years later, heading for
California to live with relatives, Mother was hoeing the garden and
refused to look up or say goodbye. Why would Mother not
acknowledge her daughters as they set out into the world? Was it
just too painful to confront the prospect of us vanishing for good?
Was she worried about all that could happen to us leaving home at only
fourteen years of age? Or was she perhaps thinking that while I was
managing to escape our miserable life of utter poverty, she never would?
Was this why she kept kneading the bread dough, refusing to look
up, with just moments left between us? All of these questions rode
roughshod across my heart.
I believe she
was neither cold nor indifferent; rather, her pain was so deep it caused
her to behave in a way that was contrary to her kind and affirming
nature. Perhaps it was a lingering memory of the loss of our oldest
sister.
While Mother
would eventually give birth to seven teen children, her first pregnancy
occurred at seventeen years of age. The first born, Donaldene Margaret,
lived for one month. In that time, the child suffered a bowel problem
requiring Mother to give her enemas with a sharpened bar of soap. Little
Donaldene, in constant pain, cried a lot. One night, sleeping between my
parents, she died. My parents didn’t know if the cause was crib death or
a result of her bowel troubles. Mother always said, “I wanted to die that
night, too.” My parents kept her tiny casket in the house, with the lamp
on throughout the night, the saddest vigil.
Perhaps this
was why Mother stood in the kitchen, silently kneading the bread, on the
day of my departure. This image of my mother, unwilling, or unable, to
look up and truly see me one last time, the sense of missed
connection, haunted me deeply as we drove away from the blue house, and
it has haunted me ever since.
Linda, eight
years old at the time, still remembers watching me lurch and bounce away
atop that pile of cordwood. All she could think, watching me recede
into invisibility, was, “Oh, my God!”
It is
important to leave the people we love knowing how we feel about them in
our hearts. Even if they cannot fully receive this message in the moment, the
words can grow inside them, and perhaps comfort them at a later
time when they might really need that fortification. The truth is, we
never know what will happen. We never know how, or even if, we will see
each other again.
I cannot
recall what I was thinking when I left the blue house for the last time,
at the start of a hundred-mile trip to the town of Wynyard. I was heading
for my ma ternal grandmother’s home, with plans to attend high school
there in the fall. For the summer, I had been offered a job on a farm just
outside of the town, working for a couple I had never met.
I was headed
toward an unknown destiny. Yet, as I struggled to get comfortable atop
the sharp, hard wood, I do remember one very distinct feeling: a fierce,
almost wild hope, rising. I was finally moving towards a conviction I had
long held in my heart like an inextinguishable talisman: I am somebody,
and I am going to be somebody greater. Here was the first realization in my
gladdening heart that the destination was not a place. My north star was
the belief that, having escaped the blue house at last, I was headed to
something greater. As I clung tightly to the old straw rope that loosely
held the logs in place, I did not know or consider what lay ahead
of me. I just knew I had to survive the journey.
This looks like a great novel
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