By Laura Pearce
My mother was, as her mother had been, a farmer's daughter who became a farmer's wife.
She graduated, with honors, from a small Christian College in the Midwest, earning a degree in Home Economics. She taught High School in Letts, Iowa for two years during the war and is said to have liked her work and been well suited for it.
She was a friendly but serious minded girl, beautiful in the Scandinavian way with wide set eyes, blond hair and clean features. A full 2 inches taller than either of her parents, she had endlessly long legs and a stunning figure. When my brothers and I look at old photographs, we see a young woman so lovely that she might have been a model or even a movie actress. She couldn't have cared less what she looked like and never thought about it one way or another. This was, no doubt, part of her appeal, for she had countless suitors and in 1946 alone, turned down five honorable proposals of marriage. The following year, when she met, and eventually agreed to marry my father, he was, (according to him) 'surprised'. She was, after all, (according to everyone)'quite a catch'.
She left her career and Iowa behind, moving to the Pacific Northwest to help the man she loved make a go at farming. This is no small thing and she went about it in no small way. Her application of thrifty economics to the thousands of intricate skills she possessed was by far the greatest factor in my parent's success and their successes were many.
My father loved his wife and took great pride in everything about her. Her good looks and common sense were pleasing to him, as was her talent for 'making a little go a long way'. Her instinctive financial prowess was extraordinary and in 15 years, they managed to pay off the 30-year bank note taken out for agriculture improvements the year they married. They continued to add acreage to our home place and through most seasons, less those marked by extreme drought, our farm yielded a fair profit. Before they had been married twenty years, they might have afforded to 'slow down a bit' had they chose to do so. Mom had other ideas of course, but The Lord had some ideas of his own.
Mom's life grudgingly ground to a halt when at age thirty-seven, God surprised her with her first of three 'late in life' children. She was a good mother and I always thought there might have been more of us had her pregnancies come earlier and not been the 'difficult' kind that left her, at the doctor's insistence, bed ridden for months on end. Mom recounted these tiresome exiles as dark times that left her moody and uncharacteristically depressed. She had no patience for needle work and we didn't own a television set. Her literary pursuits were confined primarily to bible study and the occasional periodical on agricultural theory. To her, reading fiction of any kind was a complete waste of time and perhaps symptomatic of some shameful underlying laziness. She was vaguely suspicious of women who indulged in tabloids and romance novels. She had it from reliable sources that this frivolous reading was often done from a reclined position and in the middle of the afternoon, proof positive that it was something akin to sloth or at the very least, a poorly managed day.
Sloth and wasted time notwithstanding, Mom understood the value and necessity of her children being literate if not well read in any imaginative way. She employed her typically straightforward methodology to our education and as a result, we were all good readers well in advance of our fourth birthdays.
Mom's 'method' was hardly original. It was the same proven time worn system used by countless generations of farmwomen too overwrought with the demands of their work to 'sit' and read with a child. The tools required for instruction were readily available to her, the Bible, familarity with its contents and an excellent working knowledge of the language.
Like all kids, we learned the alphabet sing-song fashion to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. For reference, the letters, both upper and lower case were printed, in pencil, on the wall near the telephone next to the place Dad measured and recorded our height (also in pencil) on an annual basis. It should be noted that while we were not the kind of people ordinarily given to graffiti, (fool's names, fool's faces, that sort of thing) the wall near the phone in our kitchen was fair game. Growth charts, phone numbers, how much a ton of hay cost in 1965…… it's all there, an interesting testament to our family's history that has never been painted over….. Anyway, having committed the 26 figures to memory and learning the quality of sounds assigned to each letter, we went about the business of stringing them together. C's, A's and T's made cats, acts, tacks and so on. We were hooked on phonics long before it was fashionable and armed with only this rudimentary knowledge, we read aloud from The Bible……Everyday.
In the beginning, even the shortest text seemed to take hours, sounding out the words that formed the unlikely sentences. We struggled with the archaic vernacular of thee's and thou's, wishing we could be doing anything else. Mom knew we hated it, and deceptively gave the appearance of only half listening while she went about her endless round of chores. She was brilliantly fluent in God's word and a single dropped syllable or mispronunciation caught her ear, prompting immediate correction. She was maddening in her exactness and being three years old was no excuse.
As the youngest, I had the advantage of hearing the texts many times before being called upon to read them myself. I knew which passages were the shortest, (always a plus, I had better things to do) the most interesting, (plagues, floods and locusts were my favorites) and most importantly, those least apt to evoke discussion.
Mom occasionally surprised us, questioning our 'interpretation' of the texts. We feared this most of all as it lead to 'do over's' and 'more careful contemplation.' Do over's were to be expected but careful contemplation was an inexact science that varied in length and structure according to Mom's moods and ever changing work load.
While disciplining our more egregious transgressions in behavior fell under my father's jurisdiction, Mom occasionally issued admonishments with her choice of scripture. We were generally allowed to choose for ourselves the chapter we wanted to read, for whatever reason, so long as it wasn't too short. When Mom assigned readings, the subtle suggestion of our 'wrongs' encrypted in text was often broad and vague, leaving us to wonder what we were being accused of. She used The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians in a sort of catchall disciplinarian way. It warned against boasting and arrogance… 'For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself… Outlined the limited rights of the immature….. 'So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world'……. And the sixth chapter, in and of itself made clear the principles and pitfalls of reaping what you sow. Mysteriously, when assigned to chapter six, we were never encouraged to read beyond the 11th verse. I can only speculate that Mom wasn't interested in explaining the nature of circumcision to pre-schoolers……And who can blame her?
We observed holidays with a deeper understanding knowing the sacred truths behind our customs. From January to December we avoided the first chapters in the book of Matthew, savoring the story of Our Savior's birth as one of the indelible components of Christmas time. When Easter came, the book of John helped us recall the great suffering of Jesus and his ultimate sacrifice made that we might forever live with him in heaven……Somewhere down the road….. Way down the road.
When at last it was time to start first grade and begin our ' formal' education, we found that our mothers teachings had given us a leg-up and few if any of our classmates had reading skills comparable to our own. If Dick and Jane seemed impossibly infantile in their ease, we were thrilled with the pictures that accompanied these simple phrases. (Pictures…who knew?) While the other kids labored over 'See Spot run', Mrs. Hayes introduced me to such perennial favorites as Charlotte Web and the Boxcar Children. During reading lessons, I was 'set apart' from the non-reading kids and left to pour over these wonderful stories until it was time for arithmetic which made no sense at all.
Mom had forgotten children, more than anything, loath to be 'set apart' by any difference of manner, dress or habit. She didn't consider that a constant diet of scripture and never watching TV, might, for all her good intentions, place me at a disadvantage. Straight away, I noticed my stilted speech lacked the slang and trendy inflections shared by my peers. Coupled with the twangy Midwestern accent that was, by the way, no fault of my own, I was instantly 'set apart' and not in any exotic or mysterious way. I just sounded like a dork.
On the third day of first grade, in a battle over a seat on the school bus, I threatened to 'Smite' Rusty McClain with my lunch box. I defy any six-year-old to threaten a 'Smiting' in mixed company without worsening an already tense situation. Complaining to Mom did no good. 'The other kid's tease me' I said. 'I don't talk like they do.'
'Don't be a Lemming', she said.
Don't be a Lemming? It was years before I knew what that was about.
My clothes were fashionable enough in a conservative way, (thank heavens) and with the exception of the 'Smiting' incident, which I am still reminded of at class reunions, my behavior was inconspicuous enough, allowing me to 'blend in', which is all I really cared about anyway. I was good enough at sports to assure that my initial exile wouldn't be permanent, and in a few weeks, the other kids forgave my quirky dialect and I was roughly as popular as anybody else.
Math eventually made sense and as the school year drew to a close, Mrs. Hayes approached my parents with the idea that I might skip second grade and be enrolled in an 'experimental' program for gifted students that was starting-up in the fall.
At my insistence, Mom and Dad declined on my behalf and I started second grade with everybody else……Still, even if it wasn't true, I remember liking the sound of it….Gifted…...
These days, my life bares little resemblance to my mothers. I didn't choose to be a farmers wife, although I might have, and perhaps been happy in the same way she was.
I am happy in my own way, living in suburban Southern California, raising a little girl of my own.
My life is ordered in a way that affords ample time for 'sitting' with a child, and while our reading is based on God's word, we have the advantage of colorful, thoughtfully written children's literature available at Christian Book stores. My daughter's love of books far exceeds my own at her age and the wonderful volumes of Bible lore prepared especially for kids mesmerize her. What child wouldn't love the story of Christ's birth written from the unique viewpoints of a donkey or lamb?
Still…….. Now and then……I feel undeniably drawn to the old ways.
Fetching Dad's ancient Masonic Bible from its place of honor on the mantle, (no 'Living' or 'Paraphrased Edition' will do) Little Helen and I settle into our favorite chair near the fireplace.
Knowing the miniscule print and absence of pictures can be intimidating to a child, I opt for starting slowly.
"Helen, do you know where to find the shortest verse in the Bible?"
"No, Mommy, Where?"
We thumb through the worn, tissue thin pages. Finding the book of John and trailing down to the 11th chapter, we look for that briefest of verses, number thirty-five.
"This is the one, Helen." " Only two words,……Jesus wept."
Her enormous blue eyes, so like my mothers, are solemn and beseeching.
"Why did 'Jesus wept', Mommy?"
I smile, secretly pleased that she is confused by the syntax. She snuggles closer, and then, in the old way, I recall for her the fascinating tale of Lazarus.
Copyright 2002 Laura Pearce
Laura Pearce is a freelance writer from San Dimas, CA
Published in US Legacies Magazine 2002
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