doesn’t feel good that he talks that way. In the spring he loves it.”
Mom nodded. That was one of the times when I felt like a parent to her. And I have not asked questions so brashly since.
But you couldn’t write all this into a biographical sketch. My knowledge of Mom and Dad was made up of such little things, things felt more than known. I came back to the few sentences I had actually written and went on boldly:
“My mother and father fell in love, although my mother could speak only a few words of English. They were married by the Captain of my father’s company and when the ice loosened its grip on the harbor at Archangel my mother sailed with my father to America.” I set a period with a flourish. “Loosened its grip” had a proper, bookish sound. I skipped over the return to his home in Vermont in a sentence and wrote of their taking a homestead in Montana, “where I was born three years later.”
I had told their story in eight sentences, but it had taken me all afternoon. I had to run to be at the cafeteria on time.
By seven-thirty I was back at the same table. I had thought it would be easy to write now, but it wasn’t. I kept remembering certain happenings in my childhood, down to the silliest detail; but they weren’t the kind of incidents you tell. I could only seem to compose terrible trite sentences like “My early childhood on the ranch was the usual happy life lived by children in the country, although it may seem bare in the telling.”
But how could I tell about those days when I’d run up to the top of the rimrock because I had to be closer to the sky? Ever since I was seven or eight I have done that, or run out across the flats. I couldn’t stand still or walk soberly, because I felt something exciting was going to happen. Sometimes the wind gave me that feeling, sometimes the first bleak day of fall, always spring and the first green pricks of wheat, and always threshing time.
I have looked at Mom often and felt that she didn’t expect anything exciting to happen. I think Dad used to, we are so much alike, but he has given up expecting it now, so I try not to show how I feel.
All I wrote was: “I did not really know the difference between work and play. Work on a ranch is interesting to a child: driving the horses and later the truck or tractor, making butter or filling sausage cases. It doesn’t matter much what you are doing, except the things you really hate, like washing dishes and cleaning house.
“I had toys. Dad bought most of them. He hardly ever came back from town, when I hadn’t gone along, without a stuffed animal or a monkey I could wind up or a new book of paper dolls. But I was fondest of a painted wooden picture, less than a foot high, that Mom put in my room on a high corner shelf. Set back from the frame was a solemn face with round cheeks and deep-set eyes. I liked best its hands that met finger tip for finger tip with each one distinct and perfect, even to the fingernail. The paint had mostly worn off; only a faint tinge of blue still remained. The wood was so smooth it felt almost soft when I stood up on a chair to touch it. It wasn’t a toy at all, but an icon that had hung in Mom’s house in Russia. She found it near the ashes after her home was burned. I had it near my bed and used to talk to it without making the words, just looking over at it now and then.”
I did not write of the uncomfortable feeling I had about the icon. When I had diphtheria at six, Mom hung the shelf in my room and put the icon on it and a saucer beneath with a lighted wick floating in oil. I lay in bed watching the little flame. When it grew dark outside, the flame on the wick made a secret glow in the room. As soon as Dad came home from town I called him to come and see it, but instead of liking it he was angry.
“Don’t bring my child up with such idols, Anna!” he called out to Mom, and he blew the flame out.
“Don’t take it away; I love it.” I started to cry.
Mom nodded. That was one of the times when I felt like a parent to her. And I have not asked questions so brashly since.
But you couldn’t write all this into a biographical sketch. My knowledge of Mom and Dad was made up of such little things, things felt more than known. I came back to the few sentences I had actually written and went on boldly:
“My mother and father fell in love, although my mother could speak only a few words of English. They were married by the Captain of my father’s company and when the ice loosened its grip on the harbor at Archangel my mother sailed with my father to America.” I set a period with a flourish. “Loosened its grip” had a proper, bookish sound. I skipped over the return to his home in Vermont in a sentence and wrote of their taking a homestead in Montana, “where I was born three years later.”
I had told their story in eight sentences, but it had taken me all afternoon. I had to run to be at the cafeteria on time.
By seven-thirty I was back at the same table. I had thought it would be easy to write now, but it wasn’t. I kept remembering certain happenings in my childhood, down to the silliest detail; but they weren’t the kind of incidents you tell. I could only seem to compose terrible trite sentences like “My early childhood on the ranch was the usual happy life lived by children in the country, although it may seem bare in the telling.”
But how could I tell about those days when I’d run up to the top of the rimrock because I had to be closer to the sky? Ever since I was seven or eight I have done that, or run out across the flats. I couldn’t stand still or walk soberly, because I felt something exciting was going to happen. Sometimes the wind gave me that feeling, sometimes the first bleak day of fall, always spring and the first green pricks of wheat, and always threshing time.
I have looked at Mom often and felt that she didn’t expect anything exciting to happen. I think Dad used to, we are so much alike, but he has given up expecting it now, so I try not to show how I feel.
All I wrote was: “I did not really know the difference between work and play. Work on a ranch is interesting to a child: driving the horses and later the truck or tractor, making butter or filling sausage cases. It doesn’t matter much what you are doing, except the things you really hate, like washing dishes and cleaning house.
“I had toys. Dad bought most of them. He hardly ever came back from town, when I hadn’t gone along, without a stuffed animal or a monkey I could wind up or a new book of paper dolls. But I was fondest of a painted wooden picture, less than a foot high, that Mom put in my room on a high corner shelf. Set back from the frame was a solemn face with round cheeks and deep-set eyes. I liked best its hands that met finger tip for finger tip with each one distinct and perfect, even to the fingernail. The paint had mostly worn off; only a faint tinge of blue still remained. The wood was so smooth it felt almost soft when I stood up on a chair to touch it. It wasn’t a toy at all, but an icon that had hung in Mom’s house in Russia. She found it near the ashes after her home was burned. I had it near my bed and used to talk to it without making the words, just looking over at it now and then.”
I did not write of the uncomfortable feeling I had about the icon. When I had diphtheria at six, Mom hung the shelf in my room and put the icon on it and a saucer beneath with a lighted wick floating in oil. I lay in bed watching the little flame. When it grew dark outside, the flame on the wick made a secret glow in the room. As soon as Dad came home from town I called him to come and see it, but instead of liking it he was angry.
“Don’t bring my child up with such idols, Anna!” he called out to Mom, and he blew the flame out.
“Don’t take it away; I love it.” I started to cry.
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