On this magical night I witnessed a beautiful sight as I peered out of my window. I watched the snow began to accumulate and finally to drift into many exotic and strange shapes. The lights from the neighbor’s houses turned my window into a mystical stage.
When the whir of the wind was mild, the flakes would dance in slow motion, but as it increased its volume to an eerie earth shattering crescendo, they danced with such abandon that they finally threw themselves against the pane of glass like pagan dancers. The snow thunder brought all of this to an end, and the sacrificed snowflakes covered the window as completely as if someone had just closed a curtain. These were the imaginative thoughts of a lonely little girl who had no one to share her make believe dreams with and this was her way to finally fall asleep into a fantasy dream world.
When the first light of day appeared, all dreams vanished and cold reality took over. I got out of bed and put on the warmest clothes that I had. There were chores to be done, and, as always, Remzy had to be milked, and then the fire had to be built in the furnace before beginning the cold trip to school.
There was no such thing as a snow day, so as soon as we finished our breakfast we all walked to school. Someone had given my mother a pair of snow pants that just fit me, and I was told to put them on. My shoes were beginning to wear out, but, luckily they fit into a pair of my brother’s outgrown galoshes. When I got to school that morning I was still warm and dry. Today, “Ole Man Winter” had been outsmarted.
In all my life I never heard my father raise his voice to my mother. I never heard him say a curse word. I am sure that he must have known them and probably said them, but never at home. We had a peaceful family life. Daddy made all the big decisions, and then mamma did what she wanted to, and Daddy was always agreeable.
Mamma never wasted a minute. When she finally sat down in the evening she had croqueting or hand work close by. She did beautiful embroidery work and made scarves and dollies for all the furniture. She darned all of the socks and put patches on the clothing that could not be repaired any other way. She was always busy, busy, busy.
She could not be happy, unless she was doing something productive. After much thought Daddy gave her a pet name which sure did fit her. He called her “His Triggerheel.”
When he called her that to her face, she would get up from whatever she was doing and kiss him and run her fingers through his pretty snow-white hair. Daddy was mother’s first and only love, and the fact that he was twenty-five years older than her never seemed to make any difference. He was hers, and she was his, and that is just the way it always was. No matter how bad the times got, we all knew that we were part of a loving family and sooner or later everything would work out.
When spring came the hobos came. They must have marked our house, because almost every day one would come to our door for food. There were times when we barely had enough for ourselves, but mother would always try to find a piece of cornbread and maybe put some honey on it. It wasn’t fancy, but they always acted like they were glad to get it and never forgot to thank Momma.
Having honey at our house was a new thing. One of Daddy’s clients needed a lawyer, but he had no money, so one day he delivered a hive of honey bees to our house, complete with a smoker, a veiled hat and gloves for robbing the hive. Mamma was tickled to death with the bees, and she loved the honey, but all I had to do was get within sight of that hive, and they came after me. I excused myself from that little chore and made sure that I was nowhere to be found when the time came to rob that hive.
Much to my disappointment the bees thrived, the hive produced another queen, who swarmed and landed in a tree. Daddy got another hive and coached the bees to go into it, and now there were two hives of bees to make my life a misery, but momma was overjoyed.
No one ever knew what would turn up at our house next. One day a big farm truck backed up to our front steps, and two husky young men unloaded an old upright piano to our house. They even rolled it in and put it in the dining room. For lack of money, another client was paying his bill in kind. My mother’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree, and I feared for the worst.
My mother could see me as the next church pianist, but I could see nothing but disappointment and disaster. After a year of agonizing music lessons with absolutely nothing to show for it, I was finally allowed to slide back into my own little world. My poor mother had to face the reality that her daughter had absolutely no talent for music. I realized that I had disappointed my mother, but I was as happy as any little girl could possibly be as I ran out of the house and into our front yard. I was free at last from that monstrosity that practically filled up the whole dining room and had made my life miserable for one whole year.