Notes |
- My Grandmother - by Alice Deckert - June 1955
The sun hung low in the west as Angeline walked slowly between the maples to the house. The Ontario hills looked hazy in the evening light. She shifted the baby on her arms and quickened her step. It was good to be home again, but-she thought for a minute of the afternoon she had spent with her mother and told the baby solemnly, "I wish my mother wouldn't be so sickly". A door slammed and she looked up. It was Alvah. " Hello there," he said and took the baby. They walked together toward the house. "Angeline"? "What"? she asked. He looked at her and grinned, "What would you think of going out West"? "Out West", Angeline echoed "I - well, I never thought of it." she laughed. "Is this what you men plan when I'm gone?" Alvah chuckled "You see" he explained, "Pa was talking to Henry, Edwin and me today and he said he'd give each of us a start out west if we wanted. The idea sort of appeals to me" From what I hear the west seems to be a good country. "What do you say?" "Its alright with me," Angeline agreed, "I'll go anywhere you want." A year went by and a delegation from Ontario went to investigate conditions in the west. The following year in 1905, Alvah, Henry and Edwin left for Saskatchewan. Standing on the station platform at Berlin, Angeline watched them go. Their first little boy stood on his own two feet now and Angeline's arms held their second son. "Six months and he'll be back", she whispered to the baby. "My papa went bye-bye on the toot-toot" sonny would say, solemn and round eyed. "On the toot-toot and he's going to come back and take us along." The summer passed. Letters from Alvah were cheerful. He was building a house, soon he would be back. Angeline was alone with the boys when Alvah came home. "My papa went bye-bye on the toot-toot," sonny told this stranger. "He's going to ___ ___" "Oh sonny," Angeline interrupted half-laughing half crying "This is your papa". Angeline was very busy now. Spring would soon come and there were many things to do. There were good-byes to be said. That was the only part Angeline didn't like. "I won't ever see you on this earth again", her mother told her wearily. "I - I wish you wouldn't go Angeline, you'll lose your boys, there are no fences out there." "I won't lose them", Angeline chucked her baby under the chin. "I'll always watch where they are." "But Mom", her eyes filled with sudden tears, "I will miss you" It was the middle of March 1906 when they left. Alvah, Angeline and their two boys in the freight train loaded with settlers effects. There were many others going too. It was March 29th, nine days since the settlers left Ontario. Vast stretches of uninhabited prairie spread out on either side of the train, spread out until they met the sky. The view was not broken by the hills or trees to which Angeline was accustomed. "I think I'm going to like it" she announced for the third time that afternoon, "Just look at the sunset". "Look ahead" Alvah suggested, "That's Humboldt." "Humboldt," Angeline repeated, "Boys" she looked at her two chubby little sons, "We'll soon be home." They found lodgings for the night. Alvah had unloaded the democrat and horses and the next morning they started off. For home. "They don't have roads graded up yet," Alvah teased, as they jogged along the prairie trail. The sun shone warm and bright. Not a bit of snow lay on the thirty miles they counted. The west was coloured with one of the prairie sunsets that Angeline was beginning to love as they drew up in front of a little board house. Alvah stopped the horses and they sat and looked at it. He turned to her and asked, "How do you like it?" It looks like a shoe box," she said "But I love it" - and she meant it with all her heart. The days that followed were happy ones. The little house with its kitchen, bedroom, sitting room and four small bedrooms upstairs almost burst at the seems. For here lived Alvah, Angeline, their two little boys, Alvah's two bachelor brothers and the hired girl. The downstairs bedroom was so small that they cut off the rockers on the boys crib-like bed to get it in beside their own. They kept their clothes in boxes under the bed, and as they sat around in the sitting room it was hard for anyone to walk through. "Did you say you have oilcloth for the walls and ceiling?" Angeline asked one day when they had gotten things in a settled condition. "Oh, yes" and Alvah got it out for her inspection. It had the design of yellow wood with a brown grain showing through and with lots of knots. "Plenty dark", Angeline thought, but she like it because Alvah did. They covered the walls and ceiling of the kitchen and Angeline found it very easy to wash off. The weather was so warm that the little door stood open half the day, but in May a snow storm came that closed it for days. Then spring came all over again and Angeline planted a garden in a patch of ground the men had plowed. All that year they went to church at Aaron Biehns. "This makes a lot of work for Mrs. Aaron," Angeline said to Alvah as they drove down the prairie trail one Sunday morning. "Just imagine getting your house ready for church every Sunday, getting the benches in and out again." Summer came and the prairie out did itself with wild sweet peas, buttercups, sleeping johns and roses. "I think we should make a straw tick or mattress for the boys bed", Angeline said one morning. "Prairie wool should do," Alvah suggested. "I'll get some now before the sun's so hot" Angeline went along with the straw tick. Alvah scythed the grass and Angeline stuffed it up. "There", she said with satisfaction, "that should make a nice soft bed." That night the boys were restless and cried in their sleep. "What's wrong with them?" Angeline wondered the next morning. "Look they've even red marks on their bodies". "Say" Alvah went over and looked at the straw tick they had filled. "Look at those little insects jumping around. They must be fleas." "Fleas?" Angeline echoed. "I forgot about them," Alvah said. During this summer, 1906, the Waterloo School was built. One of the first teachers was a widow, Mrs Henderson. As trustee, Alvah hunted high and low for a boarding place but he couldn't find any. "I guess we'll have to board her", he told Angeline. In the little "store box" home on the prairie, there was always room for one more. Morning and night Alvah drove her the 2.5 miles to school. Fall came and Angeline gathered in the vegetables from the garden. Alvah bought her fruit to can. "That's one thing we're going to have even if we are out West," he said, so Angeline stocked the cellar with jars of fruit. That fall they lost their hired girl in a way quite common to the prairies. She got married to Alvahs' brother. They worked on for a year but by the next autumn there was only one bachelor brother on the place, and Angeline had to find another hired girl. The days grew shorter and the snow fell for their first winter on the prairies. One week the letter from home told Angeline that her mother was sick in bed. "Do you think maybe you should go home?" Alvah asked. "But we've just come here," Angeline protested. "And Mother has to go to bed every winter. She's never been well so long as I can remember." And so they left it. Usually Angeline was cheerful and quite content with life but one Sunday as they went to church at Waterloo School, Angeline felt depressed "I don't know what's wrong with me," she told Alvah. "I just feel like crying." And she felt that way all day. Several days later came a letter edged in black. Angeline's mother had passed away. I'll never see you on this earth again," the words came back to her, "I'm so glad we wrote every week", she whispered. At the end of the school year, Mrs Hendrikson got married. The next teacher they hired was Eldon Burgey, Alvah's first cousin. They boarded him too but he drove by himself and because it was so handy, Alvah and Angeline decided to let their oldest boy start school though he was only five and a half. That winter one of the quick prairie blizzards came up and Mr. Burgey and Eldon didn't come home. "I'm not really worried", Angeline told Alvah as evening came on. "Mr Burgey would never let the children start for home in this storm. He'll take care of them." Mr Burgey came home at six the next morning. He looked half asleep. "The children are alright" he told them. "They lay down on their coats around the stove and I kept a good fire going." He laughed a little. "I didn't sleep though." That was not the only storm to blow itself across Angeline's path. One day Alvah and Mr. Burgey went to Watrous, while the other two men they boarded went to Guernsey. A sudden storm came up and neither pair came home. Angeline spent the night at home with the two little boys. With December came their third little son, but Angeline was afraid that his stay on earth would be short. For hours he cried while Alvah walked the floor with him. Angeline couldn't understand what was wrong, until finally the hired girl solved the mystery. Annie, another girl they had hired for several weeks, had fed the baby a cup of biscuit soup. Angeline was aghast. Why babies were never fed anything but milk till they were over six months old. The next year their fourth son was born. Their third boy now 14 months called himself "the old baby" and had to sleep with his parents to make room for the baby in the basket. Alvah's parents and sister came out for the summer and for three months Angeline had 17 people to cook for. Though they had built onto the house, it still wouldn't hold everyone and the overflow lived in the granary. Angeline was so busy that she never took time to sit up for dinner. "Angeline," Alvah said one day when he happened to find her pretty well alone in the kitchen, "Pa told me today he thinks you work too hard". "Oh I don't mind", Angeline took her rhubarb pies out of the oven. "The more I can get done in a day, the better I like it. As long as you bring home the stuff for me, I'll make it." "Well" Alvah said. He looked at the pies. "How many pies did you make this week?" "Thirty-six", Angeline laughed, "besides bread and buns and coffee cake." "And cake, and cookies," Alvah said as he went out the door. "Well just don't overdo it." "You're sure busy," a neighbour said to her one day. "How do you plan your work?" Angeline looked at her hands. "Oh I try never to plan more than I can do in one day. I like to have everything done by 9:00 O'clock so I can make a fresh start the next day." The next winter they decided to make a visit to the East. Alvah had his fall work finished and Angeline had done her sewing as it didn't take long to get ready. "Five years we've been out West," Angeline said as the train chugged eastward. "Well I've never been sorry we went." "Did you see that man that stopped to talk to me a minute ago?" Alvah asked "He saw you sitting here and our four little boys and he said to me "I envy you." They came home in March. Angeline was rather relieved to live in her own house again. Visiting with four little boys may have been a change but it certainly wasn't a rest. In July, Alvah and Angeline had their first little girl. "I'm so glad it's a girl," Angeline said contentedly, "For the others I didn't care but this time I wanted a girl." One day when the youngest of the boys was playing with his little sister he set her on the couch. She sat for a minute, then toppled over head first onto the floor. "Mama", sonny screamed. Angeline came on the run and picked up the baby. It had convulsions. Desperately she tried to think of what to do. An old piece of advice came back to her. "After a baby has convulsions keep it awake for an hour." Already the little girls' head dropped on her shoulder. Angeline wrapped her knuckles against the door and at the noise the baby looked up. Then her head dropped. Again Angeline knocked on the door. For a whole hour she kept the baby awake, then she let her sleep. Several hours later the little girl awoke, none the worse for her tumble. Several months later something happened that frightened Angeline much worse. She was going to town and after getting the baby ready she gave her to the hired girl to take care of. Alvah was upstairs working on the railing at the head of the stairs and without saying anything, the hired girl lift the baby with him. A moment later the baby came from the side and stepping over the edge, fell a few feet to the stairs and rolled down the steps. This time she did not get over it so quickly. For several weeks Angeline went about her work with the baby on her arm. The next April they had their fifth son. He was a healthy baby till he was seven months old and then he started to get convulsions. Everyone else was afraid to care for him and the hired girl didn't even want her to go out to get the wood in. Every time he took a convulsion, Angeline went cold. "This is harder on you than it is on the baby," Alvah told her. But Angeline was a mother and she couldn't help it. Three times they thought the baby had died. On his first birthday he took convulsions 11 times. "But I think he's over them now," Angeline said. "See his eyes are clear. Before they were always cloudy." She was right. And for the first time in 5 months, Angeline could rest. But the months of worry took their toll. For several years Angeline was always tired. It helped though, to have a hired girl who was good with the children. The boys helped with the dishes. And as they wanted to earn money, Angeline promised them 5 cents every time they helped if they buy their own suits in the fall. This arrangement suited everyone concerned. Two more little girls joined the family circle. One day the Bible Society man came to their home. "Eight children!" he marvelled." "Praise the Lord! I wish it were sixteen." "I don't", said Alvah with a twinkle in his eye. Angeline had long ago determined never to let anything interfere with the way she cared for her children. "My children come first," she would say, "The rest I'll do the best I can." And so as she sewed, her little ones crowded around her, losing pins and stepping on patterns to be sure, but never brushed aside. "Mamma". It was her little girl with her favourite question. "What was the world like before anything was made? People or grass or anything?" "Well" Angeline answered, deftly sewing on buttons, "we don't really know what it was like. I suppose it was all dark because God created the light afterwards." "Tell us again what Heaven is like," another begged. "Well," here Angeline laid down her sewing. "It's nicer than anything you ever saw. You can think of the most beautiful things and it's still more wonderful than that." One thing Angeline could never stand was to see her children quarrel. If it came to blows Angeline stepped between them. "You mustn't hit," she would say firmly. "It's wrong Sonny, if you'll just take the wagon and let him have the toy horse"- And so she'd help them to settle their differences. When her youngest was three, Angeline's last steady hired girl got married. She had worked there for seven years. After that, except for busy times like threshing, Angeline did her own work. Somehow or other, down through the years, though Angeline had never planned it to be that way, when any new little pioneer made his appearance on earth, Angeline was generally on the welcoming committee. Back home her children would wake up and ask, "Where's Momma?" "At Moyer's," Alvah would tell them, "Dr Scarf's or Wenger's," And the children would say, "Oh, they must have a new baby." Once in a while she stayed a week or so and the girls went ahead with the housework. Angeline phoned home occasionally to see how they were getting along and how the bread was holding out. And then she was back again, perhaps with a dollar or two pressed into her hand. As the children grew older Angeline found more and more time to work on the things she loved. By the dozen she hooked mats, knotted comforters and pieced quilts. Her sons and her daughters, upon passing the door of her sewing room, heard the familiar request, "Would you like to thread some needles for me?" And thereupon they threaded a dozen needles and had a little chat with mother. To make take comforters, Angeline washed the wool, carded the hard matted bunches into soft fluffy wool. This carded wool she piled layer upon layer in a basket till she had enough for several comforters. As one after another of her children left, to start homes of their own, Angeline gave to each several mats, quilts and comforters. And her children appreciated them for they knew the many hours of work that went into their making. Her children's marriages also gave rise to the annual Bowman reunions. "Mom", one of her daughters-in-law asked her one day, "were all of your babies good?" "Yes", Angeline said, "I think they were." "Oh", Alvah said "I can remember some nights we were kept awake." He looked about at the children and smiled. "There are many things Mamma has forgiven and forgotten long ago." [4]
|