This Life Is in Your Hands_ One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone - Melissa Coleman [43]
Just like us.
“Had a wonderful sauna and supper with Dick, Susan and Carl and kids and work crew for their boat,” Mama wrote in her journal. Dick and his wife, Mary, moved from Connecticut to Brooksville to semi-retire, followed by their son Carl, whom Papa met when he was working for extra cash as a carpenter to restore the schooner Nathaniel Bowditch in Bucks Harbor. Best of all for me, Carl and his wife, Susan, had two kids, Jennifer and Nigel, who was my age and would become a playmate.
Not only was it a rare treat to meet like-minded folks with kids, but Mary, who was of Swedish descent, shared with us some interesting traditions from Scandinavian culture. Dick and Mary had a Swedish-inspired wood-fired sauna in their house on Horseshoe Cove and invited us to join them on Sunday nights. We all piled into the cedar-planked room and sat naked on the wooden benches until we couldn’t bear the heat anymore, then ran out and jumped in the ocean to cool off. It was supposed to be great for cleansing the blood, and certainly left us cleaner and better smelling than our small metal bathtub at home, which we filled with water heated on the stove.
Mary also gave me an illustrated book called The Tomten about a Scandinavian gnome with a long white beard and red pointed hat who lived on farms and took care of the people and animals. Susan told Mama that in the Swedish tradition the Tomten brought gifts for children and animals, like an ongoing Santa Claus. Mama and Papa began to do the same for me.
“Someone I know was born three years ago today,” Papa said one morning, lifting me up and bouncing me on his knee on the stool by the bookshelf. I’d been standing nearby as he read, eyeing to get into the sphere of his attention.
“On this day, you came out of your mama’s belly over there in the loft and started nursing,” he said, eyes alight. “Not many kids can say that about their birth.”
When he lifted me up, I felt the shape of my own body within his arms and the tickle of his unshaven cheeks. He smelled of damp earth from working in the greenhouse.
“Why don’t you go check outside and see what the Tomten brought for your birthday,” Papa said.
“Tomten?” I looked into his eyes. His face was serious, but there was a sparkle in the blue and a smile hiding beneath the stubble on his cheeks. He looked over at Mama by the sink and winked.
“Outside the door,” Papa said. “I saw it when I came in.”
I hopped off Papa’s lap and ran to the door, reaching up on tiptoes to slide the handle. If I could ever see the Tomten, with his red cap and long beard, I wanted to ask him to be my friend. And just maybe, I hoped, he might bring me a doll with real hair. I opened the door to damp spring air and a yard spotted with remnants of snow. No Tomten. No doll. My eyes trailed back to the house. There by the doorstep was a little pair of sinew-and-wood snowshoes with bindings just the size for my feet.
“Bring them in, quickly, and close the door,” Mama said. Papa helped me lay the snowshoes out and put my feet into the bindings so I could clomp around on the floor. All of our snowshoes were the old-fashioned kind, made by Indians, woven from the sinew and tendons of animals around an oval wooden frame. The snow was gone now, but next winter I could go on treks with Mama and Papa on the snowy paths, and in a couple years I would snowshoe the half-mile path down to the Nearings’ to catch the school bus.
“The Tomten is pretty smart,” Papa said. “He knows what we need out here in the woods.”
“Most important for making this homesteading experience work, is having needs precede wants,” Mama wrote in her journal that evening.
Mama whooshed in the door one morning, her cheeks and nose flushed