Planting Seeds

I was recently at an outstanding workshop about the future of the church. It challenged us to think in new ways about ministry. It asked us to open our minds and imagine new ways of being together in the church. We don’t have to do it the way we always have. It is God who is unchanging and eternal – not the ways we do our ministry together. Different times, differing demographics, different needs are what we are faced with today. A different volunteer pool, a different group of lay ministers, congregation members, and prospective congregation members. They told us we can change our approach to match our present time and situation.

In the midst of the discussion, we broke into small groups. We were supposed to come up with a completely new idea for small group ministry. One thing led to another, and the discussion took me back, on this beautiful fall day, as I stood ankle deep in leaves talking about ministry, to an example I had experienced of thinking outside the box.

One church in which I did ministry, Judson Church near Lake Harriet in Minneapolis, had several families that were passionate about the natural environment – about teaching people, and especially children, how to be good stewards of the earth. As associate pastor, I was told I needed to plan the annual fall outing to a State Park. For a few years the church had been traveling each fall to collect prairie grass seeds for the park – so that they could sow them in the spring in an effort to restore the native prairie grasses.

So I organized, not sure what we were doing, and planned to meet our little group at Wild River State Park on a Sunday morning. I arrived early to get a feeling for the place. It was a cool, crisp fall morning. I had awakened early to get there at a decent time. When I pulled into the parking space near the picnic and campgrounds campers were just waking up in their tents and RV’s. I could smell stoves and fires burning. Sleepy people got up and walked to the restrooms. Some made coffee over a camp stove. The campground was shrouded in fall leaves of every color and I wished I had arrived a day earlier so that I could have spent the night and awakened in this fresh beauty.

Our little group from Judson arrived carload by carload. Soon we had assembled our small congregation at the fire circle and picnic area. In the open air, assisted by young and old lay ministers, we took turns reading scripture and poems, singing simple songs, and passing the bread and cup. Our readings were about fall, about seeds, about the planting of seeds, and about nature. They included parables of Jesus about mustard seeds and sowers and the poems of Wendell Berry and others who love the land. All of us – elders, young parents, youth and children (only sixteen people in all) felt the wonderful connection to God’s creation and to each other as we shared bread and cup.

Then we had a fabulous (and I mean gourmet, open-air, fabulous) picnic lunch at the Park Center and the naturalist met with us and taught us all about the native grasses and the invasive species that were slowly being removed. We were then escorted out to the open fields and rolling prairie. The naturalist gave us our little pails and showed us which seedpods or grasses to harvest, demonstrated how to do it, and then sent us off to do our work.

I think our oldest participant that day was in her seventies and our youngest was around age four. As we spread out amid the low grasses and brush and did our work, I had to stop to look at those around me. In groups of two’s and three’s, young and old were intently working. Small competitions had broken out within the group. Children and adults compared the contents of their pails and began to work harder and faster. Laughter and singing broke out here and there. As I stood back and beheld the workers, all I could see were God’s workers in the fields. What I experienced was God’s Realm coming to life for one golden afternoon – sun shining down on peaceful, happy people seeking to tend to God’s earth, seeking to preserve and restore something for our children and our children’s children. Simple bliss.

At the end of the day, the naturalist took the contents of our pails and weighed the tiny seeds. She told us the value of the seed if it had to be purchased and we were awestruck. Hundreds of dollars worth of tiny little seeds had been gathered. We carried a precious remnant of the past and the future in these little pails. I drove home feeling wonderfully at one with God and the universe.

I believe that as I planned that event I had been variously stressed, tired and hassled - not sure it was worth the effort. Even as we celebrated communion, I think I questioned the value of such a small group sharing this experience. But today, as I look back fondly, I know it was exactly how we ought to have been spending our time: planting seeds in young and old lives that produce the fruit of the Spirit.

Lake Leander

I don’t really recall how we got to Minnesota when I was in fourth or fifth grade. Did we fly into Minneapolis? I’m pretty sure we didn’t drive from California. Perhaps we flew into Duluth. In any case, the destination and goal was to visit Martie and Dave. I think they flew us out there.

My eldest sister, Martie, and her husband had made the decision to leave the Bay Area and move to the town where David grew up – Mountain Iron, Minnesota. There, Dave joined his father and brother in running the family business, “Vidmar Iron Works.”

I really had no concept of Minnesota at all - didn’t know what to expect. When we finally got to Martie and Dave’s, I remember the first impression of the warm and fun-loving extended family. I had never been a part of a large, close-knit family before. I had met Ben, Louise, and David’s brother, Bobby, at the wedding. They were nice and friendly there. But in their own element, out at the lake, they were the hub of a great social network.

The Vidmar’s little cabin didn’t look at all as I had expected. I thought perhaps a log cabin or an A-frame ski hut – like at home in the redwoods. No, I had forgotten who built this place: engineers who ran an Iron Works. The cabin was blue corrugated metal on the outside – with greater emphasis on function than form. On the inside, it was peaceful and cozy. More like a small house than a cabin.

Everything was vintage 1950’s. Louise kept the kitchen and everything in it polished. Embroidered dishtowels were crisp and white unlike the gray, stained ones we had back home. Sparkling Formica countertops and wood cabinets graced the kitchen, the first room one saw when entering the cabin. Then, onto the living room and porch and a view of the gorgeous Northwoods lake - Lake Leander.

Dave’s mother, Louise, was quiet and sweet – her eyes sparkled as she welcomed and invited us in. Ben was outgoing and exuberant – warm and friendly. Bobby, very, very tall and lanky, smiled and echoed their welcome. But once inside or out on the porch, the quiet did not last long. Uncles, aunts, and cousins arrived and made themselves at home, too - all of them included us in the fun. Silly jokes and animated conversation dominated the scene – “A little bit different than California -hey Karie?” asked Ben.

We played cards and took boat tours of the lake. We watched some crazy relatives do trick water-skiing – even barefoot skiiing. Over the week, David taught me how to ski. (No, this was not the summer I lost my swimsuit top while skiing...that would come years later, when it would be more humilating.) Uncle Joe let me be his partner at the favorite card game, “Smear.” We took on my mom and Ben – and they all let me think I was really good. (I believe, years later, I actually did catch on.) “We’ll outsmart them – hey, Karie?” Uncle Joe would say with a wink. Then we’d do everything short of outright cheating to get the bid.

On a Sunday afternoon, David and others pulled out accordions and played wonderful polkas. Uncle Joe’s wife, Auntie Ann, would work wonders in the kitchen with Louise. My sister, Martie, surprised us by fitting right in and playing hostess along with the best. We ate delicious food which was unlike anything I’d tasted before – I remember loving Polish sausage and potica, a wonderful Slovenian pastry that is sort of half baklava and half cinnamon bread, made from scratch. There were other delicacies, too – pasties (hearty, bland meat tarts) and blueberry desserts of all kinds. Ben took me blueberry picking – I had never seen so many wild blueberries or mosquitoes before in my life.

Then David arranged for a real once-in-a-lifetime fishing trip for our family. Mom and Dad and I went with Martie, Dave, and a friend of Dave’s in a boat with an outboard motor way up into the boundary waters. I believe this was before so much of the area became non-motorized as the BWCA. I had no idea one could travel so far on water that was neither an ocean nor a river. The network of enormous, beautiful lakes was awe-inspiring. I was not too interested in the fishing, but the adventure of the trip is something I’ll never forget.

Huge crystal blue lakes, some with densely wooded shorelines, some with gorgeous rocky outcrops and ancient Native glyphs. I loved the portages with their hiking paths across little islands. We’d watch our big heavy boat as it was towed on a conveyor-like track from one side of the island to the other. It reminded me a bit of a Disneyland ride. But the wildlife here was real – deer, moose, and birds of all kinds.

Then we got to Lac La Croix and the wonderful resort. David kept telling my Dad that we would really be “roughing it” on this trip. Instead, though, we found that the fly-in, boat-in resort had every amenity. We bought Canadian goods in the gift shop and ate delicious meals in the restaurant. My dad and I bought matching berets and hooded sweat shirts.

The next day, our fishing guide took us out to the best fishing holes in the area and we caught our fill of walleye and northern pike. Other people baited my hook and removed the fish, but I caught a 21-inch northern and was shocked. I have never had as good a fish lunch as we had over a fire that day, prepared by our guide. Fresh walleye, lightly breaded, pan fried, and little white potatoes that had come out of a can, I remember it vividly. Mmmmmmm...tasty.

I had no qualms about eating the fish but at the end of the long day, my dad wanted a picture of me holding the stringer of fish. He was bursting with pride. Due to my recently-acquired, delicate sense of care for all creatures, I begged not to hold the cruel instrument of the fish’s destruction. He insisted. I think I still have the photo of me in my Canadian beret, holding the stringer and crying hysterically.

But I got over it. At the end of the trip, my only negative impression was from the hundreds of black fly bites I received all along my scalp and hairline. I scratched myself raw.

Back at Lake Leander, we had another night and then would return to California. I had had the time of my life. Waterskiing, polkas, card games, Polish sausage, potica, and unparalleled hospitality from beginning to end. It left a real impression. And more warm and caring adults than I had ever met in one place at one time. “You’ll come back and see us again – hey, Karie?”

You bet I did. Later, there would be nephews and more cousins than I could keep track of. There would be a new generation of cabin stewards and a lot more waterskiing, followed by the Sauna. We’d play cribbage and Smear until we couldn’t see straight. But the hospitality and the friendly welcome were and are still the same. I’m still going back to Lake Leander...I rarely miss a summer.

My mother's garden

On Mother's Day, when I was around 29 years old, I gave my mother a little children's book I'd written about working in the garden with her. I think she liked it. (Sorry, this is a long post...I got carried away.)

Chaos reigned in our home when I was growing up. Hampers overflowed, people were stressed (or, alternately, unnaturally relaxed), relationships were complicated. My mom was, let us say, adrift. She tried to find purpose and security in a home, in a relationship that was irretrievably flawed and insecure. As a parent, let us also say she was oblivious – to her children’s needs, to their gifts, to the affect her life’s craziness was having on us. All of that said, there was one place where all the turbulence subsided: our backyard.

My mom, as a minister’s wife, had never had her own home. She had lived in a series of parsonages – and just when she’d get settled, the bishop would tell them it was time again to move. My dad left the ministry not long after our eventful trip to the Holy Land, when I was about three years old. They bought a house for the first time in their nearly twenty years of marriage.

For Mom, it wasn’t so much the house itself as having a yard, a place to grow and nurture plants, that was exciting. Mother was not a great housekeeper or cook. Her mother had died when she was born, and her dad had raised her. He didn’t really help to foster her domestic skills, but he was a gifted gardener. My grandfather was not the best parent (to put it mildly). But it seems that working together in the garden was a good experience for her, as it was later for me.

Mother loved fuchsias, geraniums, and anything in a hanging basket. She was inspired by great hanging displays and beauty in various gardens – the Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park, the botanical gardens near Monterey and Fort Bragg. In the yard behind our little home, Mom was relaxed and grounded. She taught me at an early age the difference between the weeds and the plants, helping me memorize the names of each. We weeded together for hours - not talking, just working. Mom had a full-time job outside the home, so she was limited to weekends and evenings for this hobby – but she rarely missed an opportunity. She’d come home from work, make dinner, feed us; we’d wash the dishes, then head outside to the backyard.

Sometimes my dad would get it into his head to join in, but his garden projects never really panned out. One spring he dug up the whole side of the house to plant a vegetable garden. Within a month it was filled with weeds – and I’m not sure if we picked a single pea, bean, or tomato.

Gardening was different for my mom. It was a stabilizing force, a refuge. On hikes, she knew all the wildflowers and trees. In our yard, she knew the names of these, as well as the birds, the bugs, and their habits.

One project my mom and dad did complete together in the yard was the “lath house.” They built a raised bed garden in one corner of the yard and then added a structure – two walls and a roof made of lath. It was light and airy. The lath provided shade and a place for creeping vines to anchor and grow. It must have been something they found in Sunset Magazine. Anyway, my mom loved it as a place for her fuchsias and tuberous begonias. A few of the sunnier boxes held colorful geraniums. The shadier corners grew lush clumps of baby’s tears.

I learned how to dig peat moss into the hard, clay-filled soil, how to tell when things needed watering, and how to water them without doing damage. Sometimes, while my mother worked on an area, I would explore and play in the “woods.” One side of the yard had tall evergreens against the fence, beside them ran a little path of gardening stones, then some decorative bushes (mostly junipers) and large-leaved ivy. In the far corner beneath the tallest tree, was a wild, open area under the big tree’s canopy. I loved to play there and explore. When I heard stories of fairies or elves, I was certain that if they existed anywhere, they would exist in this corner of my backyard.

But there was one backyard gardening duty that I found difficult to tolerate. My mom and I would water the yard in the evening after we had weeded. Then we’d go inside for an hour of TV until the sun went down. After dark, my mom would grab a flashlight and a coffee can for each of us. Then we went out back, got down on our hands and knees, and searched (with flashlights) for snails and slugs. Ugh. There were hundreds.

Our watering seemed to force them out of hiding and to stimulate their urge to visit the leaves of Mom’s flowers. We could follow their shiny iridescent trails of slime to find their location. As I write, I can still smell the moist peat moss and geraniums, and I can feel the slight “pop” of suction as I pull each snail from its perch on a leaf. I can hear the “plunk” of dropping it in the coffee can (of course, as the can filled with snails, there was more of a thud than a plunk). One trick was opening and closing the lid quickly and as slightly as you could. The snails tended to crawl up and try to climb out each time the lid was opened. If you didn’t do it just right, things would squish. Just let your imagination fill in the blank. When I found a big slug, I often called my mom over to get it. She wore gloves and I didn’t.

On our flashlight expeditions, Mom would call me over when she came across “Mr. Toad” the big grandpa of all toads who left an impression where he slept. Neighborhood cats liked to follow us around the yard as we worked and sometimes scared us when their glowing eyes appeared within a bush.

But it must have been the same year that I gave up playing with the neighbor boys that I gave up the snail hunt. I remember going to bed and imagining the snails, now out in our garbage, sealed in their coffee-can world. I knew they were gasping for breath and would die slowly. I knew this because I had checked them in the morning and many were still alive, but some had expired. My mother initially tried to rid us of snails using poison pellets. It hadn’t worked. Then she tried squishing them with her shoe. That was just gross and left a big, messy residue. Hence, the coffee can solution. It was that or no flowers – and Mom couldn’t give up her flowers.

Working in the backyard with my mother is one of my favorite memories. It was her form of therapy, and years later, it would work for me, too. I am still an outstanding weeder and nothing can bring me back to my Self more quickly than digging in the dirt. I don’t miss the snails or slugs…and I’ll never be a fan of escargot. But the smell of moist earth after the rain still takes me back to a very special place – to working in the backyard with my mother.

Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails...

I was something of a tomboy when I was a kid. I’d say that by late elementary school, I had grown out of it. But from about age four through eight or nine I spent a lot of time keeping up with the neighborhood boys.

There were several boys in the neighborhood who were my age. When I was very little, we played together in our yards. I remember at age four, when one of my little friends, Stevie, went off to Kindergarten that I was quite sad. I had to play with his dorky little brother. I was friends with Stevie and his brother for several more years. These were the kids with whom I built forts, climbed trees, played games, and got into trouble.

As I think of it now, a part of my tomboyish-ness was my own personality and a big portion was the result of parental neglect. I just wasn’t supervised. The boys in the neighborhood tended to be more free to roam, as I was. I remember the usual childhood mischief – hiding in the bushes and spying on passersby; ringing doorbells and running away; playing “doctor.” I recall friends of my parents' skinny dipping in our backyard pool and leading the gang around to the neighbor's backyard for a peek.

But I also remember when our mischief turned to destruction and petty thievery. The petty thievery gave me mild pangs of guilt, but nothing serious…nothing that wouldn’t soon be forgotten.

First, we discovered that we could put cardboard “pennies” in the gumball machine at the local candy store. If you put the cardboard piece in there and turned the handle, you could keep turning, around and around. One day we emptied it. We filled a bowl. We went back to one neighbor’s playhouse and chewed gum until we got caught. My mom made me empty my piggybank, marched me up to the candy store (the “Variety” Store) and stood there and waited while I confessed. The man at the store was very serious, but not mean. I was somewhat intimidated…but not intimidated enough.

Later, when we got a little older, we stole packs of cigarettes from my dad and smoked them in the playhouse. When our smoking habit became a big pastime, we went to the local grocery and stole a whole carton of cigarettes by stuffing it under one of our shirts. This was a more serious crime by neighborhood (or I suppose any) standards. My mom again marched me to the store with my life savings. The man at the store was more menacing this time. I was genuinely scared and quit even entering that store. But for Stevie and his brother, who were Mormon, the consequences were even more severe. They were grounded and got the belt (or the back of a hairbrush) for this. I remember feeling guilty because my punishment lasted one afternoon and an evening - theirs lasted for weeks and they were forbidden to play with me.

I hung out at the girls’ houses while the punishment lasted. But eventually, we sort of lapsed back into our regular old habits when the boys parents’ attention turned to other things.

There was also a boy in the neighborhood named Paul. Paul was a tough kid who went to Catholic school. We often heard his parents fighting in the back room of his house when we played over there. I had a crush on Paul from about first grade. He was a couple of years older than I. But my parents should have separated us sooner. If he had any affection for me, it took a strange form.

One evening while playing, for no apparent reason, Paul threw a brick at me and hit me in the head. I ran home bleeding. My mother fashioned a special band-aid and taped the skin back together. Another time, we were playing baseball with a ball and a metal pipe in Paul’s backyard and Paul accidentally swung around and hit me square on the forehead. Still, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. His mother was a nurse. She cleaned the wound and put a butterfly bandage on my forehead. I still have the lump from that one. But the last straw for me and my mother was when he came after me with a crowbar. This time it was just plain old anger at something I said or did. He hit me over the head. My mom cleaned that one up. Another butterfly. It left a gash. It also reduced the size of our gang. Paul was out.

I think that must have been the turning of the tide. I began to have less interest in boyish things. The boys were just becoming gross, in my opinion. Every year in the spring, we would ride our bikes a few blocks to where the drainage canals went through town. We’d hide our bikes in the bushes and climb the fence. Down the cement banks we’d carefully crawl, to the bottom where the mucky water flowed – drainage from the streets above. This muck and mud didn’t bother any of us in the least. The algae that grew there was the perfect breeding ground for tadpoles, which we loved to watch grow. For a few weeks we would watch the development, then one day we’d show up with our buckets and little hoppy toads would be moving everywhere. We’d fill our buckets and take them home. They’d be re-introduced to nature in our backyards - and many of them would live there for a long time. Our parents didn’t mind because they helped to keep down the number of aphids.

But the year after the cigarette fiasco, was also the end of the road for our gang. This year I remember going down to the canal on a hot and sunny day. One of the boys took to showing off by throwing little toads against the cement. Another boy did the same thing in turn, calling it, “giving the toad a sunburn.” I tried throwing one, but I couldn’t hack it. I shouted at them to “Stop it!” but that just inspired them to greater violence. We left the canal with our buckets and walked our bikes home in sullen silence. After supper, when it came time to play with the toads, the boys decided to do dissections with sticks. That was it for me. The end of an era. I decided, from then on, to be a girl.

Yes, I left behind childish things that day. But I had guilty nightmares for years after about my real friends, the toads. I think my affinity for Buddhists and their non-violent ways was probably born the same day our little gang died.

Field Biology

When I was in fifth and sixth grades, there was a great summer school course offered through the public schools. I took “Field Biology” for two summers in a row. I don’t know how the school district afforded it, but they allowed a whole school bus filled with kids to take this class. We used several classrooms and had a variety of instructors.

Early each weekday morning in June and part of July, we would arrive at the elementary school (not our usual school, we had to get ourselves to a different campus than we were used to). The teacher would show slides. We learned scientific vocabulary words – and saw photos of whatever sort of “specimens” the teachers expected us to encounter that week. I remember learning about everything from the different types of coastal redwoods (Sequoia Gigantia and Sequoia Sempivirens…see, I still remember), to the names of things found in tidepools, to wildflowers, to birds, snakes, and lizards. But learning these names was not the best part of the class.

If we spent Monday learning all about tide pools, then on Tuesday, we would head to Half Moon Bay. We’d load up our buses and take our little field journals and bag lunches and we would explore Northern California. We rode various distances - not short rides – to arrive at our field sites. We went everywhere. I mean we went to Foothill Park, Half Moon Bay, Bodega Bay, Point Reyes, Point Lobos, Mount Tamalpias, Mount Diablo, Muir Woods, you name it. At each place, we would draw pictures of the items on our “list” for the day or we would keep a tiny sample – of leaves and flowers and grasses.

As we took our long rides and explored hot hilltops, foggy coastline, and shady woods, we became admirers and intimate observers of nature. We learned that if you stick your finger gently into a sea anemone, it will close and “stick” to your finger. That is how they feed. We learned that if you have a big fire in a redwood forest, it almost always comes back. Redwoods are very resilient. We learned about the various types of birds that live near water and how they survive and we learned why rattlesnakes rattle.

Then, at the end of the term, the course would culminate in a week of camping and hiking. The first year, we went to Big Basin. I remember I loved it and had a good time. But that’s all I remember. The second year, we went to Yosemite. Honestly, for a nominal public summer school fee, they were able to bus us off and let us camp and explore Yosemite for a week. It was unbelievable.

I know I had a crush on some kid from another school and that was interesting. It was a diversion and added a dimension to the week. But, the experience, in sixth grade, of a week of camping, hiking, and exploring Yosemite was just mind blowing. We hiked to the top of peaks. We hiked trails that took us to the base of spectacular waterfalls. We hiked and hiked and hiked. God bless those teachers. I can’t imagine what a responsibility it must have been to shepherd a group that size in a National Park.

At the end of the week, at the last campfire, I got some kind of award for being the “best trooper” of the group. It was a dubious honor. It started when I had tripped on a tree root sticking out of the ground near my tent when barefoot. We had been told not to go barefoot. Not wanting to get in trouble or to be left behind, I sort of rinsed off this giant chunk of skin that had been gouged out of my heel and taped it back up there with a bandaid. On every hike we went on, I was also getting huge blisters, but didn’t want to give up hiking, so I didn’t mention it. I developed blisters upon blisters upon blisters.

At lunch time, on about the fourth day of hiking and camping, I remember taking my boots off because I was in pain – just to give them some air. Unbeknownst to me, the instructor was standing behind me. When he saw the state my feet were in, I remember the shock and concern on his face. I seem to remember several adults with first aid kits attending to my feet for ten or fifteen minutes. Then we hiked the additional five or six miles back to camp. For some reason, they were impressed with my lack of complaining. That trait has not necessarily been a good one for me over the years, but it was apparently an asset in this setting.

I will never forget the beauty we encountered that week. From Half Dome to Bridal Veil Falls, we explored. Yosemite has changed a great deal over the years. You now have to take shuttles around the park and can’t explore in solitude the way we were able to. One has to share the park with hundreds of other nature lovers. When we were there, it was still a quiet majestic place. It is a good reason to be glad to be over fifty years of age. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.

The experience I had at the age of twelve, I’m sure helped to inspire me to work in the Tetons when I was eighteen, the Rockies when I was twenty. It probably was a formative experience that caused me to push my own children out the door when they decided to blaze trails for the Minnesota Conservation Corps, to explore the great boundary waters, or to embark on their own great adventures. So, wherever those teachers are now, wherever the school administrators are who decided to set the money aside in the budget to allow us to do this, I say, “thank you.” Thank you and here’s hoping there are more teachers and administrators like you long into the future.

Good Neighbors

One of my best friends, growing up, was Lulu (aka, Laura). Lulu was three years older than I. Still, we were inseparable when I was age three through ten. I was the youngest of four sisters, she was youngest of the three. Our houses were across the street from one another and were part of the same development – so our homes had the same dimensions, the same number of bedrooms.

Whereas, our house was chaotic and topsy turvy, Lulu’s was not. This was because of her mother. Her mother, Goldie, took very good care of the house. Lulu's parents were of Danish descent, and there was a certain rule of householding that carried over. Each of the three girls had chores and they were not allowed to do anything else until the chores were done. So, I spent a lot of Saturdays at Lulu’s vacuuming, dusting, and doing dishes. I didn’t do these things at home, but if I wanted to enter their house (which I usually did) during chore time, I had to help.

Lulu’s father, Helge, was sort of a dreamer, a visionary. Less practical than his orderly and clean wife, he thought of artistic and creative things all the time. One example was the way they renovated the very structured layout of the house. They remodeled the rooms and expanded the master suite into the backyard, filled with windows. It made living in the room like living in a garden. Helge made beautiful jewelry and other things, too, in his workshop. In fact, I was over there one day when he cut his finger off while working with a circular saw. Ugh.

Helge was really, really funny. He made a joke of his stubby finger later. Even when I wasn’t hanging out with Lulu, Helge kept an eye on me. His garage/studio opened onto the street. As I ran to the other neighbors or came home from playing with other kids, I would hear him call: “Karie bearie!” or “Meep-meep” or “Prune the Goon!” These were all of his pet names for me. He’d beckon me over for a minute or two and find out what I was doing. Helge was pretty strict with his girls and he had a temper sometimes, but he was always gentle with me.

I remember being introduced to various foods at Lulu’s house. Very simple ones, but everything they ate tasted better than the food at our house. For example, when my mom made tuna salad, she put everything but the kitchen sink in there. I’m not kidding, Miracle Whip, green olives, green onions, green peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, all chopped up in big chunks – and then she’d try to make a sandwich out of it. What was that anyway? At Lulu’s, Goldie used some kind of mayonnaise (not Miracle Whip) with sweet pickle relish that she added to the tuna. She toasted the bread and the put big leaves of fresh, crisp iceberg lettuce on top of the tuna. It was terrific.

And they had English muffins. Lulu and I loved English muffins. They also stocked other types of jelly than we did at our home. We only had grape jelly. Goldie bought raspberry jam and strawberry preserves and exotic things like that. Lulu and I had a special recipe for our toasted English muffins. We slathered the butter or margarine on there, then we put just a tiny bit of peanut butter on the butter and sort of melted it altogether and then – to top it all off – a tiny scoop of raspberry jam. Yum. To this day, I love English muffins.

They also had wonderful soup. At our house we had watery Campbell’s chicken noodle. We were fed chicken noodle soup at the first sign of a sniffle or as the first food after the stomach flu (after we’d kept down Ginger Ale and dry toast). At Lulu’s they didn’t have Campbell’s, they had this wonderful Lipton’s noodle soup. It didn’t have those annoying chunks of chicken and it was completely filled with thousands of tiny noodles. The broth wasn’t all pale and watery, either. It was salty and flavorful.

One summer, Lulu went off with her family to a week-long seminar at Asilomar retreat center. The family came back full of vim, vigor, and enthusiasm for the inspiration they’d received there. I didn’t know it then, but it must have been some kind of a Christian retreat. Lulu taught me every song she’d learned. We sang, “We are One in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord” at the top of our voices. She and her sister, Louise, taught me the call: “Now let us sing” (“sing” was sung in a deep bass voice) and the response: “Sing ‘til the power of the Lord come down.” They must have broken these up into male and female parts on the retreat, because we always sang the call in a bass voice and the response in high soprano.

We played “Chopsticks” on the piano, and “Heart and Soul” for hours on end. When we got a little older we listened to LP records on the portable stereo Lulu shared with her sisters. We would put a speaker on either side of our heads and become “freaked out” by the stereo sound moving back and forth, side to side.

I know things weren’t perfect at Lulu’s house. There was one time that my dad and Helge had too much to drink and the two of them decided the three girls needed a hair cut (all three had waist-length blonde hair). When Goldie got home, she found her three girls with equally bad bowl-cut hairdos. But things at Lulu’s were much, much better than at my home.

I spent the greater part of my childhood over there – learning to clean, cook, play piano, and having just plain fun. Everyone referred Goldie as, “my second mom.”

We moved to Minnesota just as I was ending junior high. By that time, Laura and I spent less time together – going to different schools and entering adolescence had caused us to grow apart. She was in high school by that time. I do remember riding with her and Louise in the family convertible all over the Palo Alto hills when Laura got her license.

Whenever I thought of Lulu in later years, I thought of her, her sisters, and her funny dad. I rarely thought of Goldie, who was more of a fixture than a character in my memories.

Years later, after raising my own family, I visited my elderly mother who was living in a bleak little trailer in Arizona. My sisters were visiting, too. I was sitting in my mother’s living room and I heard the most familiar voice outside, talking with my mom. As I headed to the screen door, the voice said, “Where is my Karie Doll?” I burst into tears and couldn’t speak as Goldie came through the door and gave me a big hug. (I cried my way through the better part of that night, too, remembering the moment.) In that one moment, I saw in a way I hadn’t before, all of the things Lulu’s mother had done for me.

I remembered the meals, the sleepovers, the cleaning, the listening, the laughing, and the teaching. I remembered a very serious conversation that I had with her as a twelve year old, right before we moved, which I had completely forgotten. She could see what I could not: that I was headed down the wrong road. Not that anything she said at that point could have re-directed me. But I have to believe that all of the other things she and Helge did – day in and day out – helped to keep me in one piece. And their loving care and taking me into their family helped to give me a “self” – to which I eventually returned.

Goldie could only stay a little while, but just those brief moments were enough. Grace washed over us and gave us little glimpses of heaven. Goldie laughed and showed me the little locket she wore beneath her blouse that held a few of Helge’s ashes. The rest of the ashes had been scattered on various gardens and trees. But this little bit, she thought, would like being nestled so close to her breast. Her eyes twinkled as she spoke. I will not forget them.

The Plum Tree

The following story is a longer response to the previous story, "Climbing." It is written by my sister, Nancy. Then Judy added her comments in italics, too. Anyone else have a "tree story"?

Our sister, Karie, recently wrote a story about everyone having a special tree. Her story prompted our story about a tree that we knew before she was born.

Neither Judy nor I can claim this tree as our own, as we spent more time in our “Plum Tree” together than alone. Our plum tree was behind our house, the Methodist parsonage in Santa Cruz. We don’t remember Martie climbing the tree with us as Martie was three and four years older than we were and was into teenage things in Santa Cruz. She also had rheumatic fever in Santa Cruz and couldn’t play with anyone for a period of time. Both Judy and I had private moments in our tree, but most of the time you could find both of us up there together. Climbing the tree would make us exhibit our athletic prowess, asking the other sister if she could do the same swing up into the tree. (What Nancy is forgetting is that we didn't just stop with the tree. We somehow navigated from the tree to the top of the two story garage next to the tree. We would sit for hours on the top of the garage. It was an escape from the parsonage that had to be kept in perfect order.) We loved Santa Cruz and for the most part were happy girls in Santa Cruz at ages for Nancy (9 – 12) and Judy (8 – 11).

From our tree you could access the garage (oops, I guess she didn't forget); you could see into the Santa Cruz Sentinel (newspaper) next to our house; you could see into the parking lot for the church; you could see the side door and the front entry of the Methodist Church; you could talk to people; you could spy on people and listen to their conversations; you could climb to different spots in the tree; you could hide; you could make up games. (We were pirates on a pirate ship, or Rapunzel at the top of her tower waiting for the prince to come. Sometimes we'd be in a stagecoach saving everyone from the bad guys who always tried to rob it. Sometimes, it was as Nancy said, a place two sisters could go to talk and compare notes of our many Santa Cruz adventures.) We remember it being our paradise spot to be to have private conversations. We had many quiet (or sacred) moments in our tree staring at the stained glass windows and bell tower of the 100 year old church next door. We were lucky to escape in our tree. (As Nancy explained there was a Newspaper on one side of our house, a mortuary behind us and another mortuary on the other side of the 100 year old church. There wasn't much 'play' room in our neighborhood.)

In those days Nancy spent a lot of her time on her blue bike at the beach and the wharf, but always seemed to come home to spend equal time with Judy climbing up into the tree. Judy spent more time downtown at Leask’s Dept. Store riding the elevator. We don’t think it was surprising to see Judy or Nancy in their “Sunday Best” up in the tree (if we let anyone know that we were there) as climbing the tree on Sunday was cool (with all the people coming and going). (Mother always told us that was how we met the people in Dad's church on the very first Sunday we were there. Nancy and I in the plum tree - throwing plums at the cars as they parked in what we considered our parking lot.)

One exciting time in the tree was the day our little sister Karie was born. We climbed to our spots in the tree and shouted to everyone coming to church that day “It’s a girl!”

In later years in Palo Alto, we should have known that our sister, Karie, would find her own tree.