5am. Perfect stillness. Shades of gray fill the sky completely. No rays of morning sunlight just a weak awakening of another day. No breeze, no sounds except dripping misty rain falling lightly on weary summer flowers. Clicking hummingbird unexpectedly appears, lighting on the dead branch of the elderberry high above the house looking into the moist misty distance for his next sudden flight. 

 

Sunset Land – Poem by Ella Higginson  1890- Good Housekeeping
 
How still it was amid those dark, old trees
That dropped fir needles on our wide-stretched tent
What long, dim, ghoulish shadows curled and bent
About our door, stirred by each spiced breeze
While night stole to us o’er the broad, blue seas
Pale, sunset skies with plumy forests blent
And soft reflections to the green earth lent
The drowsy droning of belated bees
The long, soft lushing of the flowing tide
The clinking of a brook against a stone
Made music sweet as silver bells.  Beside
Our tent, in pools with mellow monotone
Murmured the frogs.  So deep, and vast, and wide
Came on the night and we were all alone!
 
Like stars within some black-rimmed wave, your eyes
Sent trembling glances deep into my own
Your hammock faintly swung, One moonbeam shone
Upon your milk-white breast.  How swift time flies,
In such an hour beneath these mellow skies!
I trembled nearer and my arms were thrown
Around your throbbing throat alone, alone
We two, in gladdest passionate surprise,
To feel each heart against each other beat
And know that we were young and life was sweet!
Each swelling pulse into its comrade curled
We loved — we loved– forgetting all the world!
Unworthy, I bent o’er your hammock bed
And both our souls in one long kiss was wed.
 
Fair was your face as apple blossoms snow;
Cleft as the scarlet of your sweet lips’ thread
Within your cheek one rising flush of red
Forerun the coming of love’s warmer glow
A bunch of crimson poppies trembled low
Half-awed against your breast; your dark, crowned head
Was sweet with odorous flowers.  Conquered, love-led,
I let the hours slip by, I loved you so–
Dear heart I loved you so, and yet we knew
While thy pure lips were wedded unto mine
This hour to be our last.  Solemnly you
Soft, trembling arms, around my throat did twine
And kissed me sweet farewell.  O, love to dwell
That hour with thee hast brought foretaste of hell.
 
The Puget Sound still sparkles in the west
Caressing with her blue arms sunset land
Blown sails drift by the shores whereon I stand
And gleaming seagulls cleave the bright waves’ crest
But empty are my arms and sad my breast
Thy own wild poppies bloom beneath my hand
Once I bound them into a girdle-band
To grace thy slender waist in fierce unrest
I crush them now beneath my heel.  Fir trees
Drop needles all day long about my feet
The tide flows in with dreamy, rhythmic beat
Pink-hearted shells unsought lie on the beach
An empty hammock swings within my reach
But you and I, O God, are far apart!
He holds thy kisses –but I –hold thy heart!
 

George Turns 5
 

1911- March
George spent most of his waking hours outside and barefoot whenever possible, and covered in dirt.  On the morning of his big day, turning 5 years old, he was up early because he smelled the bacon frying and it was Sunday!  This was gonna be a good day!  He ran into the kitchen and Mama gave him five swats and a kiss on the cheek.  Those pale blue eyes and that mischievous grin never failed to melt her heart and he knew she had a weakness for it under her strictness.  It was freezing outside but the sky was brilliantly clear and for once the sun was shining.  Lizzie hollered at him to get his boots on before he went out—oh, those boots were a nuisance to little George!  Who has time for all those laces?  “I got some ‘splorin’ to do Mama!”  Lizzie rolled her clear blue eyes and said, “My hand gonna ‘splore your bottom, boy!  Get your boots on!”  Slowly he trudged to the porch and slipped on his old boots—the ones that Earl outgrew two years ago.  The very same ones that old Willie Boy outgrew six years ago!  Stupid old boots, anyway.  He ran out, caught his breath in the brisk early spring morning air and blew out a big puff of cold, frozen breath and squealed, “I’m a cloud maker!  Just like Pawpaw with his pipe!  He’s a cloud maker too!”
George missed his Pawpaw.  He had headed to Texas when George was only three along with Uncle John.  They were all fun–and now they had been gone so long it was getting hard to remember them.
George ran to the barn, the cold air burning into his lungs, then took a quick turn around and headed for the outhouse for his morning visit.  He hated the outhouse.  It smelled so bad!  There was a hole that scared him, it was cold and creepy, and he got out as quickly as possible.  The only light in there came through the moon-shaped “window” in the door.
Quickly he skipped to the barn to join papa for the morning chores so his ‘splorin’ could get underway.  He shyly said, “Mornin’” to his papa, Big George, who wished him a happy birthday and quietly handed him the bag of feed.  It was George’s daily task to feed the chickens, gather the eggs, and give them fresh water from the pump when it wasn’t frozen.  Charlie rooster was George’s favorite.  He chased George all around the barn, out to the pump, and back again.  George loved Charlie rooster but his little brother, Irvin, is deathly afraid of him and George always watched out for him.  All the chickens had names and George knew them all.  Henny, Penny, Lenny, Jenny, Benny, Denny, Kenny, and Lucy.  Lucy can’t rhyme so she doesn’t.  She was a different kind of chicken–she waddled like a duck, laid no eggs, and basically just sat around all day clucking.
George put his left hand far into the nearly empty feed bag and grabbed the last handful, scattering it all around the chicken pen.  This got the hens all busy eating so George grabbed the straw basket Papa got off the old Indian Joe and filled it with seven fresh, warm eggs while they chickens weren’t looking.  He let Charlie Rooster follow him around back to the house where he delivered the eggs to Mama before heading off to ‘splore.  Mama grabbed him by the back of the shirt just before he escaped and gave him five more kisses on the cheeks, which he promptly wiped off with his sleeve and headed back out to see if his brothers, Willie and Earl, were done milking Flo, their Jersey cow, so they could have some breakfast.
Willie was eleven and almost as tall as Mama.  He was in the 5^th grade while Earl was in 3^rd grade and eight years old.  At night when they would do their lessons, George would look through their books and try to figure out all those word he couldn’t quite read yet.  He would tell Mama, “I want to read books and I wanna go to school with Willie!” but the only reply he got was, “Not yet, George”.  He tried to teach his little brother, Irvin, to count and he wrote letters.  He especially liked to look at the Sears Roebuck catalog and study all the machines.  All those wheels and gears and wires made his mind reel.  His neighbor Mr. Moon once gave him an old sickle grinder and he disassembled and reassembled it over and over.  When he wasn’t ‘splorin’ he was thinking about machines, looking at the catalog and imagining how to take things apart.
When he finally found Willie and Earl and Papa they were done with the chores and heading in for breakfast – Oh, that bacon!  Mama made him a special breakfast – Biscuits, gravy, bacon, eggs, and she even let him have a tiny bit of coffee with sugar and cream.  Oh, birthdays were the very best. After breakfast the older boys headed off to help Papa with the fence.  And George, of course, headed off for his own adventures ‘splorin!
They lived in a tiny house on ten acres in Bow.  Their house had two bedrooms that the four boys all shared with two beds.  George and Irvin in one (Irvin wet the bed every night so usually George just slept on the floor on a quilt) and Willie and Earl shared the other.  When it was bed time they all lined up at the outhouse in the dark with a lantern taking turns.  Willie would tease them with spooky sounds and tell them stories in the dark of their room every  night  He would also tell them how to spell words – like T-R-A-N-S-P-O-R-T-A-T-I-O-N and M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I while they laid in the dark waiting for the sand man to come and put scratchy sand in their eyes and make them fall asleep.  George held the nickel he’d gotten for his birthday tightly in his left hand as he fell off to sleep.  He thought of all the candy that nickel could buy down at Gilmore’s store!  The jars of colorful treats danced around in his mind as he could almost taste the licorice, the gum ball, the taffy… or maybe he would save it along with his four pennies from last year.  Nine cents could buy a toy!  A gun was what he really wanted, or even a bow and arrow!  Or a knife…Oh, and off to sleep he went dreaming of all the ‘splorin’ he’d do the next day.

1906

September

*Story- Lizzie
Early on a dappled September day she takes her three boys down the dirt road surrounded by oat fields on both sides.  The light in early fall and the crisp morning air soothe her soul in such a way that nothing else can.  She carries Earl on one hip and a bushel basket holding George in the wagon as she walks to the apple orchard to fill her basket with the harvest that will be their delight in the coming winter.  Apple butter, apple sauce, and canned apples for future pies are the order of the day.  Willie will head to school and she will be left with Earl and George to entertain themselves in the orchard.  The unexpected warmth of the Indian summer fills her with hope and makes her very routine life a little brighter.
As they make their way back along the tree-lined dirt lane, Earl helps pull the wagon loaded with the apple bushel while baby George now takes his place on her left hip.  The gradual change in leaf color has begun and as the sun rises higher in the crisp blue sky, there is a calm in this day which doesn’t always show itself. As summer struggles for its final breath before fall takes full command, there is a nearness to this season, to nature, the bounty of the harvest, and the preparation of food for the winter months; anticipation of evenings spent indoors darning, sewing, knitting all taking place next to the fire in the stove.  Not looking forward to those freezing trips to the outhouse, however, brings her back from her daydream and into the babbling conversation of a three year old who has decided to pee on a rock at the side of the road… again.  Earl stays busy all day on the farm, following his papa, chasing chickens, playing with sticks and rocks (which generally fill his pockets by the end of the day), and peeing on any big rock he finds.  It all stems from Willie telling him a story about a cow who peed on a flat rock out in the field one day and the sound it made.  She is surrounded by boys, was raised by boys, and she must fight for her maternal side to show itself as she laughs at their antics.
Baby George is falling asleep on her hip as they arrive back at the home they share with Lizzie’s father and brother John.  She puts him down in his cradle while Earl runs out to do his daily routine which ends with him very dirty and smelly at the end of the day.  She pumps another bucket of water and rinses the apples.  For the applesauce she like to leave the peels on to add a little more flavor and texture.  The others she peels for apple butter and puts a pot on the always-warm stove top.
Lizzie’s Diary: Six months have passed since little George Wilmer was born.  He is tiny and charming.  Can a baby be charming?  I am taken with him in a way the others have failed to capture my heart.  He is a bundle of my very soul and I could forsake all others for this very one.  He is very interactive, especially with me and I believe I never knew true love until this little fella came along.  I never tire of him and I feel a connection to his heart in such a way that I feel foolish!
I am a sassy, feisty woman in my 20’s not given to fanciful thought.  I work hard, knowing that the only thing between living and dying is my own hard work around here.  We must work to put every morsel of food in our mouths.
Sometimes I take this baby and the other two boys, Willie and Earl and we walk down the dirt road that runs out to the main road.  There are fields on both sides and a shallow ditch.  We plant for Mr. Halloran who owns the property.  We hope to buy it from him.  We have five acres of oats and a personal garden.  The dirt road is lined with tall leaf trees that at this time of year begin their gradual change of color.  It is in the evening light, as the sun sets before dinner now, that the lingering rays dance on the breezy leaves in such a way that I feel a comfortable deep longing in my soul for the season to hang on a little longer before another winter brings rain and sleet and even a bit of snow.  I love the fall of this area—so crisp in the mornings, so mellow in the afternoon, so soothing in the evenings as summer struggles for its last breath before fall takes full command.
Willie Boy has started school now.  He is six years old and goes to the schoolhouse every day, arriving home tired and worn from all the cares of kindergarten.  Earl stays busy all day on the farm, following his daddy and chasing chickens, playing with sticks and rocks (many of which I routinely find in the pockets of his overalls on laundry day!)  While my sweet baby and I go about our days canning, cleaning, and cooking.
I fall into bed at night exhausted and filled with a thousand things left undone, lean in close to my hardworking husband and fall promptly to sleep.  The baby sleeps six hours at night now and it is a blessing beyond measure.
An hour after falling into a deep sleep I awaken to a feverish six year old, coughing with the croup.  I am so deeply asleep at first I cannot comprehend the disruption but alas my senses kick in.  There is always a pot of water boiling on the woodstove so I create a tent over it for him to breathe the steam.  He is so miserable and tries to cry but just barks that horrible bar.  I make a poultice and place it on his chest.  He is in misery and the barking wakes the baby.  Soon the household is up and Willie is barking, the baby crying, and Earl wants to use the toilet!  Tietjen chaos has begun.  George gets up to see what all the commotion is about.  Thankfully he sees to the Earl while I try to comfort Willie and my precious baby.  I feel a bit overwhelmed but I am certainly capable of a crisis of this magnitude!
We all settle back in for a few hours of much needed rest before the morning light again graces us with another full day ahead.
I often feel that my days are a monotonous routine of a never ending cycle of repetition and it is simply easy to lose the value of life.  We are simply living to live another day and as the season changes I cling to the want of more carefree, long summer days as the darkness creeps in lasting longer each morning.  I know it won’t last long but some days it seems endless with little to show for it all.
As my baby rocks with me in this old chair I recite, in a whisper
O sleep, sweet sleep—lean downward unto me
And lay thy cool touch on my fevered cheek
Lay all thy fair length close to me and speak
Thy language soft and drowsy as the sea
That steals up tidelands slow and lullingly
O sleep, kind sleep, lean down and press thy lips
On my tired lids, let thy cool fingertips
Still my hot temples throb—aye, let me be
Cradled within thy arms –and bid me think
Of clovered banks where long, still shadows creep
Of lotus blossoms lolling on a stream
Of tinkling brooks where thirsty cattle drink
Of drowsy poppy fields—and bid me dream
Of him I love, O sleep, O gentle sleep.  (Ella Higginson, 1895)
The baby’s even breath, Willie’s raspy snore, all matching the longing for peaceful sleep once again.  I lay little George back in the cradle and his warmth leaves my breast.  I climb back into bed and recite it again in my head, not getting past “On my tired eyes”….