CATEGORY: LATE CHILDHOOD
PHOTO: CEDAR WAXWINGS

Mother taught in Shaniko for two years.  The second year we moved into a different and larger house.  I have noticed that almost every town, no matter how small, usually has at least one, and sometimes several primo houses in the original part of town, the houses of the once elite. Shaniko had three, all in a row on the main highway.  They were hardly grand houses, certainly nothing compared to the house at the ranch, or even our house in Grass Valley, but they filled the “cut above” category for Shaniko, which had originally been a town of tents.  The middle one had belonged to Pat’s Aunt, Helen Reese.  The Reese family had moved away and we were able to rent it.  I have three special memories of things that happened there.

The first one is of Cedar Waxwings.  It was late fall.  It had snowed and become very cold with a rampaging wind blowing.  Mother was concerned about what might freeze–the pipes, the car, us.  She told us to go to bed early to keep warm.  These houses were not insulated.  We lay in bed listening to the wind and liking the feeling of being in a safe place when there was a raging beast outside snarling to get in.

Sometime in the night I woke up.  The wind had stopped.  Everything was still.  The moon was shining through the window and it seemed as light as day.  I tiptoed to the front door and looked out.  Silhouetted against the sky I could see that the Mountain Ash tree in the front yard was full of birds.  It was as if every branch was covered with long lines of them.  In the morning they were still there.  They were Cedar Waxwings!  They were all in rows along the branches and they were passing berries from one to the other all down the lines.  Finally one of them would eat it and then they started with another berry.  How polite!  I was entranced by these birds.  Their feathers were so smooth and their colors so subdued and pure that they really did look as if they were made of wax.

The second memory can be told in just a few words.  Mother was gone and Mary and I were heating mashed potatoes to fix our own lunch.  We got into an argument.  Mary, suddenly picked up a handful of mashed potatoes and threw it at me.  Her aim was perfect which was most unusual; I think she had never hit anything she aimed at in all her life before.  This missile hit me right in the face.  We were both so surprised that we were speechless.  If you can’t speak there is nothing more to argue about.

The third thing was as profound to me as melting into the warehouse platform while looking at the sky on the day I ran away from Sunday school.  It was spring and the weather was turning lovely after a cold winter.  It was Saturday.  On the previous evening mother had said we could go for a picnic today if it were a “good day.”  This was marvelously exciting because the place we would go was into the canyon below town where there were evergreen trees and a creek; I mean a real year round creek with RUNNING WATER!  The canyon was only a half mile away, but it was nothing like the high desert where the town of Shaniko had been pasted like a postage stamp on a flat, sage brush colored envelope that stretched as far as the eye could see.  When we woke Saturday morning it was cloudy.  It looked like it might rain.  Mother said we could still have our picnic if it cleared up.

Mother had taught me to sew at an early age.  By this time I was making all my own clothes.  I had been making a dress for myself and decided I might as well work on it while we waited.  I can even remember the dress; it was plain light blue cotton with a white collar.  I had gotten the blue cotton for 25 cents a yard.  I had gotten the fabric for the collar from the good edges of an old pillowcase that was in the rag bag.  Now I was ready to do the hem.  The dress had a gathered skirt so it was a long hem.  I was in a hurry and I was impatient.  Maybe it would still be a good day!!  If that suddenly happened, I wanted to be ready!

I usually did hems by hand with small even stitches.  This morning I thought of something different.  Why should I do all that work and take all that time to do it by hand?  Why not do it on the sewing machine?  Who would know the difference?  It took me only a minute to sew the hem on the machine.  I didn’t even bother to baste it.  When I finished, I held the dress up and looked at it.  The hem was puckered.  Our old White sewing machine held the material on the underside of a seam fuller than that on the top side and needed to be basted first and also stretched while sewing so the two pieces would be even.  In my haste, I had failed to do either, and even if I had, I still didn’t like the machine sewn hem.  It looked cheap.  I looked at it again.  I thought of one of my grandmother’s sayings, “You’ll never see it on a galloping horse.”  I thought, “So, it isn’t perfect.  So what!  You’ll never see it on a galloping horse!”  But it wouldn’t do.  I knew I would never like that dress.

I sighed and started to tear out the hem.  It took me awhile, pulling and then breaking off the thread on one side and then the other.  Then I dampened it and ironed all the puckers out; I basted it and began to hem it by hand.  I felt better right away.  I started to hum a little tune to go with the rhythm of the stitches.  I tried to make up funny words to go with the melody, so I was giggling as I stitched.  An hour or so later I was finished.  I held the dress up and looked at the hem.  It looked like a hem should look.  I felt a kind of satisfaction.  I felt happy!  I had been sitting by the window, and at that very moment the sun came out and the sky cleared as if by magic.  I suddenly thought, “It is not the sun shining that makes a good day.  Every day is a good day.  It all depends on what I do with it.”

Now this may seem like a Pollyanna kind of story, but that experience has stayed with me all my life.  I have always been grateful that I learned on that very day, and all by myself, that it is better to do something over and over until you get it right, and that the easiest way to do it over is by making it fun.  Having an experience like that is so much more meaningful than having someone tell you, “If a thing is worth doing it is worth doing well.”

I finished the dress and we went on a picnic in one of the world’s beautiful places.  It was a good day!