In the Beginning, Martha
November 14, 2010
One winter day when my grandmother, Martha, was twenty-six years old she needed to go outside and get some water from the well. The well wasn’t far from the house, but fetching water on a Dakota farm on such a cold day meant she either had to bundle up her two children–Marie, age four, and LaRue, a baby–and take them with her, or leave them inside. My grandfather was away.
The fireplace warmed only one room of the two-room sod house, so she spread a quilt on the floor, put the children on the quilt, gave them some bread, and placed two dolls she’d made of wooden spools on the edge of the quilt for them to find when they’d finished the bread. She grabbed a woolen shawl and a pail and set out. In a few minutes she’d be back. They’d hardly notice her absence.
She started down the frozen path to the well. Blades of sunlight gleaming off a mower struck her eyes. She raised her right arm to block the glare and hurried on, worried that the children might crawl in the opposite direction from the dolls, toward the fireplace. In her rush she didn’t see the thick wedge of ice around the well’s wooden skirt. When the toe of her boot hit the wedge, she slipped and tumbled headlong into the icy water.
As soon as she could catch her breath, she screamed from the cold. Several feet above, the well’s bucket swayed in an uneven circle of light.
Splashing around, she knocked her shin against a narrow shelf of wood. It was just wide enough to stand on and just high enough to keep the top half of her body out of the water. She pressed her hands against the rocks and wood of the wall–too slippery to climb. The baby, LaRue, could now be edging toward the fireplace. Marie wouldn’t notice because she’d be playing with her doll.
The drenched shawl bunched up around her shoulders like a necklace of stones. She tore at it until it slipped over her head and fell. Freed of its weight, she scraped at the patchwork wall to try to gain even an inch. She got nowhere.
Three long wooden nails poked through a space between slats not too far above her. The ragged edge of the shawl was just disappearing under the water when she grabbed it. Standing on the narrow ledge, she put one end of the woolly thing between her teeth, and squeezed with both hands until she’d drained as much liquid from it as she could. Twice, she slipped off the ledge and had to kick her way back.
She tried to toss the shawl up toward the nails but kept missing. By this time her body was a fierce, unstoppable shivering. She forced herself to aim better. One more time and several loops of heavy wool caught on two of the nails. It stretched but didn’t tear, so she pulled harder. It held fast. Raising one hand over the other along the twisted shawl, she climbed.
At last her head came even with the nails. The inside of the well was now a criss-cross of boards, no more earth or rocks. Light filtered through some of the slats. She shoved her fingers into two of these openings and raised herself higher, lifting her right leg and placing one soggy boot on top of the nails. The bucket swung only a few feet away. She raised her left leg and nudged the toe of her left boot into a hole. In this manner, she managed to claw her way up.
Scraped by metal nails, rough wood and ice, her hands bled freely, but at last her head came higher than the top of the bucket. She lunged for the rope and swung out. The wooden bucket twirled around and banged hard against her stomach. For a moment she couldn’t tell if her fingers, now completely numb, stayed closed around the hemp, but when she felt herself swinging in the opposite direction she knew they still worked. She reached out to grab the top of the well’s rim and threw one arm, then the other, over the edge. Willing herself to raise her nearly deadened legs, she fell over the side and crashed onto her knees against the icy skirt that had tripped her in the first place.
It took ten minutes to crawl across the yard to the door of the house, grasp its metal latch, hoist herself up, and push open the heavy slab of wood. Knees on fire, she lurched toward her children on the quilt and fell with a cry next to their warm bodies.
And what did they see, these two babies? They looked up from their play and saw their mother come in, watched her stagger and fall down beside them, saw her long brown hair wet and tangled like the Nordic sea princess in one of the old books she sometimes read to them, saw her eyes like chips of blue ice, her hands, arms and legs bloodied, her dress soaked through, and her face raw and red from cold and blood and tears. Why was she laughing? And what caused her to pull them to her and press their faces into the wet, chilled folds of her dress and sob until they, too, were crying?
This is Martha, Alice’s mother. The source of everything.
Martha
Marie and LaRue
November 14, 2010 at 10:31 am
Wow! So scary! Glad all I have to do is turn on the faucet! You are from sturdy stock for sure, Andrea.
November 14, 2010 at 11:49 am
Whew! Horrors! Think of the sheer will and adrenaline used here!
November 14, 2010 at 11:57 am
Wow.
Crying.
Thanks
November 14, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Andrea, I have so enjoyed every post and anxiously look forward to the next! I hope you plan to publish as a book, because it rivals Tuesdays With Maury. Keep writing!!! Bev
November 14, 2010 at 1:09 pm
You have me officially hooked
What a beautiful blog.
November 14, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Oh. My. Gosh!!!
What determination is a mother’s love. And what a splendid happy end to the story.
November 14, 2010 at 7:39 pm
and to think, I’m feeling a bit chilly as the sun goes down on a low-50′s day!
November 15, 2010 at 4:55 am
Love this. Love the story, love the photographs. A treasure of a story. One event or accident turns us down a life or death path. All the quick thinking choices she made to live and to survive.
November 15, 2010 at 11:32 am
Wow! What a spell-binding story. Such a different era — such different dangers in everyday life.
November 15, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Andrea, what a nail-biter. What a riveting story. What a story teller! Despite having heard some of the stories and seen many of the pictures, this blog is taking me into an altogether different world.You best be proud, girl!
November 15, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Whew…I’m exhausted and completely engaged. Hearing your “voice”, these stories…so satisfying and as Ketzel says–you bet be proud, girl!
November 15, 2010 at 8:48 pm
One of the best pieces yet, AC. The tension reminded me of going to see “Speed” with you (not kidding). Gorgeous photos, too.
November 16, 2010 at 8:11 am
So suspenseful, it seems like a ‘made up’ story! The kind that are just too amazing to be true, and yet are – because real life is just…to amazing. I was on pins and needles and could feel her absolute tenacity and love for those babies pulling her back to them. Thank you, no wonder Alice is such a strong woman, and you too!
November 16, 2010 at 9:52 am
Andrea, This will stay lodged in my brain as a reminder of what “a hard day” actually looks like. I love that you ended with the point of view of the babies, that just pushed me over the brink. I’ve been imagining the conversation between Martha and her husband when he comes home, would she have downplayed it to him? Wondering about that era, the degree of hardship that was an everyday part of life for our grandparents and great grandparents. (Okay, back to my cappuccino…) Thank you for this piece, it is superb.
November 16, 2010 at 12:40 pm
An amazing and beautiful tale that left me breathless as Martha struggled in the icy water. You are a great story teller Andrea. This piece comes alive as one reads. I could see it all as though watching it on film. Brilliant!
November 16, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Hooray for Martha and Providence; without both, I would not be writing to you today.
November 18, 2010 at 4:06 pm
AMAZING. Wow, Andrea, what a story–and how you tell it! The most poignant thing is knowing that what drove Martha hardest wasn’t her own survival, but the safety of her babies.
November 27, 2010 at 12:54 pm
[...] wasn’t far from where one of Martha’s sisters lived and was several miles from her own old homestead, which she and my grandfather had left behind for town [...]
December 5, 2010 at 11:45 am
[...] The well that almost killed his daughter Martha was one of his finds. [...]
December 19, 2010 at 10:03 am
This was beautiful and so well written. You make me want to aspire to really write and not just share the daily task and struggles and victory of caregiving. I guess each of our journeys are unique and thank you for sharing Martha with me. Ginger
December 31, 2010 at 12:42 pm
[...] on to tell me about her habit of skipping down the street whistling, and of her mother’s (Martha) tongue-in-cheek proverbial warning: “A whistling girl and a crowing hen always come to some [...]
January 6, 2011 at 10:39 am
[...] two older brothers, Aunt Mattie, my grandmother and I stood expectantly around a small hole Mattie had dug in the front yard. We kept our eyes on [...]
February 21, 2011 at 11:26 am
[...] was about six,” she said, “and Mattie was ten. She and Mama (Martha) and I had been out at Aunt Christina’s farm for a [...]
March 7, 2011 at 4:08 pm
[...] probably guessed that the daughter of her Aunt Martha and her favorite uncle, Louie, had a crush on her because Mattie always slowed her pace when she [...]
March 20, 2011 at 9:28 am
[...] age. She picked up a photograph of Siri’s family and pointed to Siri’s mother, Mary (Martha’s [...]
May 8, 2011 at 10:26 am
[...] of us are remembering our mothers today or creating new memories with them (or wishing we could). Martha died forty-eight years ago. Alice is still in awe of [...]
June 4, 2011 at 12:20 pm
[...] and Martha, their parents, had both been pulled from school early (as all their ancestors had been, if any of [...]
August 19, 2011 at 2:23 pm
[...] was a baby during Nebba’s reign, so she does not remember how partial the cow was to Martha, mother of the brood of children. [...]
August 28, 2011 at 11:28 am
[...] had a car!” she said, still amazed. A car and a motorcycle, she was soon to discover. Martha and Louie didn’t say anything about her going out with a boy much older. She was barely [...]
December 7, 2011 at 10:37 pm
[...] few minutes later, the adults (Alice, Mattie, my grandmother, my father, all snug inside the house with my brothers) heard a knock. Alice opened the door. [...]
April 22, 2012 at 7:23 pm
[...] I’d created all by myself. Delighted, I ran into the house to share the fabulous news with my grandmother, failing to notice that she grabbed a hoe as she hurriedly followed me back to the scene of this [...]