~BEDROOMS~

Lying rigid on our lumpy mattress, I listened to little sister Lois’s light breathing and watched the shadows cast by a kerosene lamp. They flickered over unfinished walls and ceiling, turning empty knotholes into dark entryways to a scary other world. That sleeping space in a corner of a one-room coal miner's shack in North Dakota is one of my earliest mental snapshots.

The next bedroom, a more cheerful spot, also doubled as living space during the day. All of us children slept in the L-shaped main room of the cabin our father, Delbert Rawlins, built when he and our mother, Marie, settled in the Robe Valley. Before we left Washington for a year in North Dakota, we were two in that double bed. Billy was born while we were gone so when we returned, we were three. Then Patty came, and we were four, lying crosswise along its length. Before we moved from that house to the larger place next door, baby David sometimes made the fifth child sleeping in a row.

My chief memory of that bedroom is of having been tucked in one winter night, listening drowsily to the clatter of dishes and Mama softly singing a Lutheran hymn. An Aladdin lamp with a tall glass chimney and glowing mantle sat on a cupboard in the kitchen part of the ell, giving light for her work and sending a pleasant, subdued glow over our corner. Suddenly, the light brightened, and I heard her sharp exclamation.

My eyes flew open. Black smoke spewed from the top of the lamp, and flames filled the chimney. I saw Mama’s hand, draped with her dishcloth, reach out and grab the lamp by its base. In a few quick steps,
she reached the front door as the flames blazed toward the ceiling. She yanked the knob with the other hand and flung the blazing lamp into a snow bank outside. Those lamps were generally safe. I have no idea what caused that one to malfunction, but Mama’s quick thinking saved her babies and our home

See A Logger’s Daughter: Growing Up in Washington’s Woods for continuation of this story.

~CHRISTMAS CARD FROM MY SISTER~


My sister’s Christmas card painting takes my breath away...not the skill or the composition or the color, though all three are there....

Here I sit, sixty years distant from the events pictured, and gaze at her watercolor remembrance. Memories and emotions swirl. It’s like a scene in a snow globe. Flakes settle deep on roof and evergreens, drape a mantle of white over Green Mountain. The sky over all is purple and black.

Our little house nestles in the woods beneath the mountain, and lamplight warms the windows. Out front, children play. I’m a child again...the tallest one with yellow hair. Sister Lois, who grew up to paint the picture, helps me pat our snowman into shape. I can feel the chill of ice melting through my hand-knit mittens, stiffening my fingers.

Our mischievous middle sibling, Billy, pushes a snowball bigger than he is. Little sister Patty, down on her knees, tries to roll a snowball, too, and David, the smallest child, stamps his feet and crows with delight. Our toes grow numb in their rubber galoshes, but we scarcely notice. Our shouts and laughter ring in the clean air. No other noise disturbs the silence because the road is buried. Until the big yellow plow or “maintainer” scrapes its way from town, we are the only people in the world. Loggers, like our father, can’t get into the woods, and if any neighbors are out and about, snow muffles their sounds.

Soon Daddy will come out to shovel the steps and the path to the house. Then he will begin the long task of clearing the driveway, taking care to avoid our snow art. We will clamor for turns at the shovel and get in his way. We are safe and contained--a family--and the joy of it makes us giddy.

See A Logger’s Daughter: Growing up in Washington’s Woods for continuation of this story.