It’s a sunshiny day and I’m up in the garage with Dad.  He’s working at the very long work bench where his grinders are, where the sun floods through the window and shows the designs that hang in the dust of the air.  About ten or twelve years old, I’ve climbed up on the big tractor tire just to sit there and watch him work.

I’ve figured out that Dad is not just Dad, but a separate person who would be living and farming and thinking and reading even if he wasn’t my Dad. And so I deliberately went to the garage, to watch him work and to think about that.  Recognizing that he is other becomes a framework for what comes later: conscious respect and deliberate honor.

Because little girls in those days weren’t supposed to interfere in men’s work, I just sat there on the tractor tire and watched him work.  We didn’t talk, except without words.

If I were an artist, I could draw you a picture.

A shiny day in early April. The surface of the flower garden on either side of the porch steps in front of the kitchen is warm — warm enough that the heat has softened the dirt as it reflected off the south side of the house.  It’s too early by several weeks for any sound of buzzing insects or any trail of ants seeking a likely nest, but the air is still and warm, inviting a youngster to come out of the house and do something.

I see the wasted, wilted tiger lilies from last year, waiting to be pulled clear from the ground to free the space for this season’s burnt orange with black-brown tiger spots.  Oh, yes.  That is something that could be done — just for fun in the sun.

It’s Sunday though. Work is not done on Sunday, and gardening and weeding are considered work, so a request is made via the mother to the father, “Sharon would like to clean up the flower beds but she says it wouldn’t be like work, because she will do it just for fun. So she can do that, I think?”

And the answer comes back, “Yes, she can. As long as she stops as soon as it’s not fun.”

I was waiting outside for the answer so couldn’t know for sure, but I believe he was smiling as he said that.

The circa 1910 Underwood typewriter with a worn out ribbon sits on the table in the sewing room in 1955.  I’m eleven now.  My two older sisters are working in Los Angeles.  In offices.  They are excellent typists, and the letters they send are often typed, page after wonderful page.  My brother who’s in the Navy sends his reports home in typewritten form, too.  So easy to read. So efficient-looking.  My next letter to my oldest sister, fifteen years older than me, must be done on the typewriter!  A summer afternoon’s work produces a one page communique with details about the cats and the dog.  Something about the gladiolas coming up.  A comment about the thunderstorm last week.  Mom is making me a new school dress from plaid fabric.  

One of the three cent postage stamps that have been delivering mail since 1932 paid to have this letter delivered to California.  About two weeks later, I get a letter back, addressed just to me. I open it with anticipation, of course, only to find that it contains my poor, typed letter — now all marked up with corrections.  Not enough spaces after each period.  Not enough lines between the paragraphs.  A misspelled word here.  A period where there should have been a comma.  

Some letters sting a little.  

It’s still a precious moment in my memory, just because I gave all the gumption my eleven year old abilities had to give and I wanted my sister to be proud of me. She let me know that she took my effort seriously, and expected me to be an even better typist.

I am.

Tomorrow’s a big, big day. At six years old, I understand about the long drive we’ll be taking on paved road for forty-five miles and then another fifteen miles on dusty narrow dirt roads, until we arrive at the little church with the high steeple, a landmark seen for miles around because there’s not a tree taller than ten feet to be found anywhere, even in the occasional gully.  A row of hardy lilac or caragana bushes marks the edge of the church grounds and the beginning of the farmer’s field, and provides a bit of shade for those who might bring their noon meal out to sit on a picnic blanket to eat.  Especially the young people, because that’s where they gather to eat and look shyly at one another. Being from sister churches on the prairie, they see each other  only occasionally and like Amish youth, only hesitantly make eye contact and,  perhaps by their early teens, dare to say “Hullo” and say what grade of school they are in.

Being little yet, I eat in the basement, sitting next to my parents on the long benches that line the tables.  The middle-aged adults in this room are my parents’ childhood acquaintances and friends, now all in their late forties and early fifties.  The older folks who came for this fiftieth church anniversary are my grandparents’ peers, now in their sixties and seventies.

The biggest man in the church has always been a dear neighbor of my grandparents, first in his youth and now farming his own land.  He’s a cheerful giant in the community — in matters of faith,  farming and sheer personal presence.  To me, he’s just a giant. I didn’t know that giants sometimes take genuine delight in cheerful little girls who are the youngest daughter of the giant’s friends.  As he approached my parents, he was laughing when he scooped me up in his arms; the family friend enjoying the sight of this fast-growing youngest child of his friends.  And I screamed.  As only a suddenly frightened six-year old can.

He had solid black hair. Our family just had brown hair.  His face was mottled — deep farmer tan and red.  Not because he drank — just because that was the complexion that fit this burly and heavy, over six feet tall farmer.  So I screamed.  An absolutely blood-curdling scream that shocked the crowd in the church basement to dead silence.

Then, still sobbing, I was taken out to the  car and left sitting there alone for an hour because I had embarrassed my parents’ friend.  In retrospect, yes, he surely was embarrassed.

I survived the day, as children in safe families usually do survive such days, although I was completely shattered and did not understand why being scared was something to be punished for. Our sub-culture being what it was, no comfort was extended to me, but I survived. They survived. He survived.  And in the evening, after a long day of thanking and praising God — because according to the theme of the day, “The Lord Has Done Great Things For Us” — we all went back to our scattered farms, got the cows milked and went to bed.

Later that week, a package arrived in our mailbox addressed personally to Miss Sharon Larsen.  It was from the giant and his wife.  In the box were six Hershey candy bars and eight long and colorful hair ribbons.  When I saw the ribbons, I understood for myself that he had never meant to scare me.  Mom helped me write a little thank you note to them.

That was the first time that an adult had apologized to me and asked for my forgiveness — even though those big words weren’t used.

Even though I never quite got over the fear feeling when we saw the giant at subsequent family or church gatherings, childish misunderstandings and frights were just that.  Over the long haul, we understood them.  We assimilated them. And we learned from them.

When I see this man of faith in heaven perhaps he will still seem like some kind of giant to me, with the same great humility he showed — with a box of candy bars and bright ribbons.

Here’s a favorite hymn the church would have sung that day, as they remembered their decades on the prairie.  (Day by Day)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNVCcph6cnI