A Sufficient Grace

Our story continues with an early sketch of Laura as a girl and her grandmother. As the floor remained open for this chapter - I had fun doing some mental traveling on the Internet and blending fiction and history as I went along.

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
~ 2 Corinthians 12:9

There is a story, which I read as a girl. An awkward asthmatic girl with acne, who read voraciously and dreamt crystalline dreams. Dreams of travelling and writing. Of bringing about change. Of having a room of my own to set down the constant flurry of phrases in my mind. This particular story gave me the stubs of wings, the promise of flying. These were the opening lines:

"It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life. I have, as it were, a superstitious hesitation in lifting the veil that clings about my childhood like a golden mist. The task of writing an autobiography is a difficult one. When I try to classify my earliest impressions, I find that fact and fancy look alike over the years that link the past with the present. The woman paints the child's experiences in her own fantasy. A few impressions stand out vividly from the first years of my life; but "the shadows of the prison-house are on the rest." Besides, many of the joys and sorrows of childhood have lost their poignancy; and many incidents of vital importance in my early education have been forgotten in the excitement of great discoveries. In order, therefore, not to be tedious I shall try to present in a series of sketches only the episodes that seem to me to be the most interesting and important."

In retrospect across the years, I see that this is how we all relate our stories. As a series of sketches of the most interesting and important fragments of our lives. The mundane dust of the in-between, the waiting, the indecisive hovering of the quill - is lost. This was how Helen Keller began: "The Story of my Life". Of which the beginning was simple and much like every other little life. An assertive happy child for one brief spring, from which there remained few, almost unreal memories. At nineteen months she became gravely ill. A family doctor diagnosed acute congestion of the stomach and brain (most probably scarlet fever or meningitis). The fever left as mysteriously as it came. But the elation over her recovery was short-lived. The illness had plunged her into the unconsciousness of a new-born baby. Without sight or hearing. But during that brief season of wholeness, she had caught glimpses of broad, green fields, a luminous sky, trees and flowers. Which the darkness that followed could not wholly blot out. She writes: "If we have once seen, the day is ours, and what the day has shown." It was the persistence and faith of one woman - Anne Sullivan, which lifted her up into the world of perception once again. Their story was one of  victory. Of miracles. A "story" which inspired many to see and hear more truly. It was many years before I realised that the miracles were most certainly preceded and interspersed by hours and days of frustration, failures, endless repetition and anguish.

I waited for my own miracles to show up, to give me something inspiring or great to write about.

But my own life seemed to crawl along at a rather tedious pace. Occasionally the monotone would be broken by the visit of a colourful relative, the initial sweetness of young love, a hint of deeper meaning from the other side of the veil. During this time, the only things I ever wrote down, were my secret longings and unflattering perceptions of the people who shared what I thought to be the daily humdrum of my existence.

I remember being introduced to Tolkien by a history teacher, Mrs Mayes. An unassuming spinster, with a wizened, quizzical expression and a quick wit. She recognised something of my longing for greatness, even if it was only on the pages of a fantasy novel. Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist or hero of "The Hobbit", is an ordinary, respectable, reserved hobbit (half-ling). He gets tricked by Gandalf the wizard, to join a band of dwarfs, in spite of his trepidation at the thought of adventure. The dwarfs set out to reclaim their Lonely Mountain and the vast treasure guarded deep in it's bowels by the dragon Smaug, who lies sleeping upon it. There is a scene in which Galadriel (a noble Elve, fairest and mightiest of all Elven woman) asks Gandalf why he chose the hobbit to be part of this dangerous quest. He answers in a whisper: "I do not know. Saruman (another wizard) believes that it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that it is not what I’ve found. I’ve found it is the small things, every act of normal folk that keeps the darkness at bay - simple acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps it is because I am afraid, and he gives me courage."

I was not so convinced that our family was what one would classify as  "normal", but my life certainly seemed to revolve around small things. Perhaps if I could find the means by which to make these small things count, there was still a way to unlock the undefined legacy which I so hoped for?

I started with my grandmother, who featured largely in my childhood. Mostly, because of her generous proportions, but also since she was the undisputed matriarch of the Pederson family. She was ordinary enough, but was made to seem formidable, in that she had survived two husbands,  a world war and three tragic miscarriages, before giving birth, on the kitchen table, to my father Adam and his twin brother Andreas.

I waited until she flopped into a deep settee on the porch, at the end of a sultry day. The last rays of the sun casting an unlikely halo around her hair, damp with perspiration. As she set down her teaspoon and raised the rose-budded cup to her lips, I said: "Grams, can we chat?" She eyed me suspiciously over her steel-rimmed glasses. "What about?" she asked, her one eyebrow raised. "Shouldn't you rather ask your mother? " she mumbled. "I'm afraid I may have forgotten these... um, details a bit you know..." The last few words were swallowed up by the tea-cup, her eyes concentrating on the contents to hide her discomfort. I suppressed a giggle. "Don't worry Gran" I smiled. "It's nothing like that."

"Can I get you some more tea?" I offered. Now I had her really worried. "I don't have money Laura", she said. "And I'm not good at keeping secrets". I realised that this was going to be harder than I thought. She saw right through my supposed "small act of kindness" as a way of getting into her head. It took about two weeks before she let down her guard. By then I had made a few surprising discoveries about the shuffling old woman, who seemed to take up so much room in our home, but very little space in my heart. She sang. Softly, under her breath, barely audible. Nostalgic songs of lovers and lonely hearts. Of girls with moonlight in their eyes. She talked to her English roses, pruning sheers in hand. The wide-brimmed hat, hiding her vulnerability. At times she seemed to forget what she was doing. I'd see her wander to the gate and peer intensely down the road. Fumble in the post box, looking lost. Gran with the sharp tongue, sensible shoes and faded apron, became a woman with a soul. I had never even noticed the colour of her eyes, until one morning, I looked up from the toothbrush in my hand into the mirror. And for a weird moment, saw her looking back at me.

That same day, I sat down and wrote my very first poem.

I was thinking of love,

and you came to mind.
There is much about me,

I'd like to rewind.

I know I've been blind,

and this you have seen.

Yet never told me,

how foolish I've been.

Is there a chance,

to start over again?

For me to know you,

to be your friend?

So much, so much,

which I long to know.

But only if you wish it so...

By Laura Pederson for her Grams

I slipped it into her apron pocket while she sat napping by the window after lunch. Later in the afternoon, I thought I saw a moistness in her eyes. But she did not let on that she had seen, or read my offering. My heart sank. When she sat down to her cuppa that afternoon, I picked up my book and started up the stairs to my room. My foot was on the bottom step when I heard her say: "So lass, would you still like to talk?"

In the weeks and months which followed, she became a faucet to which I returned each day, thirsty and curious. My curiosity broke the seal on a trove of memories from her past. I was given glimpses of my grandfather, who up to that time, was just a sepia face behind bevelled edged glass. I got to know about how the baker in their village wooed the washer-woman for months with offerings of  fragrant bagels. Until she finally gave in. Regardless of the fact that she could not stand bagels. During this time, her pig did seem to become remarkably fat...

She told me poignant tales of loss and courage. Of men fighting wars and women working, watching and waiting. Of babies being born and restoring hope for a while. Of my own father, and his dream to build a lighthouse, so that his father's ship could find it's way home.

There was one particular story which I took with a healthy heft of salt. It was of a certain young man who was the sweetheart of one of her distant cousins for a short while. Before the end of the first semester, he dropped out of Cambridge University, joined the British army and was sent to South Africa to fight in the Boer war. The self-same soldier was said to have fought in four different wars. Survived being shot in the stomach, groin, head, ankle, hip and right leg. He was also meant to have survived two plane crashes and five escape attempts from a POW camp. He was shot twice in the face, loosing a left eye as a result. He wore a glass eye for a short time after. But, while travelling in a taxi with the wind stinging the dry socket of his lifeless eye, he threw it out of the window and donned a black eye patch, which he wore for the rest of his life. During the year of 1905, the cousin received news that he had embarked on a steamer to France. As an infantry commander on the Western Front, he was wounded seven more times. Soon after his arrival he lost his left hand (biting his mangled fingers off when a doctor declined to remove them!). News also reached home, that he won the Victoria Cross, the British Empire’s highest award for gallantry in combat...

"Oh Grams" I gasped, when she ended the tale with a sigh and a shrug. "You certainly got carried away a bit with that one." She seemed indignant, and insisted that there was no elaboration on her account. "The story is authentic" she said, "and the details quite clear in my mind."

Many years later, browsing through a musty old bookshop, an image caught my eye. An old uniformed man, stared out of the picture with one stern eye. The other, covered by a black eye patch... Right there, in the embrace of a torn leather chair, I read "Happy Odyssey", from cover to cover. The autobiography of Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart. Grams' story, written by the man himself. I felt like laughing and crying. How I wished she were there with me, a pot of Earl Gray between us. I could fill in the bizarre details for her. From the real life account, which reads even more far-fetched than an elaborate Hollywood plot. How she would have frowned and scowled at his flippancy about the loss of various body parts. "Frankly, I enjoyed the war" he wrote. I doubt she would have still regarded him as a hero.

She was the first one to show me that it is far easier to aspire to greatness, than to be satisfied with just being who God intended me to be. "Ours is a God of small people" she said. With the wistful smile I had come to love so much. "Small people, who are happy to be small in the eyes of the world. And content with the greatness that flows from His presence in their hearts".

Beauty for ashes

(Our story continues with another glimpse into Laura's past. With this chapter, I had two "collaborators" - our boys, Luke and Daniel. They gave ideas, and the story provided a platform for them to do "research" on leopards, which proved to be fun as well as quite valuable in the end!)

To bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,

the oil of joy instead of mourning,

and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. ~ Isaiah 61:3

I woke up this morning to the distant sound of cows calling mournfully for their calves. Rising up to our cottage on the tail of a mist dragon - uninvited, unwanted. It always pierces me like a thorn to the quick. The calves echoed their mothers' urgent lowing with their own anxious cries. A mother can identify her calve's call from more than a hundred others', and he her's. Our neighbour Matt is a remarkable animal husband. Over many years of rearing Brahman cattle, he has learnt to understand the intricate "language" between a mother and her calve. She calls at a low frequency to it when it is near, with her mouth mostly closed, almost like a deep hum. As the distance widens, the calls become ever more urgent, and the frequency higher. Anxiety becomes evident in her taught outstretched neck, lips drawn back, the whites of her eyes visible. Mother-offspring cattle calls are unique - each pair having a characteristic and exclusive call all of their own. When forced apart, the calls from both sides become a desperate cry of longing. A cry which I understand so well.

Three years ago, I surfaced from a dark well of unnatural sleep, awakened by such calls. Instinctively I reached for the place next to me in the bed. It was cold. And empty. An icy fist uncoiled itself inside my stomach, as I remembered the events of the day before... My husband (Aron's father) had gone over to help our neighbour Matthias, separate the young calves prior to weaning. While the men were at the pens, Matt's son came over, a little shamefaced, to ask for help with the felling of a large Redwood. Lightning had cleft the tree almost in half during an angry storm the week before. It appeared to be a fairly straight forward job, but the youth was uncertain and lacked confidence. Ron offered to go, leaving the older man to see to the cattle. After a few steps, he paused, turned back and did something rather strange. He removed the silver wheat engraved wedding band from his left hand and placed it in the older man's palm. "Please hold onto this for me Matt", he said, smiling reassuringly, and walked away...

An hour later, the final groan of the large Redwood could be heard. Then there was a chaos of branches snapping and the tremendous shudder as the old giant surrendered and lay stretched out at it's full length. Limbs flayed like a slain warrior. Matt sighed with relief and waited for Ron to return. He struggled on alone, glancing over his shoulder, expecting Ron to come strolling across the yard with his distinctive graceful gait. But he did not come. With a frown, the older man closed the gate after the last recalcitrant cow and walked with long strides toward the edge of the forest. Two impressive Sequoia had stood sentinel over the forester's cottage for as long as he could remember. But lightning had ended the tallest of the two trees' life in an electrified second. Matt reached the place where it lay. He looked up at the remaining tree. The side on which it's felled partner had stood, seemed exposed, vulnerable. His son Jake, was already busy cutting the smaller branches for firewood. Ron was nowhere to be seen. "What happened to Ron, son?" he asked. Jake looked up, a bit bewildered. "But he left here ages ago Dad" he said. Instinctively, Matt reached for the ring in his pocket. Fingering the wheat pattern, he tried to force down the rising visceral fear.

Without any words exchanged between father and son, Jake lay down his tools, and walked back to the house with his father. They re-emerged, each with a shotgun slung over his shoulder and grim expressions borne on both faces. Re-entered the forest with the tension evident in their taught limbs. On light feet, they scanned the area from where Ron set out, with Matt halting to do a backward 180 degree scan every few meters. After a fruitless hour, they split up. It was young Jake who found the hat, lying askew in the moss. He picked it up gingerly, and called for his Father. He recognised his mistake too late. A blur of movement flashed before his eyes, before the leopard was on top of him. The shotgun was thrown out of reach and he held his arms up protectively over his face and neck. Matt rushed through the foliage at the moment when the leopard sunk her teeth into his biceps. Jake's howl of pain pierced the stillness of the forest. The older man lay his weapon calmly against his shoulder, found the predator's neck in his sights, and pulled the trigger. She tensed her body in one final shuddering moment of magnificent surging life, and then slumped over the young man. Pinning him under the mass of her dead body.

As the blood of the leopard mixed with his own, Jake dragged himself free with much difficulty. The wound in his arm was deep and severe, but it was miraculously the only injury he had sustained. Ron had not been so fortunate. They found his mangled body nearby. What made Ron decide to walk deeper into the forest on that day, no one knew. What events led up to the attack, no one knew either. Most probably the leopard picked up the cries of alarm from the newly separated calves. Hunger, caused her to abandon the safety of the "rantjies" (hills), to move into man's territory of traps and guns. Ron wandered across her path at the wrong moment. Or perhaps she had cubs hidden in a den up there, which would have intensified her aggression. Which also meant that there had to be a male at large. But the most dreadful mystery that died with him that day, is why the animal severed his left hand, and what became of it. It was never found. A sinister secret, swallowed up by the undergrowth. This has haunted my dreams more than anything else.

Days and weeks passed in mild anaesthesia. I cared for Aron, moved through each hour, feeling like someone else was causing my limbs to respond. Aron toddled around the house calling: "Dadda! Dadda!" until it felt like I could gag him if he didn't stop. Matt and his family reached out in so many ways, but I had nothing left in me with which to receive the love they offered. Eventually, parcels and offerings were just left on the doorstep. Always topped by a single St Joseph's lily from his wife Emily's garden. She knew well how I loved their fragrance. The way they glowed ice-white in the moonlight. We had walked so many times through the pasture where they grew wild. The snow queens, she called them. She had been drying some bulbs for me to plant on our own untamed piece of land. Matt or Jake would arrive uncalled for, to do what needed to be done around the house. Moving unassumingly in and out of our quiet world, without asking anything in return. Little by little their undemanding compassion, found a way through the numbness.

Then on an unmarked morning, I opened my eyes to sunlight lancing through the stained glass pane in the window. A gift from Ron, fitted gently into place with sensitive hands, to bring a play of colour into our room with the dawn. It collected in a rainbow pool on the floor next to my bed.  There were day-break sounds, familiar and yet new. There was birdsong. The same as each morning, yet with a certain purity in the notes. When I turned my face away from the wall, Aron was there, waiting quietly for me to wake up. A lily in the grasp of his dimpled hand. "Smell Mamo" he said. I took the offering from him. The halo of his bed-tousled hair, the clarity and sweetness of his eyes looking up into mine, broke through the bars deep inside of me. I held him to me and sobbed and laughed. And smelled. And smelled. And smelled...