Fit Company for Oneself

This post summarizes the chapters in Fit Company for Oneself. If you don’t like spoilers, don’t read it.

Paul, Line and Marty come home from school to find that Mother and Dad have gone to the hospital. Paul picks up Kristen next door and they make supper for themselves. Ellie, their married sister, calls. Marty is remembering the blackberry picking trip when they went in the ditch and she got lost. But Dad finally calls to say the new baby is a little girl named Hanna May. The next day they all go to the hospital to meet her.

Line bikes five miles out to the Berglund farm where the pigs are farrowing. Her friend David has offered that she help take care of one for a 4H project. Being present at the births feels sacred to Line, but she is desperate for experience, wants to be a foreign exchange student. Mother puts her foot down, however and Line must give up the idea. David who wants to farm and marry, realizes their dreams don’t match.

Marty is deeply thrilled by the girls basketball team which is rated second in the state. She goes to one exciting game, but when students go down to Des Moines for the championships, Marty and Line stay home. A snowstorm closes the school, but the game is televised and the whole family watches. Marty feels left out of the action at school, however, and has to find her own way to be happy.

Paul is terribly excited by the fact that Alan Shepherd is the first American in space. On Memorial Day, the family walks out to the nearby creek and has a “double picnic” for both lunch and dinner. They come home to find one of their neighbors has hanged himself and Dad goes over to help. Paul visits Mr. Sherwood, who tells him their neighbor had been gassed in World War I. Mother comforts Paul.

At the Minnesota lake, Paul hangs out in a little bog he thinks of as his own. He also goes into town with Dad and buys lumber to make a platform and dock down by the lake. Dad builds “with nature, not against it,” as he tells Paul. Line and Paul go out on the lake in the rowboat. Aunt Rose is very proud of the cabin and her family.

Line takes stock on New Year’s Eve. She is almost 18, worried about communism, nuclear war and her own lack of prospects. She can’t wait for college. Ellie and Bruce arrive, announcing they will have a baby, and would Line please come down and help them through the summer. Yes, of course! Line gets through the end of senior year playing the mother, an old battle-axe, in a 1920’s play.

Marty goes to the junior prom with Jim, and then to a drive-in movie, where she is surprised by the sweetness in her responding body. It makes it hard to talk to Jim, however. During the summer she reads and plays with Kristen and Hanna. She also wheedles an invitation to visit old Miss Larrabee, the governor’s daughter, and practices on the beautiful baby grand at the Larrabee mansion on the hill.

Line takes charge when Ellie is wan and listless, about to have her baby. A friend takes them to the hospital, but Bruce, Ellie’s husband, shows up before the baby is born. When Bruce again drives to Minneapolis to work and prepare for his family to join him, Line is busy with the baby. Arriving in Minneapolis, the family goes to a church which appears more diverse to Line than her own. Alone in the evenings, Line thinks about the fact that she finally has her own choices in front of her.

At school, Marty finds it difficult to talk to Jim. Her friend Barbara seems to have everything, except she loses the student council presidency. When Mother and Dad go up to close the cabin for the winter, Marty stays home from school to take care of Hanna. Hanna gets a high fever, however, and Marty carries her around for three days. Mother doesn’t thank Marty, and Jim doesn’t ask her to the homecoming dance.

At college, Line finds working in the dish room introduces her to interesting exchange students. She is experimenting with coffee and stays up late, reading The Odyssey. Her teachers’ notice excites Line, but the action around her points to the civil rights battles going on in the South. Even her art classes cannot compete.

On a winter walk with Foxy, Paul puts his foot down a hole and sprains his good ankle. He tries to walk home, but can’t get far. He sends Foxy to get Dad, who drags Paul home on a sled. That winter it is hard to get around, but when Paul sees the doctor, he finds that he is in good shape and needs no more surgeries. The family also stops to see Line at college and have pizza, an unusual treat.

That summer Marty and Paul keep house while Mother is in summer school to get her teaching credential. Marty tries photography and Paul plays guitar and learns the lyrics of the songs on Hootnanny. Marty is sad that the family is scattered. At an ice cream social, Marty meets David Berglund’s fiancé. And then, at the last summer band concert, her friends Jim and Rodney talk about where they will go to college.

At Wittenberg, Marty is invited to an honors banquet where The Stranger, by Camus, is discussed. She feels inadequate in Latin, but laps up the history and religion combined in her core courses. Her roommate is more interested in science. She thinks Marty is a chameleon, just reflecting the ideas around her. When Marty steps on one of the lenses of her glasses she must get along without them.

Dad becomes friends with an archer, and when hunting season starts Paul goes out with the men early in the morning. They watch a beautiful buck protecting his does. When Paul gets home from school, he finds Dad has killed the buck with his bow and arrows. He takes Paul to the meat locker to show him the head. When President Kennedy is killed, Paul finds himself equating the president and the beautiful buck.

At Christmas, Paul is thrilled to have Line and Marty home, at least briefly. But when an acquaintance requests Paul come and sing with his folk group, Paul goes. Dennis and the Dots practice for a talent show, Paul with his guitar being the third in the trio. They sing a couple of traditional songs which the audience loves. Paul finds he likes singing with this group also.

Line finds her new roommate, Mae, an exchange student from Spelman College, is miserable about leaving her boyfriend who is in the Movement. It’s a dangerous time in Atlanta. Line takes her to an International Relations Club meeting and introduces her to Henry, whom Line has ambivalent feelings about. Afterwards they spy on a sorority fashion show displaying wedding dresses.

The college campus during summer school feels empty and lonely to Marty, until a classmate, April, a dancer from the city, chooses her for a friend. Marty works at the library and enjoys her class in the contemporary novel. She and April spend the weekends hiking and reading. At the end of the summer they admit to each other that something has happened between them, though they may never see each other again.

At the lake cabin, Paul takes the canoe out in the early morning. When Ellie and Bruce come with their kids, he plays host, as Dad is doing pastoral duty in Iowa. When Dad and Marty turn up the next day, Paul happily steps back. He and Marty talk about their dreams for the future, but also take a boat out to the middle of the lake when the aurora borealis is strong one night.

At Spelman College in Atlanta, Line finds that the previous “freedom summer” had exhausted many of the civil rights workers, and that the rabble-rousing professors she had heard about were no longer there. Her previous roommate, Mae, welcomes Line, however and Line learns much about Southern manners and mores.

Marty attends an evening at Dr. Magnusson’s house, for a discussion of philosophy, but she is more taken with his wife and their European tastes. She is courted by Glen, a sweet pre-seminarian, and also makes a friend of Kate, who convinces her to slow down and do what is important. Glen invites Marty to a dance but without a nice dress and a pimple on her nose, Marty feels the evening is a failure.

Line let Marty know she was going down to Alabama to March for voting rights, but she did not sign out properly. In Selma, she meets Stephen, an organizer who tells her group where to go. Line spends her time at the hospital tent. When the march gets to Montgomery, Line and her friends are allowed to join. Stephen won’t leave Line’s side. They listen to the singing, and to Dr. Martin Luther King.

Paul is surprised on Saturday night when Line turns up! The family has been worried about her. Paul shows Line how Hanna sings folk songs when he pulls out his guitar. Line goes back to school, but that week the family celebrates a Seder. Dennis and the Dots, including Paul, practice for a dance, but they are graduating, getting drafted. That is the end of the Dots.

At summer school, Marty rooms with one of the Scandinavians who have come for a workshop, learning more about her own heritage. She babysits for the Magnussons and enjoys playing with Thea. She is studying the Romantic poets, but has trouble expressing herself. When April comes for a visit, Marty is intimidated by her beauty, but they picnic together as they used to.

Up at the lake for the summer, Paul goes exploring, finding a beaver pond back in the woods. He wishes he could stop time, or at least realize he was in the wilderness, where he wanted to be. He collects cattails and Mother makes pancakes, using their pollen. When Dad comes up, Paul convinces him to go deep into the woods, camping. While there, Paul says he doesn’t want to go to Wittenberg College.

Line has a job at a Lutheran Home for the Aged in Chicago for the summer. She likes working with and learning from her “old people.” But she also spends as much time as she dares with Stephen Cohen, who lives at the big communal SDS headquarters in the south of the city. They go to an SDS convention, at which Line is bored by the endless talk. She writes home, however, saying she will not go back to school this year, setting herself free.

Marty is uncertain what will happen once she graduates from college. She and her friend Kate are both free, and Marty finds inner freedom too when a friend in a philosophy class asks why Christ came to only one place in the world, only one people. Dr. Magnusson asks whether Marty would like to be an “au pair” for their family in the coming year at Oxford University. Marty would!

Stephen and Line come to Wittenberg for a teach-in about Vietnam and the draft. Mother and Dad bring the rest of the family up for a picnic to meet them. Few of them have met anyone Jewish before and Stephen is clearly important to Line. Marty and Paul have complex feelings about all of them being outward bound, but they are impressed with their gracious and welcoming parents.

The Pastor’s Kids

This post is a summary of what happens in the chapters of The Pastor’s Kids. If you don’t like spoilers, don’t read it.

The book opens with the four Mikkelson kids, who have been left alone for the day, peering out into a snowy night, watching headlights come toward them, hoping to see their parents’ car. The little wind-swept town on the flat, North Dakota plains is fronted by twin elevators to store wheat and a railroad track. Mother and Dad do eventually return, bringing valentines and paper dolls, and the world rights itself.

A small, forlorn four-year-old, Paul is whisked into a contagion unit in a hospital when it is found he has polio. When he gets better, he goes to a rehabilitation unit far from home, though Mother can now visit him in the afternoons. Paul wants a better wheelchair so he can race with the other kids at night, but Dad says they are hoping he gets braces instead so he can walk.

Line, who is eight, sympathizes with kids who are less well off than she. She has little sympathy for her older sister Ellie, however. Line wishes she were the eldest, but she does dominate her little gang of Marty, a year younger, and Paul, who is finally home. At Christmas Mother has lots of ideas to make the house festive. Line learns that “the mills of God grind slowly.”

Marty wants to have the pretty clothes and buckle shoes of her friend Eileen, but also loves being outdoors. She understands Mother’s house decor of pussywillows rather than felt roses. At Eileen’s house at the train depot, she finds there is no plumbing! On a rainy vacation, Mother ends up reading many books to entertain the kids.

The whole school plays wild games together, including the high school kids. Line idolizes the leaders. The family goes to a basketball game, giving Line ample opportunity to watch her favorite cheerleader and the spirited leader of the basketball team.

Dad takes Paul on a visit to a family where he gives communion to an older Norwegian woman who is dying. As they drive home, they see a twister along the horizon. Dad is also trying to get Paul to study Morse code so he can work toward a hamm radio license, but Paul enjoys a wild game of cops and robbers with the neighbors more.

Marty puts her hand through a window when Line yells that a circus train is coming. Dad telephones a nearby nurse and makes a butterfly-shaped tape suture, as there is no nearby hospital. The kids are invited to tea at the home of a rich farmer near town. Marty finds it is not quite what she had imagined, but Line gets to ride the horse, just for the asking.

Renting a cabin from a friend, Dad introduces his family to a northern Minnesota lake where they fish and swim. Paul limps around without his brace, thinking lake life is paradise. Line leads Marty and Paul on an adventure to spy on the old man who owns a trolley car parked a little way down the lake coast. They are frightened, but no one is there and they do not get in trouble.

Marty is miserable when she has a fight with Line and the shoe she throws at Line breaks a window. She hides in a closet all day, but Mother and Dad are mild about it, thinking she has punished herself enough. Later she rhapsodizes over a sunrise as she eats toast on a fall morning.

Line goes to the Young Citizens League, anxious to distinguish herself, but she jumps in too early. The group advisor describes what being a citizen is, and how they are using Robert’s Rules of Order. One of Dad’s parishioners adopts three part-native American kids and Line, Marty and Paul go to their new ranch house to roller-skate in the basement.

Paul loves Davy Crockett when the kids are allowed to go to their neighbors to watch Disneyland on television. Dad leads a drum and bugle corps which marches out to the cemetery with the VFW on Memorial Day. Paul’s feet are contracting, however, and he sinks down in pain when they finally get there. Dad’s brother Marshall was killed in World War II, in 1945, only ten years before.

Line tries to hide in the car when Mother and Dad take Paul for surgery in the summer. She does not want to stay with her cousins, but this ruse doesn’t work. The girls mark time through the summer and go visit Paul in the hospital. He is in traction, wan and immovable, with a calendar on the wall marking the day when he will be free.

At Halloween the town gets the kids to collect money for UNICEF and puts on a big party at the church parish hall. Marty enjoys square dancing at school and believes that the country kids are smart in their own ways, though she and her friend Michael remain at the top of their class of nine. At New Year’s Eve, it is Marty’s birthday and Dad takes them to watch him ring the heavy church bell at midnight.

Paul envies Marty and Line who can climb up in the “big tree” at the back of the schoolyard. After a communion service, the pastor’s family is invited out to a farm for Sunday dinner. Paul knows already that he, the only boy in the family, is expected to be a pastor like Dad. He loves the farm and finds that Ellie is tall enough to boost him up into the “big tree.”

Television arrives in the Mikkelson household and the family watches on winter afternoons. Dad brings home ice skates and they all go skating on the pond. Mother, however, is pregnant, and in February, a new little sister is born.  Mother and Dad also announce that Dad has accepted a call to a new parish in northeast Iowa, throwing all the kids’ plans askew.

As the Mikkelsons prepare to leave Bryson, boxes pile up around the house. They forget Mother’s birthday, but the parish gives them a lavish party. Line, loathe to leave, sits with her cat, harrumphing that in her mind, animals do have souls. She hates hypocrisy and looks for goodness deep in people.

The Mikkelsons stop at each of their grandmother’s houses as they make their way across Minnesota and have a makeup birthday celebration for Mother. Marty compares her grandmothers, both Norwegian, but with different values. Arriving in their new town, Marty is mesmerized by its beauty, nestled into the hills.

When Line and Marty start junior high, Line is thrilled by the idea of girls basketball and its coach. She can’t figure out what’s eating Paul or why Ellie seems happy. Marty becomes a cheerleader, but she is struggling also.

Summer is blissful for Paul, however. He loves the garden, a nearby creek and he doesn’t have to have surgery. At school the boys ran away and left Paul, as he couldn’t run. It hurts, as he is a sociable kid. But Marty introduced him to science fiction. At a fair at the end of the summer, Line, Marty and Paul love the acrobats and also see Ellie on the Ferris wheel with a boy.

Marty wants a crinoline like the other girls, but Mother wavers about letting her have one. She’s not athletic so sticks with the less popular girls. Her math teacher requests her help checking tests, however. She also begins a notebook, telling her troubles to an imaginary friend, Anna Frank.

Paul’s last surgery is really tough. He wakes up in more pain than he thought possible. Mother stays with him and then Line, who brings a radio so they can listen to baseball games, the Minnesota Millers playing a Cuban team! The doctors tell Paul that they have now done all they can for his legs. The rest is up to him. He tells Line and Marty his real love is wilderness.

One day the Mikkelsons come home to a “pounding” in which the congregation has gifted them with a lot of food, especially mounds of sweet corn. Mother organizes everyone into a processing team resulting in most of the corn going into the freezer for the winter. The whole family takes Ellie up to college and Line is thrilled by the idea that it will soon be her turn.

Marty practices with the high school marching band for half time during a football game. She also sings harmony with Line and Paul for church functions. Dad and Mother share their hopes for their kids when they hear from Ellie that she is unhappy at college. On a Luther League hayride and bonfire, Dad brings everyone together through song.

Dad brings home a Sheltie dog, which Paul immediately bonds with, calling her Foxy. Ellie comes home at Christmas and marries her boyfriend Bruce in a quiet family ceremony, leaving college at the end of the semester. When the family watches “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” Paul tries to prepare, but breaks down in any case.

Line babysits for some hungry kids, coming home to tell Mother about it. She also goes to a baby shower for a friend who has dropped out of school at 16. She tries to write a speech for her speech club. Her teacher tells her to put more of herself into it, and applauds the result.

The Mikkelsons go up to the lake in Minnesota where Mother’s brother is building a cabin. It is a pristine little lake made when the glaciers retreated. Line works on drawing. Marty takes care of Kristen and plays with forbidden cards. Paul helps his cousins build a treehouse. Mother is once again pregnant, helping cook for the family. The sky over the water is full of stars. The peace of the wilderness envelops them, along with the warmth of extended family.