Nature’s Stricter Lessons

This post is a summary of the chapters in Nature’s Stricter Lessons. If you don’t like spoilers, please ignore it.

Marty goes to Santa Cruz to help out while Line studies for, and takes, the tests necessary to get her California LVN license. Marty takes the kids on a picnic, which quickly turns into a Lord of the Rings trek, to her surprise. Once home, Marty helps set up the new company, Design Logic, which intends to bring computerized drafting to architects. She and her friends are very excited about it.

Paul and Marie drive to Quebec, so Paul can meet Marie’s family, including her daughter Grace. Many of them, farmers, speak little English. But Paul is helped by a brother-in-law, Pierre, who explains the complicated history and current politics of Quebec. Paul can see with his own eyes how the small community is ruled by a pretentious Monsignor, who influenced Marie’s early troubles.

In Santa Cruz, Line and Stephen have added an au pair from Kenya, Cathy, to their busy household. Stephen is working on a biography of Bayard Rustin. Line works several evenings and every other weekend, now that all the kids are in school. At the community hospital, Line sees ordinary patients. She also notices more than one gay man with skin lesions and pneumonia.

Marty and Erik go to a hot springs for the weekend, even though they have just moved into a new house in the East Bay. Marty loves the house, unpacking while Erik explores, especially the bars! A neighbor comes over to introduce herself. But Marty is confused. Is it enough to live for yourself in beauty? When she misses the city, she has a literary brunch with friends in San Francisco.

When they hear that Dad has been diagnosed with liver cancer, Paul and Marie, Hanna and Kirsten arrive home to help Mother plan. Paul believes that he has the most chance of being able to stay with Dad during surgery as Mother is teaching. Paul stays near the hospital and things go well. Dad is optimistic, but cancer is usually a death sentence. Paul tries to be to Dad the caretaker Dad once was to him.

Marty and Erik plan to go to Minnesota at Christmas, but before that they enjoy an epic Halloween party at Lana’s. In Minneapolis, Marty feels the full weight of Dad’s illness and aging. All the siblings, even Ellie, are there, except for Line. Erik finds a historic bar in St. Paul; Hanna gets them to put on a Chekhov play; and Marty goes cross-country skiing with Paul, in a beautiful twilight full of rabbits and their tracks.

When Line arrives in Minnesota at the beginning of summer, Dad lies in state at the cabin. Paul, Marie and Hanna have packed up the parsonage and moved their parents to their retirement home at the lake. They manage to get Dad down to see the lake once, but he is very weak. They take him to the hospital, his kids gather around and he is lifted out of life. Line, Mother, Uncle David and the others visit the quiet, grassy cemetery where he will be buried.

That summer, Paul and Marie, Marie’s daughter Grace, Hanna and Mother try to reclaim the emptiness Dad has left. Mother will live during the winter at Ellie’s new suburban house. When the women go down to the Twin Cities to shop, Paul takes the canoe to explore Ely, at the edge of the Boundary Waters. He camps on an island, thinks about science, life and loss, and dreams of moving to Ely with Marie.

Overcoming the loss of Dad was perhaps hardest for Marty, who hadn’t gone home at his death. She works dutifully, but economic woes are affecting the new company, Design Logic. Jill displays her frustration at a meeting, sensing the rapid growth of technology all around them. Marty is fascinated by West Coast culture, but wishes she had some work of her own. Erik is no better off, becoming more depressed.

The Cohens, Line and her four kids and Stephen, attend a non-violent protest at Lawrence Livermore Labs, singing and making origami cranes. When Mother and Hanna come to San Francisco for a visit, Line and Marty take them to Ghirardelli Square. Line’s girls don’t get to the city often, either, so they are thrilled by the chocolate factory.

Paul works on the literature review for his master’s thesis on sand hill cranes in a university library in the Twin Cities. He is thrilled to come home and find Marie waiting up for him. They talk about everything, partners. Together with Grace, they go to choir practice at the Lutheran church in Bemidji. An extraordinary choir director has made this exciting for Paul, and Marie gets to use her wonderful voice.

Just before Christmas we catch Marty on her way home from work. Things are changing, Jill and Peter have left and Marty is sure she must look for a new job. She and Erik drive down to Big Sur, stopping to see Line’s family for a meal. The Cohen’s house is festive, the kids growing up. On the coast, Marty and Erik stop at the Nepenthe, go to the beach, stay at Deetjen’s. But they find it difficult to talk.

Paul opens up the cabin for Mother and Hanna for the summer, but then plans to move to Ely. He and Marie cannot figure out why this makes Grace unhappy, but Hanna finds it is a guy she has fallen in love with. The move goes well and they celebrate with strawberry rhubarb pie! Both Paul and Marie have jobs. When they return to the lake for Mother’s birthday, Grace becomes engaged to her Gerald.

The Cohen family is all affected by the widely-publicized famine in Ethiopia, deciding to forego holiday outlay this year. Christy comes home one day having helped pull a dead young surfer from the ocean. Line goes with him to the funeral and the paddle-out. At Hanukkah, Poppa arrives with news. He has begun to plan his retirement for the following year and wants to move to California!

Marty sets up personal computers at her new job in San Francisco. She has some experience, but not much backup. It scares her. In the evening she goes to an Al-Anon meeting, surprised to find that alcoholism has a family pattern and that she has willingly participated in it. She must begin to speak, rather than keeping silent. She agonizes over this, while watching Miami Vice, Erik asleep beside her.

When Erik doesn’t come home from a ski trip, Marty doesn’t worry right away. But soon she hears from Kirkwood that people there haven’t seen him either. With his brother Brad, she goes up to Kirkwood, finding nothing. They must wait. Marty goes to New York for a training class, visiting with Meredith and then meeting Hanna at the oyster bar under Grand Central station. At home there is no word from Erik.

Line takes Christy to the airport where he gets a flight to Minnesota. He is 18 and has ideas of his own. Marty, whose husband’s body was found in the Sierra, arrives for a visit, exhausted, and now alone. Then Poppa comes, teasing the little girls and telling them all he wants to buy a new house in Santa Cruz with an in-law apartment for himself. Line and Stephen are glad he wants to live with them.

Christy’s exploration of Ely sparks Paul to think more about work. He is doing administrative work for an outfitter and substitute teaching during the winter. Marie returns from Bemidji where she has been helping her daughter Grace with a sick baby. They practice a song Marie has written, Paul on guitar. They do a set at a local bar on the weekend to some acclaim.

Marty has moved to Russian Hill. She is stubbornly single, trying to find out why she gives up too much of herself in relationship. She goes to Angel Island and lies in the sun. When Meredith comes for a visit, they both go down to Carmel for a staff retreat. Marty internalizes the coming conflict she sees in the principals. She meets her old friend Nathan for a drink. When he kisses her, she is moved, but resistant.

Line engineers a trip to San Francisco for her girls. She takes Ivy on a long walk through Berkeley, tasting as they go. Heather goes to art museums with Poppa, and Fern goes to work for the day with Marty. They have pizza for dinner, and they all go to a movie Poppa is fond of, The Princess Bride. Poppa and Line are house-hunting in Santa Cruz, Poppa leaning toward an extravagantly beautiful house.

Paul and Christy take a last camping trip on Burntside Lake before Christy leaves to work on the Democratic presidential campaign. Soon after he leaves, Leon and Marcia, from Alaska, visit. Paul and Marie walk them around Ely, pointing out landmarks and ending up at the co-op where Marie cooks. Marie has made food into a science and Paul has taken to gardening.

Line and her family are getting used to the new house. Line spends extra time at the hospital as her friend Ben is dying of AIDS. She sweeps her patio, thinking about the tensions surrounding her young girls. When Fern doesn’t come home one night, Line can’t sleep. She and Stephen sit up and Stephen asks whether Line would like him to explore overseas options for a sabbatical. Fern returns safely, to everyone’s relief.

As a part of her job, Marty goes down to Los Angeles to load computer software at a new branch office. She stays with Nathan, whom she is in love with, but admits he doesn’t really love her, doesn’t want to share his daughter. At home she is happy to hear from Hanna. When she has tea with her old friend Lana at the Clift Hotel, Marty is surprised to find herself telling Lana she is thinking of leaving her job.

Paul comes to the lake in September to help Mother close up the cabin, appreciating her quiet dignity. When she leaves, he and Archie, his dog, walk into the back country behind the road, observing all they can. When he picks up Marie in Bemidji, they drive home, Marie singing and trying to learn a Leonard Cohen song. Paul helps pack out a group going into the Boundary Waters, and he and Marie play pool.

During the 1989 earthquake, Marty, at work in a reinforced building, doesn’t feel it much. Outside traffic is gridlocked and power is out. She walks home, and gathers with her neighbors that night for snacks and wine. Two weeks later, she drives down to Santa Cruz and is thrilled to spend the weekend with Line’s family. Back in the city, Marty investigates a tai chi class and joins, shy and diffident, but determined.

On Mother’s 70th birthday, all of her kids and their families gather at the cabin. Line, Marty, Hanna and Line’s girls accompany Mother out to the cemetery where Dad is buried. The men plan an “Iron Man” canoe trip down a chain of lakes into Leech lake. Kristen bakes and frosts the cake. A storm is coming, but there is time for a cook-out before it breaks. Afterwards everyone watches, enjoying the thunder and lightning.

Pulled Into Nazareth

This post is a summary of the chapters in Pulled Into Nazareth. Please ignore it, if you don’t like spoilers.

Paul reluctantly leaves his sisters, heading north to Alaska. He sees stone sheep on the way, stops at a hot spring and drives the old Country Sedan carefully over the Alcan highway. Fairbanks seems a bare and austere town after a recent flood. Paul doesn’t know where to turn. He camps, but then is given the name of Arvi Kukkonen, a Finnish Quaker homesteader. Arvi welcomes Paul and rents him a cabin.

Marty gives up waiting for Erik and goes to Yosemite Valley with friends she has met at work. She enjoys the monumental landscape, camping out, the cooking fire and visiting the Ahwahnee Hotel, but feels a little lonely. She also enjoys a lavish retirement lunch laid out at the Palace Hotel for a woman who regaled Marty’s typing pool with stories of being a “holy terror” in her early years. Marty picks up Christopher.

Line finds that Marty and Erik want to move in together and have found an apartment out by Golden Gate park for all of them. Line is reluctant, but it has a small garden and is close to the arboretum. Spiritual teachers and seekers abound and Line enjoys the Sufis, but Christopher keeps her grounded. Line is wary of Erik, but she and Marty both enjoy their film-loving friends Jack and Nathan.

Paul wakes up in Fairbanks on a spring morning, making breakfast for himself and a resident fox. He hitches rides to school, talking politics. It is Friday, and after school he goes to the house of his friends. They decide to go to a small club parents have set up. Folk singers from Anchorage are playing. Paul is asked if he wants to do carpenter work for the summer at a resort hotel friends are building in the bush.

Friends, musicians and drug dealers collect around Erik and Marty. Line finds it is no place for a little kid. She calls Paul and asks if she can come to stay with him in Fairbanks. Paul picks her up at the airport, buys supplies and they go out into the bush where Paul is working as a carpenter. As they listen to the bush radio one night, a message comes for Line. Her husband Stephen has come to Fairbanks to find her.

Early in December, Marty goes Christmas shopping. She is missing Line, who has moved to Santa Cruz. With Erik, she goes on an impromptu drive into the snowy mountains, to Lake Tahoe. The atmosphere in Reno feels to her what hell would actually be like. She suspects Erik of dealing drugs, has done acid trips with him. After Christmas, they visit Line and Stephen and share intellectual passions.

Paul takes advantage of the offer of a trip to the Athabascan village of New Minto to see his friend Marcia. As a passenger on a snowmobile, they take an old sled road through the bush. A dogsled sprint race, and Easter vacation, are the occasion for a potlatch. Once home, Paul goes to the Sunday night sauna where people are discussing the environmental impact of the proposed oil pipeline through the state.

At the beach together, Line and Stephen find that Christy is still angry around his father. Line hopes it will change. She takes Christy with her to the Birth Center where women share their pregnancy experiences. Line is hugely pregnant. When she goes into labor she sends Christy away, but has the baby at home with a midwife and Stephen to help. When Christy comes home he is thrilled to hold the new baby.

Marty comes home from work one day to find that some of Erik’s things are gone.  She calls him and he tells her to pack her things. He has rented them a new apartment. Marty is frightened, but within two hours she is packed and ready to leave. The new apartment is in North Beach. Everything is new. Marty, out beyond her boundaries, goes to her photography class, wondering what is right. 

On a Saturday in October, Paul goes out early to a little lake he has made into an observation point. He spends his afternoon reading Bonhoeffer, a book of his letters from prison, given him by Arvi. Bonhoeffer’s thoughts reflect what Paul is working on. And in the evening, he goes out with Brian to play “the holy game of poker,” with men they admire. Bearded young carpenters and surveyors.

In Santa Cruz, Line stresses over her domestic worries, lack of money mostly. She counsels a young woman student who has just had a miscarriage. Stephen, while talking to his father in New York, reveals that the provost of his college is stepping down. The university is changing. But Christy is more folded into the family and the baby, Heather, is doing well. Line is optimistic about their family life.

Erik surprises Marty by suggesting they get married. Marty is happy, but she knows what she is getting into. They drive out to Iowa in May and enjoy a family wedding. Even Paul is there for the summer. On the way back they stop in Santa Fe to see the desert architecture, and in Palm Desert where Marty meets Erik’s sophisticated father and acid-tongued mother. She hopes someday to overcome their artificiality.

At the end of a summer in which Paul has helped Dad with a construction project at the lake, he finds himself rushing to finish shingling a roof. Ellie and her two girls are visiting, will head back to Italy soon. Mother leaves with Kristen and Hanna. Dad and Paul enclose the new building, stow equipment and drain the pipes before leaving. When Dad asks whether Paul still plans to go to the seminary, Paul says no.

Line becomes pregnant again and their apartment at the dorm begins to feel too small. Stephen’s father helps with a down payment and Line goes house hunting. In the spring, a month before the baby is to come, they move into a big house with a garden near an elementary school. Marty comes down to help. Though midwives are being arrested, Line manages to have this baby, Fern, born at home also.

From a classmate, Paul learns of a summer job on the Adventuress, sailing out of Port Ludlow, Washington. He applies and joins the crew when school is out. He falls in love with the two-masted schooner and becomes a sailor by the end of the summer. Paul is the backup engineer, gives amateur astronomy talks and plays the guitar for sing-alongs. He is beginning to notice his own loneliness, however.

The whole Cohen family goes out to Iowa for Christmas, Stephen, Line, Christy, Heather and six-month-old Fern. Mother puts on lovely meals and there are mounds of presents. The parsonage is no longer as scruffy as when Line grew up. She enjoys playing in the snow with her kids, and especially a talk with Mother when the others have gone out tobogganing. She sees the family through Stephen’s eyes.

Marty is thrilled when Erik suggests they go to Europe for a few weeks. At first they relax in Italy, where Erik sketches houses and antiquities. They go to Athens by ship. Then Erik suggests Marty stay there, while he goes on to Istanbul. She is shocked, spends the week he is gone sorting through her emotional attachment to her marriage, trying to become Stoic, philosophical. By the time Erik returns, she is cool.

When Paul returns to the Adventuress in the summer, he meets the French-Canadian Marie working in the galley. They quickly become aware of each other. Marie has a great voice, but a sad past. The intense emotion between them feels painful to Paul, until he takes her aside and they talk of it. After that Paul doesn’t care that the rest of the crew knows. He feels that he is no longer alone.

Marty rushes off to work in the morning, enjoying the habitual wakening of North Beach people. At work, she types up notes and inventory into a database programmed by her friend Jill. At lunch she meets Ming-Yue at the Art Institute, having a picnic. After work, it is off to the ballet, where she and Lana have season tickets. Lana schools her, especially about a Twyla Tharp ballet to a Beach Boys song.

Paul and Marie, who has joined him in Fairbanks, visit friends who have been taking care of extra children. The pipeline is making everyone behave maniacally. They also ski out to visit the Kukkonens. Carol finds some greens for Marie and Arvi talks to Paul about ecology. Paul is still exploring large questions. Marie comes home from her job at a Greek restaurant and drags Paul out to see the auroras, and dance.

On July 4, 1976, everyone celebrates. At Line’s house there is a new baby, Ivy, one week old. And sister Kirsten, spending the summer to help Line. In the morning the household goes to watch a parade, except for Line. They have a barbecue. At night they climb the hill to see the fireworks, again leaving Line and the baby at home. When Christy disappears, Kristen and Stephen worry, but Line does not.

Line hears Fern screaming from the kitchen and Erik calling for an ambulance. Two-year-old Fern has pulled a cup of hot tea on herself. She is taken to a burn unit at Stanford. Poppa comes from New York to help that week, when Stephen and Line go to the hospital every day. When Fern gets to come home, it is to a noisy celebration of Purim, put on by Poppa. Line is grateful.

Marty cleans her apartment and heads out to a coffee shop, where she meets Ming-Yue. Ming-Yue is quitting her job, planning to work freelance, taking as her professional name, Meredith Chen. Marty loves spending time with her. She then joins Erik on a professional trip to Hawaii. She reads about surrealism while Erik has meetings. Later by themselves, they take acid on a lovely afternoon at the beach.

Marie leaves suddenly for home in Quebec. Paul is bereft. He has not had time to pin down a future with her and all of it is uncertain. That summer he works on the construction of a school near Tetlin. Oil is running through the new pipeline, but Paul wants to leave. Northern Minnesota calls him, but he wants to take Marie. When she finally returns, Paul and Marie seal their partnership with a song.

The drought in California lasted a long time. Line’s children are sandier and dirtier than usual. But in the fall the rains come. Line bakes cupcakes for Christy’s birthday as he lobbies for a BB gun, pressured by well-off friends. At night, when the storm knocks out the power, Line makes a fire and they sing songs and dance. They join a community Thanksgiving service in the woods.

Marty and Erik celebrate his passing of the architectural exams with an evening at Chez Panisse, a European-style restaurant in Berkeley. They talk about architectural history. That week Marty’s department goes out for drinks. Another night she goes to a small theatre a block from her North Beach apartment, where Spanish dancers and guitar players perform flamenco, making Marty’s heart ache with its beauty.

Poppa pays for Stephen and Line and their four kids to come to Brooklyn. The neighborhood is scary and Line feels claustrophobic, but they visit the Statue of Liberty, the library and park. Inside, the four-level townhouse is pleasant and refugees Poppa took in cook Indian food. When they get home, the apricots are ripening and Line bakes pies!

By July, Paul and Marie have moved back to Minnesota and are staying at the lake cabin. The two families from California arrive late one night as Mother waits nervously. Paul organizes a canoe trip out to the Bucket lakes with Hanna captaining one canoe. When a storm comes up, he hightails it home, but Hanna pulls up across the lake and lets the residents drive her and Marty home.

With One Hand Waving Free

This is a summary of the chapters in With One Hand Waving Free. If you don’t like spoilers, don’t read it.

Foxy dies at the beginning of a summer of transition. Paul is saddened by the loss of his companion, but about to go to college. Marty is finishing summer school at Wittenberg, living in a room of her own and preparing to go to England. Line visits Stephen at the SDS headquarters in Chicago as often as she can. On a very hot evening, they go over to the lake and sit in the cooling breeze.

Line is invited by Kay to a discussion of SDS women who have come back from the summer convention disgruntled. They feel that the men don’t let them talk. To cool down, Line and her roommate go to a Japanese restaurant, a very foreign experience. Worried about her future, Line is grateful when her roommate tells her about a nursing program. Line investigates and tells Stephen she plans to enroll.

Marty takes a train to New York and an Icelandic flight to London. She has vowed to accept every invitation! She explores Oxford, attends evensong at Magdalene College, and hears Tolkien read a story. Irene Magnusson cooks wonderful food and Marty eats too much. She is pursuing her interests in modern writers, but cannot articulate what she is doing. She also feels she is not doing enough for her keep.

At the small junior college Paul has chosen, he finds his religion professor quite conservative. But he is thrilled with the daring songs the choir director chooses and he particularly loves his biology professor, who spends most of his time in the greenhouse. When a tornado touches down nearby, Paul helps. And at Christmas, Line comes home from Chicago, bringing bagels and the great world.

Line is a little older than her classmates in the LPN program at Cook County Hospital. They all bear the fierce Chicago winter, prepping to go into the hospital. On Saturdays, Line meets Stephen who comes up from the south. She is still working at the Home for the Aged in north Chicago. At the hospital, Line is put into a group on the obstetrics ward where she watches two very different births.

As spring comes, Marty feels more at home in Oxford. She is reading a biography of Joyce and attending lectures on the Moderns. She meets Glyn there, a scholarship student who asks her to the theatre. She rushes home for a dinner of snails baked in butter and garlic, with wine. But then meets Glyn for an Ibsen play. They go to the pub afterward, talking of their interests.

Paul joins the choir tour down into Texas, traveling through states he has never seen. He stays in different homes and enjoys a barbecue when they get to Texas Lutheran College. The morning of the big concert, however, Oddmar, their director, has a heart attack and dies. After their big concert, the tour is abruptly canceled.

Marty and Kate hitchhike to Dover, take the ferry, and then head for Paris. The hostels there are full, so the first night they are up all night, walking through Les Halles and eating pommes frites, snails and brandy. After Paris, they go to Germany and finally down to Greece at Easter. All of their experiences sink deeply down into Marty. Truck drivers pick them up as they head north through Yugoslavia.

In her last month at Oxford, Marty longs to stay. Glyn tells her he doesn’t want a girlfriend, however, on an afternoon of sunshine and rain. Marty visits Kate at the retreat center where she works, sitting at twilight at the bottom of the garden, trying to decide what she should do next. She determines she must do as she wants, an unfamiliar concept to her! She slips away without saying goodbye to Glyn.

Line works and studies hard all year. She also cannot help getting involved with some of the patients, often girls having babies who are younger than she. She and Stephen have little time to get together, but he recognizes that Line needs a break and offers to pay her bus fare to go home. A friend from the women’s group asks if Line knows any doctors who would help with abortions, illegally. She is surprised and sad.

Paul and Marty help Mother and Dad move across the state, saying goodbye to their favorite creek, the towering old house and garden. The new house is recently built, beautiful. Kristen makes a cake for Mother’s birthday. Paul unpacks boxes of books and fires up the barbecue. In the evening, he goes exploring, to a river nearby and listens to a Twins game on the radio, trying not to think too much about his future.

In Berkeley, where Marty has accepted another “au pair” job to postpone her choices, she is fascinated by the strange, spikey vegetation and the architecture which allows for an indoor-outdoor way of living. Marty picks up the Chertok kids from school and watches Julia Child with them in the evening. She explores Berkeley, going to a famous political coffee shop. Everything is new, once again.

After she finishes her LPN program, Line gets a job at the hospital and an apartment in Hyde Park, which she shares with a friend. Line and Stephen see more of each other, but Line begins to wonder if she isn’t pregnant. She lives with this thought many weeks before finally confirming it. What will Stephen do? She worries, but one evening, he takes Line to listen to jazz and asks her to marry him.

Mother calls Paul and asks him to come home for the weekend. Line and Stephen were coming to get married, bringing Stephen’s parents. Everyone is nervous and on their best behavior. Dad prepares a service of blessing, as Line and Stephen have already had a civil ceremony. Everything goes well. Dad and Paul plan a trip up to the lake to open the cabin and plant trees. Paul feels most at home in the north.

Enjoying coffee at the Med one morning, Marty is approached by Erik, an architectural student. He asks if she would come to San Francisco with him on Friday. Marty goes, but the rock concert they attend gets very late. They go to a friend of Erik’s in the Haight. In the morning, Marty hears about temp work in the city. She is chagrined to get home the next day, but Erik turns on the charm and apologizes.

Line’s friend Kay comes to have tea and sympathy with her, bringing her own baby. It is the week of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago and Stephen has been working hard on organizing. Line continues to work, her baby due in November, but she is worried about Stephen. He comes home from the protests and jail, bruised, bloodied but exultant. “It’s just the beginning,” he says. Line turns away.

At the lake, Paul helps Dad frame out a small “beach house” down near the water. He is happy at the lake and wants to soak in everything, but also he takes the canoe out, plays folk songs on the guitar and reads all night. When he and Dad go in to buy roofing materials, Paul is mesmerized by a good pair of boots, tents and sleeping bags. It will be a couple of years before he has money for these things.

Marty finds living in the city simple, and feels free. She has a typing job. Going out with friends to eat Russian food, the talk ranges widely. On Saturday, she goes to a communal darkroom and makes prints of the photographs she has been taking. She then meets a friend for a Pasolini film. The friend is disappointed, but Marty sees the beauty even in a story of degradation.

Line’s baby comes just at the beginning of November. The birth is relatively easy, though exhausting. Stephen and Line name the little boy Christopher. At Thanksgiving, they walk down the street to Bernie and Kay’s house to celebrate with friends. “And Nixon will be in the White House for four years!” says Kay, incredulous.

Marty flies home for Christmas and Paul drives to Chicago to pick up Line and her baby. The house is so harmonious and everyone passes the baby around, while eating the cookies the girls have made. Line, Marty and Paul stay up late, ecstatic to see each other and filling each other in on their lives. Under the tree is a lefse grill, and the next afternoon Line and Marty make some. 

At school in northern Minnesota, Paul goes skiing with his roommate at night. When he goes with an outreach team to a nearby church, he meets a teacher from Alaska with a broken leg. He immediately sees her path as possible for himself. When the Red River floods that spring, Paul helps sandbag and recover possessions. At last he tells Mother and Dad he is thinking about teaching, not going to the seminary.

Line is pleased to stay home with baby Christopher, but when the semester ends she is terrified they won’t have any money. She doesn’t want to get a job and leave Christopher with the preoccupied Stephen. For him the revolution is hardening. When Bernie Freeman is attacked, Line tries to get Stephen to pull back. He is giving all their resources to SDS, however. Line asks Marty to send her a ticket to California.

Line and Christopher take a train across the Rockies and Marty meets them. The air feels very different to Line, and after a shower and a night’s sleep, she begins to feel much less worried. Marty and Line explore the northern part of San Francisco and rent an apartment of their own. They spend an evening on the ocean beach, watching the sun go down. To Line, California feels simple, and safe.

Erik drives Marty down to a cabin in the redwoods near Santa Cruz, where a bunch of friends are being lazy, smoking weed. Erik and Marty make spaghetti. On the way home they stop at the beach. Marty finds friends with Line at their apartment. They have found a cunning backpack for Christopher to ride in. Line does not want to go back to Chicago. Marty encourages her to stay, do nursing work.

In his last year in college, Paul already has his sights set on Alaska. He studies the Fairbanks newspapers. He does his student teaching in a small nearby town, putting his whole self into it. Mr. Hudson, the teacher he works with, invites him golfing, in October! Meeting people outside his own culture attunes Paul to the world, but he misses Line and Marty, would like to compare notes.

Line has an evening job at a hospital and arranges child care with friends. She is meeting people who know about herbs and healing. Julia invites her to a Sufi dance and Line brings Christopher. When Stephen calls, Line cannot imagine going back to Chicago. San Francisco feels safe, though Stephen seems to be rejecting “revolution.” Jack and Nathan come over and they watch “The Avengers.”

Dad gives Paul the old Country Sedan station wagon and a second-hand sleeping bag of which he is very proud. He sets off across country, first to San Francisco to see his sisters. For a week the three of them, plus Christopher on his little legs, explore the city, ending up one day at the Japanese tea garden. They can hardly bear to leave each other, they enjoy being together so much. 

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.