The Woman’s Touch
It’s hard for me to think of home and family without also thinking about a woman’s touch. During the first half of my life, four women in our family helped shape the man I was becoming, each from a different perspective—mother, sister, wife, and daughter.
As a small boy I was shy. When strangers came to call, I sought safety by burying my face in the folds of my mother’s dress. She was there with us during the frightening blackouts of World War II, when we had to turn off all our lights and sit under the dining room table for several hours, never knowing whether it was a drill or whether bombs might actually fall. At that age I saw my mother primarily as a loving refuge from the strange world into which I had been born. I did not yet appreciate the independent adventurous woman she was. When only 16 years old, she had traveled alone by train across California and much of Nevada to teach children in the ranch country north of Ely, Nevada.
My mother was an excellent cook having learned at the side of her mother who brought many wonderful recipes over from Sweden. Sometimes at dinner we were enjoying the meal so much we would forget to let her know how much we appreciated her preparing it. More than a few times I heard her say, “This is pretty good if I do say so myself”.
Loving sweets as I did, I particularly looked forward to her desserts. After many years, the Swedish sugar cookies she baked when I was a boy are still my favorite cookie, and I remember the sour cream/cinnamon coffee cake she made that was always available for anyone who dropped by to pay her a visit. What I remember most was the time our big apricot tree had a bumper crop, and my mother baked pies as long as that tree kept giving us apricots. As a teenager I ate as much pie as the rest of the family put together. My mother kept track and had baked forty pies that month. What a great time to be a teenager.
My sister, Barbara, was almost three years older than I. We had different interests, the normal number of brother-and-sister squabbles, and to a large extent went our own ways. By the time I reached high school, however, I had begun to appreciate her advice and sense the love behind her words.
One interest we shared was a love of art, and when I was entering “Cal” as a freshman she recommended several art classes she knew I would enjoy taking. Unfortunately those classes were only offered in the late afternoons when I was already committed to either baseball or basketball team practices. However I did appreciate that she cared enough to want me to experience some of the classes she loved the most.
Her favorite professor was a highly regarded Japanese American artist named Chiura Obata, whose many accomplishments included beautiful paintings of Yosemite and other national parks. At one point he announced to his class that he and his wife would be hosting an open house for his art students. He must have also let them know that he loved fishing, because Barbara asked him if she could bring along her younger brother who also loved fishing. When we arrived at his home, the famous artist took me aside and led me to a room where he had many sheets of rolled up paper. When unrolled, each paper revealed an ink print of an impressively large fish, most often a huge trout, that he had caught. He explained how he could cover one side of a fish with a specific ink to get an imprint, then wash the ink off, and still be able to eat the fish. We had started to exchange fish stories when his wife came in and reminded him he needed to be out with his art students. He could become so engrossed in his passions that, at that moment, his love of fishing made him forget his love for art and his purpose for that evening.
In my early thirties after dating a variety of women, I married a young woman also named Barbara. She had been a student in a tennis class I taught and struck me as unusually mature for her age and fun to be around. Before long we were spending time together almost every day. As our relationship became more serious, one of my friends cautioned me that it could never last because of our age difference of almost 14 years. Yet we have now been happily married for almost 60 years, so I think we might yet make it work.
Our age difference did pop up in interesting ways, however, starting on our first date. That night I took her out for dinner at a nice restaurant by a lake in Oakland. I ordered wine with my dinner. She ordered milk. On another evening at her request we went to see a rock group named Paul Revere and the Raiders. When I looked around, I realized I must have been the only person even close to thirty in the entire audience.
There was no way I could have known then what a special person she would be throughout our lives, how strong she would be in both mind and spirit, or how often she would help solve the various problems that occur in a long marriage. She became the glue to our family, a person we all have depended on for wisdom, strength and love.
The fourth woman who had a strong influence on my life was our daughter, Tami. At every stage in her life, she has taught me how wonderful a daddy-daughter relationship can be.
When she was a baby, I often carried her in a backpack as we hiked through the woods. As a toddler, she liked walking with me holding hands. One day she looked up at me and asked, “Hand for me”? Those words touched me so deeply I never forgot them and started asking her that question as well. Whenever that question came up, we would smile at each other and reach for the other’s hand.
Within a few years I was holding her hand when helping her across the difficult currents of trout streams and when climbing up or down steep hills. She later wrote that just as I had held her hand in the scary parts of a stream, Jesus was holding her hand in the scary waters of life. Beyond that, she also felt that God was prompting her to help guide other people through their tough times.
Tami brought her enthusiasm, creativity and caring personality to the teaching of young children in a nearby school. People walking by our home were starting to greet me by a new identity, as “Tami’s Dad”, and letting me know how much they appreciated having her as a teacher for their children.
So these four women have all touched me with their steadfast love, strength and character, providing me with protection, direction, and wisdom as needed. At times during the years that followed, other special women have entered our lives and blessed us with their caring ways.
I thank God for His gift of a woman’s touch.
