remember that every day she
fixed it in exactly the same manner, which is to say pulled severely behind her ears, with a fringe at her forehead, and rolled
and fastened at the back of her head. I am not certain I ever saw Karen with her hair free and loose except for those occasions
when I happened to observe her make herself ready for bed. Normally, Karen, who had great difficulty sleeping, was late to
bed and early to rise, and I came to think of her as keeping a kind of watch over our household. Karen did have, however,
an excellent figure, and was broad in her shoulders and erect in her posture. She was a tall woman, some five inches taller
than myself. I was, if not diminutive, then small in my proportions. Like Karen, I too had broad shoulders, but perhaps a
less plain face than hers when I was twenty. I did not possess, however, her obedience, nor her excellence as a seamstress.
Though I would say otherwise at the time, I took a foolish pride in this when I was a girl, preferring the world of nature
and imagination to that of cloth and needle, and I know that in my heart I set myself up as the more fortunate of us two,
and I believed at the time that if ever I should have a husband, he would be a man who would be drawn to a woman not solely
for her domestic skills, which has always seemed to be the measure of a woman, but also for her conversation.
In our family there was only the one other child besides Karen and me, Evan, my brother, who was two years older than myself,
and so it happened that we were raised as one, so close were we in age, and so far from Karen. At that time, there were many
deprivations visited upon the fisher-folk. Because of the shortness of the fishing season near to our home, our father, in
order to feed his family, had sometimes to leave us for months at a time during the winter, to fish not by himself in his
skiff, which he preferred and which better suited his independent nature, but rather to join the fishing fleets that sailed
along the west coast and further north after the cod and the herring. When our situation was very bad, or it had been a particularly
harsh winter, my mother and sometimes my sister had to hire themselves out for washing and for cooking in the boarding house
for sailors on the Storgata in Laurvig.
But I must here dispel the image of the Christensen family in rude circumstances, hungry and in poverty, for in truth, though
we had little in the way of material goods in my early childhood years, we had our religion, which was a comfort, and our
schooling, when we could make our way along the coast road into Laurvig, and we had family ties for which in all my years
on this earth I have never found a replacement.
The cottage in which we lived was humble but of a very pleasing aspect. It was of wood, painted white, and with a red-tiled
roof, as was the custom. It had a small porch with a railing in the front, and one window, to the south, that was made of
colored glass. In the rear of our home was a small shed for storing nets and barrels, and in front there was a narrow beach
where our father, when we were younger, kept his skiffs.
How many times I have had in my mind the image of leaving Laurvig, and seeing from the harbor, along the coast road, our own
cottage and others like it, one and a half stories tall, with such a profusion of blossoms in the gardens around them. This
area in Norway, which is in the southeastern part of the country, facing to Sweden and Denmark, has a mild climate and good
soil for orchards and other plants such as myrtle and fuchsia, which were in abundance then and are now. We had peaches from
a tree in our garden, and though there were months at a time when I had only the one woolen dress and only one pair of woolen
socks, we had fruit to eat and fresh or dried fish and the foods that flour and water go together to make, such as porridge
and pancakes and lefse.
I possess so very many
fixed it in exactly the same manner, which is to say pulled severely behind her ears, with a fringe at her forehead, and rolled
and fastened at the back of her head. I am not certain I ever saw Karen with her hair free and loose except for those occasions
when I happened to observe her make herself ready for bed. Normally, Karen, who had great difficulty sleeping, was late to
bed and early to rise, and I came to think of her as keeping a kind of watch over our household. Karen did have, however,
an excellent figure, and was broad in her shoulders and erect in her posture. She was a tall woman, some five inches taller
than myself. I was, if not diminutive, then small in my proportions. Like Karen, I too had broad shoulders, but perhaps a
less plain face than hers when I was twenty. I did not possess, however, her obedience, nor her excellence as a seamstress.
Though I would say otherwise at the time, I took a foolish pride in this when I was a girl, preferring the world of nature
and imagination to that of cloth and needle, and I know that in my heart I set myself up as the more fortunate of us two,
and I believed at the time that if ever I should have a husband, he would be a man who would be drawn to a woman not solely
for her domestic skills, which has always seemed to be the measure of a woman, but also for her conversation.
In our family there was only the one other child besides Karen and me, Evan, my brother, who was two years older than myself,
and so it happened that we were raised as one, so close were we in age, and so far from Karen. At that time, there were many
deprivations visited upon the fisher-folk. Because of the shortness of the fishing season near to our home, our father, in
order to feed his family, had sometimes to leave us for months at a time during the winter, to fish not by himself in his
skiff, which he preferred and which better suited his independent nature, but rather to join the fishing fleets that sailed
along the west coast and further north after the cod and the herring. When our situation was very bad, or it had been a particularly
harsh winter, my mother and sometimes my sister had to hire themselves out for washing and for cooking in the boarding house
for sailors on the Storgata in Laurvig.
But I must here dispel the image of the Christensen family in rude circumstances, hungry and in poverty, for in truth, though
we had little in the way of material goods in my early childhood years, we had our religion, which was a comfort, and our
schooling, when we could make our way along the coast road into Laurvig, and we had family ties for which in all my years
on this earth I have never found a replacement.
The cottage in which we lived was humble but of a very pleasing aspect. It was of wood, painted white, and with a red-tiled
roof, as was the custom. It had a small porch with a railing in the front, and one window, to the south, that was made of
colored glass. In the rear of our home was a small shed for storing nets and barrels, and in front there was a narrow beach
where our father, when we were younger, kept his skiffs.
How many times I have had in my mind the image of leaving Laurvig, and seeing from the harbor, along the coast road, our own
cottage and others like it, one and a half stories tall, with such a profusion of blossoms in the gardens around them. This
area in Norway, which is in the southeastern part of the country, facing to Sweden and Denmark, has a mild climate and good
soil for orchards and other plants such as myrtle and fuchsia, which were in abundance then and are now. We had peaches from
a tree in our garden, and though there were months at a time when I had only the one woolen dress and only one pair of woolen
socks, we had fruit to eat and fresh or dried fish and the foods that flour and water go together to make, such as porridge
and pancakes and lefse.
I possess so very many
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