Deanna's Journal

Recently, John and I took a day off from homestead tasks, and spent it in nearby Portsmouth doing something restorative for both: looking through historic houses. At the John Paul Jones House, in addition to information about the daring admiral, and, fascinatingly, the signing of The Portsmouth Treaty of 1905, hosted in that city by then-President Teddy Roosevelt, ending the Russo-Japanese War — is an exhibit from the 1800’s of embroidery samplers, most done by young girls. Two, particularly, were not only beautiful work from so-young hands, but displayed startling, touching verses as their centerpieces—surrounded of course by evenly ornate alphabets, courses of numerals, sentiments to teacher or grandmother, houses, trees, and baskets of flowers, so perfectly and creatively designed and formed that the youth of their makers just astonished.

The Wish

Jesus permit thy gracious name to stand

     As the first efforts of an infants hand

And while her fingers o’er the canvass move

     Engage her tender heart to seek thy love

With thy dear Children let her share a part

     And write thy name upon her heart

                                  Harriet Ann Dockam    1825    Age 10

The Grave

There is a calm for those who weep

A rest for weary pilgrims found

Thereof they lie and sweetly sleep

                         Love in the ground.

The cloud that wrecks the wintry sky

No more disturbs the sweet repose

Than summer evening’s latest sigh

                           That shuts the rose.

                             Ann Elizabeth Ham     1826   Portsmouth, New Hampshire

She was 11 years old.  I am nearly seven times their ages then, and will never have such accomplishment in handwork as they at 10 and 11. In any home-making and hospitable skills, save perhaps cooking.

I acknowledge soberly that middle- and upper-class girls and women of that time and culture on both sides of the North Atlantic were channeled into domestic arts and skills, and curtailed to them for life by authorities other than their own hearts and minds.  Yet in women’s preserved diaries and letters are their records not just of fatigue, suffering, or some loneliness, but also of deep satisfaction and joy in providing for family needs, in creating beauty, graciousness, nourishment, cleanliness and comfort of surroundings to body and spirit, with excellence and affection.  Their sacrifice did not come in being that hard-working, skillful resource for loved ones and community; it came in their being denied against their fullness and wills from developing others of their gifts, too. “Sacrifice” exacted by another—is not sacrifice, further. Is it not, more truly, violation.  Sacrifice is voluntary, for the good of another.

There are today many women, I included, who experience deep satisfaction and joy in home-making, for our own and others’ living —the well-placed vase, the beauty of fabric, the strengthening yet enticing meal, the restfulness of a clean bed–  intertwined with other endeavors we love and choose with such excellence and love as we have.  And I wouldn’t ignore that some women of that period emerged against imposing oppositions  as courageous and brilliant leaders in fields far from private homemaking. The English monarch whose name that long era bears was, ironically in view of the contrasting common lives of contemporary female subjects, a woman.

Yet even the masterful accomplishment in needlework alone of these two little Portsmouth girls –-learning required of them yet resourcefully, inventively executed—I do not assume encompassed everything about who they were or were to become.

Nor may what accomplishments any of us can name similarly be assumed to define all of who we are. Or are yet to become.

© Deanna Harrington Christiansen   2010

This Salem [Massachusetts] News Valentine’s Day 2009 front page story of John and my reacquaintance after 48 years, and subsequent love and marriage in 2007, is now reproduced on the “About” page of this Journal.  Click on the “About” tab at the top of the page and scroll down to read it.

Rejoice with us, for the blessings of love deepen, now in 2010!

(c) Deanna Harrington Christiansen 2010

On this gently showery, light gray June day, my vision filled with greens and bright flowers outdoors, I am reading what I wrote in  a very different rain in late Winter.  

This rain had begun Saturday night. It snowed for awhile, temporarily covering all the bare brown from melting. Then rain began again in earnest–with high winds that put the nerves on alert after that recent severe windstorm’s power failures and our own downed pine that had torn the power lines off our house, laying them, live for awhile, across the road, keeping cars from passing.

Now there was sharp, prickly sleet for an hour on the skylight window over the bed, then loud, imminent pelting rain so hard it coated the window and woke me up repeatedly, then kept me from falling back to sleep for long periods. John was away at Christian men’s retreat, returning Sunday afternoon. Rain never let up, all day Sunday, all night last night, most of the night heavy and loud on the glass and roof.  The woods surrounding us whipped and bobbed, howling with wind.

The lights have held through Monday afternoon now, and the winds have passed, but it is still raining, and cold. We have the woodstove going. We have more than an inch of water in the basement again, so I can’t wash or dry clothes as I would be standing in water; and even though John put in a sump pump last week, because the floor is slightly cracked mid-basement and tilts imperceptibly away from the sump corner, when there is this much rain it seeps in from the ground and does not reach the sump well until it is several inches deep. We will attend to more complete solutions before next Fall.

The ground is still frozen, unable to absorb rains a few days ago or what were feet, still, of now-melted snow, and this new rain has nowhere else to go. The puddles are now ponds. The woods have lakes on their floors. The river is so loud from all the added water that we can hear its constant rushing through closed doors and windows. We can see the white foam leaping from the rapids through the bare woods from the back porch!  We have never seen the rapids from the back yard. We have received more than 6 inches of rain in less than 72 hours. Floods everywhere, some people evacuated, sleeping in relatives’ homes, motels, or churches, roads out. As I could still bake, I made Sweet Irish Bread getting ready for St. Patrick’s Day.

(c) Deanna Harrington Christiansen

Pulling Dandelions

I pulled dandelions this warming morning. New yellow blossoms bobbing

In the lawn since it’s been mowed are buttercups. The dandelions

Have mostly gone to seed, hoary-headed from this week’s late freeze,

Lining the drive on the other side of my car. I got a lot of them up

At the root, remembering you must get the roots to be rid of them; the soil

Surprised me, loose and damp.  Digging’s better; poisoning, I suppose–

John says dandelions must begone, just intruders in the lawn. 

As I uprooted them they let go of seed, of course, wafting grayish white

Along the driveway, like bad spirits rushing to regain roothold

And multiply in a swept house.  Tossing pulled weeds over the bank, I saw

Fluffy parachutes catch the breeze to carry their kind into the hollow.

There should soon be some Dandy Little Lions in the ditch.

(c) Deanna Harrington Christiansen

May 13, 2010~ Barrington, New Hampshire

Winter is striking, beautiful, in New Hampshire. This lovely winter seemed too long, having set in mid-November, deep, bitter cold, certainly more snowy and windy than last year’s on the coast of North Shore Massachusetts in Manchester by the Sea, damaging to the house, delivering a 3-day power outage that had us melting snow on the woodstove to flush toilets…flooding the cellar when late rains came heavy, melting several feet of snow, setting records for inches fallen in short periods and soaking boxes that we had simply not had time or strength to lift up, never mind unpack. Ice and snow on these small, winding country roads, though the highways were cleared, kept me from driving for weeks at a time.  Hard, hard continual work– while fascinating and usually warmly and beautifully rewarding–learning the woodstove, John far more than I stocking, stacking, loading, lugging wood, cutting kindling, splitting the too-large pieces to fit the stove, sweeping up bark and chips off the wide plank pine floor near the stove and wood cabinet– learning how the draft, kindling, small and large logs work together to produce the hottest, most long-lasting fires, carrying the cold ashes to spread some under the sleeping plants outdoors and the rest to their metal ash barrel. Being introduced to the house hot spots and cold spots from burning wood. Enduring weeks without an oil furnace at first, relying on the woodstove, thank God for it, to keep us and the pipes from freezing, as the existing furnace would have leaked CO into the air; then enduring months when the new furnace did not respond to the thermostat consistently when we needed to rely on oil heat, both of us having to be in Massachusetts for a day, perhaps.

As the days warmed, in spite of the flooded, frozen ground and cold nights, the air did indeed change toward late March. One day I heard a robin! (Can anyone say the significance of hearing the first robin after a deep winter…) Tiny buds somehow appeared on bushes or trees here and there, giving witness to the creation miracle. I heard more loud, irrepressibly cheerful robins. We began seeing sap buckets hung on maples across the area. And I began daily watching the tips of the maple trees around us and by the roadsides for—-red.

Green is spoken of as the color of Spring: new growth, new shoots, buds, tiny green leaves. But if I ever knew it growing up in Massachusetts, I had forgotten it: maple trees bud red, not green, and maples are among the first to bud. The rest of the trees look dormant, dead even: but there eventually against the rest is the red maple haze as one looks into the woods or beside the roads.

And there. In our back yard, close to the house in this almost 2-acre property, a cluster of maples forming one great tree glowed red on all its branch tips as the morning sun struck it a couple weeks ago. Another tree, broken and fallen in the great windstorm but not severed, connected yet to its trunk as it awaits cutting later in Spring, has its crown bursting poignantly into red, lying on the ground.

Now John has raked clean and largely mulched the front gardens left to us by the former owner, with red bark, under pale yellow and white jonquils that giddily bloomed for Easter, purple crocus, yellow daffodils, curly dark green leafing shrubs that we will wait to learn what they are, grape hyacinth, and lilies of colors we will discover as they flower. The purple-flowering red azalea John planted for us last November to celebrate our new life here has not only done well through snow, but has leaved. Azalea blooms early, too. Soon Mary’s swathes of tiny purple and white violets will appear in the grass! In both front and back, violets that, when I saw them a year ago walking these grounds arm-in-arm with John, dreaming of owning this house, brought tears and prayers to my heart: Might we, Lord, indeed live here? I had not seen violets growing since I was young in Waltham, Massachusetts.

(c) Deanna Harrington Christiansen

February 3, 2010, Wednesday

     I walked Ayla down to the mailbox to put a letter out this morning, then continued down the road a short way to the stone wall marking our property line on that side. The day is cold and sunny, with miniature snow crystals shimmering through the air. I do not ever remember seeing such a beautiful phenomenon before. The little dog enjoyed running, straining against her shortened lead, along the top of the snowbank at the side of the road, sniffing who or what had been there already. There are no sidewalks on Second Crown Point Road; they would have been buried in three feet of plowed snow if there were. I walked country–style, on the left side of the road. The trees are tall, bare, gray-brown and strikingly linear against the blue sky and streaked white clouds. The pavement itself is clear, though, if brown sand-covered; the intentional road clearing of New Hampshire towns and the State, plus heavy rains a few days ago, have seen to that.

February 4, Thursday

     The sun rose higher in the sky this morning than it has been.  The first week we were here, last Fall in mid-November, we slept in the guest bedroom, first on a nice thick borrowed inflatable camp mattress on the floor, then pretty soon on my twin beds placed together with king bedding on them, until we could set up John’s fabulous empire-sized, ornately carved king in the master bedroom. One of those early mornings after John had left in the dark for work nearly 2 hours away, I looked out the second floor guest window, across the roof of the garage, perpendicular to the house, and, from that window, just at eye height. The tree branches, nearly leafless, were outlined clearly, reaching vertically high into the sky. The sun had just broken the horizon. Its blinding orange rays streaked across the lines of shingles at a right angle toward me, through the vertical black lines of the trees.

     I caught my breath at the graphic beauty. This was my new home.

     This morning the sky was lighter already before an earlier-than-ever sunrise. Near the end of winter, my father always said “There is a change in the air about the middle of February.  You can feel when Spring is coming.” It’s only the 4th of February and I don’t think the air has changed yet. But the light has.

 February 11

     John stamps in from the cold a couple Saturday mornings ago, looking handsome in his Western hat and heavy red and gray plaid jacket, declaring “I have mucked out the stalls and fed the livestock:–that is, cleaned up in the yard after Ayla and filled the birdfeeders for the birds– and the squirrels!” with a big laugh.

     Last weekend John filled both birdfeeders, one a long cylinder cage for black oil sunflower seeds and the other, a little house feeder with a red roof, with mixed wild bird seed. The tiny red squirrel, or squirrels- sometimes we see more than one- had the house feeder empty by Tuesday. The birds still came between squirrel-presences and picked at what was left, and  pecked for periods at the suet cakes on the ends of the feeder house. But that was mostly woodpeckers. Downy and Hairy. We have seen a nuthatch or two at the cylinder, as well as woodpeckers, and the chickadees, juncos, and tufted titmice all try their turn at the sunflower seeds in the cage. Once we saw a male cardinal in all his red glory. The quick red squirrels go ‘round and ‘round, seeking a way in that is not there for them.

     When we first put the feeders out—it was well into December, after the bears had gone to sleep—we didn’t mind feeding the squirrels from time to time. It’s just that red squirrels are not on a time-to-time feeding schedule. They are sunup to sundown voracious, as often as they can get back here from whoever else’s birdfeeders they are gorging themselves on. They keep the birds from eating.

     We did wait to hang birdfeeders until we estimated the bears had gone into hibernation. This is a startling new country consideration for us. The neighbors, having lived here many years, tell us stories not only of bear sightings in the woods near their places, or even on their properties, but of large black bears coming up onto their porches and decks and destroying bird feeders looking for seeds or whatever food they can forage. One 6-footer came up on our closest neighbors’ porch last Fall and looked in the sliding glass door at Joe. The same bear was seen on his big farmer’s porch, breaking into his birdfeeder, by the man across the road returning home from work. He got out of his car and, yelling at it at the top of his lungs, chased the bear away across his big green field. He reached a stone wall and jumped over it. Couldn’t see the bear, figured he had run it off—until the bear reared up suddenly at him. He leapt right back over and ran as fast as he could and, very fortunately for him, the bear did not pursue him.

     I think no matter how long I live here I will not take that response to any bear near my house. And next winter, when we want to put out seed for the over-wintering birds, we plan to mount the feeders on posts in the large back yard with steep conical metal roofs fashioned over them–far enough away from the house to leave some space between us and a bear, yet close enough to watch the birds come, which affords us one of our greatest joys here, and safer against squirrels.

     One neighbor had photographs of fresh bear prints in the deep snow that has fallen since hibernation began, up by her log home about a half mile into the woods from here. So one has waked up, and in early February, very untimely.

      The residents do not allow their small children, or dogs of whatever size or strength, to go out after dark by themselves. They use outside lights and strong flashlights, and keep the pets on a lead and bring them back in after they have done their business: coyotes are everywhere in these woods and frequently attack and kill a dog, cat, other pets. Not that far from houses either. I was used to hearing about coyotes in the canyons of San Diego; my friend Irene lost a little dog to one just at the edge of her back yard. Coyotes’ prevalence and aggressiveness here points out my need to learn my new adopted environment. One woman, walking on a public trail in the woods a few counties over, was attacked suddenly by a coyote that turned out to be rabid. The woman had deep bites on her forearm but will heal from her wounds and blood loss; she is taking the required rabies shot series in the stomach to prevent being killed by rabies.

(c) Deanna Harrington Christiansen

     Yesterday early, as soon as John had pulled out of the driveway for his long commute to Massachusetts, before I returned to the house to put on my jeans and sneakers, in a sudden inspiration I grabbed a rake from its garage hook and, in my long ivory robe and warm winter L.L.Bean slippers that John gave me for Christmas, raked up a square yard of brown, flattened, unsightly tangle near the porch.
     The sun was already out, the air was crisp but hardly cold. What used to be grass and lily fronds had been hidden under pretty white snow since December, and under them, it turned out, had been hidden little bright green shoots for who knows how long.
     It was a good beginning to an early March day, particularly after weathering the 60 mile-an-hour gusted windstorm two weeks ago with its consequent 3 day power failure.

(c) Deanna Harrington Christiansen

Chinese characters in little iron teapots.

In the beginning, and for along time afterward, the Chinese people did not have the whole story of what was true. Only fragments that did not make sense or hold together. They were confused but curious, as they are an intelligent people, and desired someone to come to give them the whole picture.

Then one day each Chinese written character appeared in the air, fragments of phrases, without joining to form complete paragraphs, just disparate characters, hundreds and hundreds of them, and entered, one by one, each their own identical little iron teapot, the ancient kind that is dark of color and very heavy, and rose high into the sky and quickly flew off.

Each one in its own tiny pot, floating like miniature flying carpets carrying a royal messenger, off separately over the vastness of China, to every region and every people of China.

Once set down in a populated place, the characters came out of their pots and gathered into a story– and the inhabitants read, and heard, and at last that people of China knew the Story of what is true.

They were overjoyed! They told each other the Story over and over, and came together to worship the one true God, Him in Christ Jesus. And the characters returned each to their little iron teapots and wended their way through the air to the next region, emptying out to spell out the true whole Story, and off to the next, and the next, until the entire vast land shall know the Story, know Him who is the Truth.

A dream after seeing the 1800’s Chinese house at the Peabody-Essex Museum with John.

August 2009

(c) Deanna Harrington Christiansen

The air becomes grayer, more damp, more chilled, as one early hour turns into two, or three.  Southeastern New Hampshire has been in faux-Spring for several days, bright warmish sun in blue skies with a few high white clouds, warm enough at 40 or more to be outdoors without a jacket and gloves, for awhile. A bird in the woods next to the house  exploded into song at about 7 o’clock yesterday morning . It chirped as if it were hysterical with elation at the return of Spring. I have never heard the song before and I couldn’t spot the bird, so I can’t tell you what it was.   Today we expect gradually dropping temperatures, cold rain, and snow, overnight and into Wednesday, with another two snow and rain storms behind this one. But it is February in New Hampshire, as they like to say here: you have to expect it. Still, there was a crow on the back yard ground yesterday for the first time since we moved in, three months ago. It was a sign that we are becoming accepted by that local fauna. Crows are intelligent and scrutinize you carefully before they trust you. They will unscrupulously take advantage of your trash put out on Thursday mornings for the local family business’s small truck to pick up, but they will not approach you or your house until they have sized you up as acceptable. I learned that in Swanzey, New Hampshire, when I moved there in 2006 from San Diego.

(c) Deanna Harrington Christiansen