How many times hadn’t Kristina wished that she could write a letter to her parents! But Swedish women were not taught to write. Perhaps if she herself had insisted, when she was little, she might have learned to write. But how could she have known what was in store for her? As a little girl she could not have imagined that her life would be spent on another continent. Nor had anyone else at home imagined that a woman of their village would move so far away from her relatives that she needed to write letters to her parents. Her fate had not been anticipated by the village school laws.
Now she was separated from her dear ones; not a word from her could reach them except through another person. After Robert had left for California, Karl Oskar had written a few short letters for her to her parents. Robert had helped her to express her thoughts, but Karl Oskar had difficulty in forming the sentences and capturing her feeling in writing. The letters became the same, almost word for word: she was well, all was well with them, her father and mother must not worry about their daughter, her daily thoughts were with them in her dear old Duvemåla. These last were the truest words in the letters.
It was always her father who answered, as her mother too, being a woman, could not write, and he wrote equally short letters, using direct biblical words: their daughter must put her trust in the Lord in North America, she must bring up her children in the Lord’s ways and with strict discipline, as she herself had been brought up in her home, she must obey the Ten Commandments and live irreproachably so that they might meet in Heaven.
His final words confirmed her belief that she never again would see her parents and brothers and sisters on this earth. And she asked dejectedly: Why must the world be so immensely large? Why must the roads across it be so dreadfully long?
Kristina suffered because the world was so large that she never again would meet her relatives from the homeland in life.
— 3—
When the tall drifts round the cabin melted away in the spring, the landscape seemed empty and bare. Without their winter covering the log walls appeared in all their wretchedness. Now their home looked like a simple outhouse, a hay barn or a shed. There was nothing to indicate that this was a human habitation. A flower garden was what was needed.
Flowers cheered one up and were a decoration outside a home, and company for one when alone. When she was first married, Kristina had planted a flower bed against the wall of their house in Korpamoen — resedas, asters, sunflowers, larkspur, lavender, daisies, and other flowers.
This spring she would prepare a flower bed in front of her new home. She hoed a patch under the south window, and decided to try to get the same kind of flowers she had planted at home, if they were obtainable here.
Mr. Abbott, the Scottish storekeeper in Taylors Falls, had all kinds of seeds for sale. And shortly before Whitsuntide she had an opportunity to ride to Taylors Falls with Jonas Petter and Swedish Anna. Like her they were going to the Scotsman for their holiday purchases.
All three had finished their shopping and were sitting on the wagon, ready to return home, when Kristina remembered that she had forgotten the flower seeds. She jumped off and walked back to the store alone.
Mr. Abbott, behind the counter, greeted her with a lift of his white cap and adjusted the pencil behind his right ear; he was much more courteous to women than to men. The tall Scot was one of Ulrika’s rejected suitors. But a couple of years ago he had married the daughter of the German Fisher, and his wife had borne him a daughter who already managed to crawl about on the floor, both behind the counter and in front of it.
Kristina had become acquainted with him and was able to buy from him, even though they did not understand each other’s language, since he usually guessed what she wanted and would point to the shelves where his wares were displayed. But she did not know where he kept his seeds, nor did she know what they were called in English. Perhaps flowers had the same names in both languages. She tried the foreign tongue for the first time:
“I wanta planta blooms. . blommer. .”
The storekeeper listened without changing expression. He did not understand her and answered in words she in turn did not understand. In vain she looked around the shelves for seed bags. He must keep them in a drawer — but which one?
She grew embarrassed and annoyed at herself; was she unable to buy a few seeds for her own patch? She would take any kind, whatever he had, for it would be futile to stand here and ask for aster, lion-hearts, and other Swedish flowers she wanted. The question now was, could she get any seeds at all?
Then she saw a paper hanging from a shelf with a red flower painted on it. Relieved, she pointed to the paper and exclaimed:
“I wanta this! Blommer!
Mr. Abbotts face lighted up:
“Ah — you want seed, Mrs. Nelson?”
But she knew the meaning of the word “seed.” Karl Oskar had bought seed for their field, she did not want rye or barley.
“No! No! Not seed! I wanta blommer!
Mr. Abbott brought out a heap of small bags and spread them on the counter; he opened one of them to show her that it was seed. Well, perhaps it was the right kind; she could see the seeds with her own eyes, but the English printed on the bags she could not read; she must buy blindly.
Kristina fingered the small bags and chose five. As far as she could see, there was different printing on each one, so at least she would have five kinds of flowers.
She told Karl Oskar when she came home that she had blindly bought five kinds of flower seed for her patch under the window. She thought it would be amusing to see what she had picked; she hoped some of them would be the same varieties she had grown in Korpamoen.
Her new flower bed lay against the long front side of the house, on the south facing the sun; they would surely grow here. And she cleaned the earth well, picking away roots and weeds before she put the seed in the ground. She pushed it down in rows, one kind to each row, filled the holes with earth, evened out the bed, flattened it with a piece of board, so that it looked neat and orderly.
Flowers would grow near the house, they would be at the entrance, the place of honor. Flower beds belonged to a home. No one planted flowers in front of a barn, a stable, or a pigpen; a flower bed distinguished a home from animal shed.
Here her flowers would grow right under the window so they would catch her eye as soon as she looked out. And people would see from a distance that human beings lived in this cabin of rough timbers.
When Kristina finished her planting and had her flower bed in order she felt she had moved a little patch of ground from her homeland to the settlement at Ki-Chi-Saga.
— 4—
Minnesota’s hot season was approaching. Each day the sun felt warmer. The earth dried out, and Kristina watered her flower bed every evening. Flowers responded to the care given them, they grew better if they were watched and cared for, they appreciated water and attention. And flowers changed from one day to another; in the morning sun they proudly raised their heads, in fog and rain their heads were bent, sad and depressed; as with people, their appearance often changed.
Karl Oskar kept busy hoeing turf on the new-broken field; with a team he could have plowed and enlarged his field faster. Here lay the whole meadow with wild grass which was good only for hay. How much more wouldn’t it give him if it were cultivated! It had been lying here in fallow ever since the day of Creation. Now the tiller had arrived, and the time for the earth to give bread to people. At the house wall Kristina had planted her own little field. The flower bed would amuse her, and perhaps lessen her thoughts of longing. She needed something different to occupy her here, something to shatter her homesickness.