A Million Years with You (3 page)

He taught us never to go into the woods without string, a knife, and matches. He showed us how to make a fire even in blizzards or rainstorms using only things we would find in the woods, such as dead twigs and birch bark, which burns pretty well even when damp. He also insisted that we use only one match to light the fire, and not just a wooden, strike-anywhere match, but also a little cardboard book match. He made us try again and again until both of us could do it every time. Thus if we were lost in winter, we could keep ourselves from freezing. He read us the cautionary story by Jack London, “To Build a Fire,” in which a man trying to survive a bitter winter night finally manages to build a fire but builds it under an evergreen tree. The fire warms the snow on the branches. The snow falls on the fire and puts it out. And the man didn't have another match. Even now, I would never make a fire directly under an evergreen tree, and I still need only one match.

 

The woods were the main part of my early education. I'd say I learned more from the woods than I learned in school, certainly for the first few years. I still find spelling and math elusive, while the things I learned in the woods stay with me.

That education took place in New Hampshire, but unfortunately we didn't live there year-round. My dad was the CEO of Raytheon, an electronics company which he had founded in 1922, four years before he married my mother and nine years before I was born. So we had to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to be near his factory. We were in New Hampshire every weekend, during all school vacations, and all summer, but the rest of the time we were stuck in the city. Thus it was animals in Cambridge who first opened for me a very important window of the natural world.

2

O
UR HOUSE WAS
on a quiet street, two blocks east of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. My brother and I went to a private school. And because my mom did extensive community work and often wasn't home in the daytime, a Finnish couple named Tom and Kirsti Johnson kept house for us. Johnson is not a Finnish name, of course. Tom's real surname was Sammallahti. But when Tom's father came to Quincy, Massachusetts, via Ellis Island, the immigration official who processed him could neither spell nor pronounce Sammallahti and didn't want to try, so he simply changed it to Johnson. But nothing changed except the name. Tom and Kirsti were Finnish to the core.

They were like our second parents. Thanks to them, the adult/child ratio of our home was three to one. We adored them. Except for the work we all did together on the New Hampshire farm, we didn't know what our actual parents did because, of course, they didn't work at home. But we watched Tom and Kirsti constantly. I aspired to be like Kirsti, a cook in someone's household, an ambition that she crushed. She had come to America alone as a teenager, in hopes of getting a college education, but she had been unable to do so, and that must not happen to me. She told me I must not become a cook for any reason but instead must go to college.

Even so, she let me help her. My brother helped her too. We did such things as clean frosting from the stirring spoon with our tongues. We spent most of our time in the kitchen, where Tom and Kirsti spoke Finnish. Because of this, we also learned some Finnish. When I was older, perhaps fifteen or so, I could read the Finnish newspaper,
Raivaaja
, aloud to Tom's nearly blind mother. By then Tom, Kirsti, and Tom's mother had taken over the farm in Peterborough. My brother and I saw their house as our second home and spent as much time as we could with them. I didn't know all the words in
Raivaaja
by any means, but Tom's mother certainly did, and because Finnish is spelled as it is sounds, I could pronounce the words well enough so that Tom's mother understood what I was reading.

Tom told us stories from which we learned about life by leaps and bounds. We got an interesting picture of New York society, because before coming to live with us, Tom and Kirsti had worked as butler and cook for a rich family there. Our favorite story was about their employer, Henry, when he and his wife were giving a party and he got drunk. While Tom was passing yet another round of cocktails, Henry stood up from his chair and started to fuss with his pants. Tom took Henry's arm to help him to the bathroom. Henry shook him off and opened his fly. The guests were horrified. “Henry! Henry!” his poor wife cried. “Think of your dignity!” But Henry said, “To hell with my dignity! I'll piss right here.” And he did.

Oh joy! Imagine a grownup doing that! There could not be a better story, and we couldn't hear it often enough. Tom obliged us. He'd tell other stories too, but at our urgent requests he'd always include a repeat of that one, and it was just as great the hundredth time as it had been the first. No wonder we loved to be in the kitchen.

Looking back, however, I wonder if my brother and I with our constant requests were inconvenient there. Tom and Kirsti were unfailingly good to us, but it's possible that we took too much of their time. The reason I think so is that one day our mom introduced us to a heavyset woman who, we were told, would be our nanny. The nanny would take care of us, she said.

Our mom then asked us to show the nanny around, so we showed her the dinosaur diorama. It was, after all, not a professionally made toy but just some sticks with green paper stuck on them and some little clay figures squeezed into shape by children. Our nanny gave a huff, as if she didn't like it, and because it made the room somewhat messy, she soon cleaned it up.

Even before this disaster, we knew we didn't like her. We had already noticed a difference between the bossy way she acted when alone with us and the sugary way she acted in the presence of our parents. Since the diorama had been in my brother's room, she must have thought it belonged only to him, because the next day, as if to compensate him, she gave him a toy Mickey Mouse. He didn't know what the Mickey Mouse was and didn't want it. Nor did he thank the nanny until she ordered him to do so. He dangled the toy as he grudgingly mumbled something. We started to make a new diorama, but she cleaned that up too, and we began to hate her.

A few days later, the nanny, my brother, and I were alone in the house. For some reason, the nanny went into a room to look out the window. My brother took the key from the inner side of the door, quietly shut the door, and locked it. I didn't see him do this, but when he strolled down the hall, I followed.

Soon the nanny was pounding on the door, demanding that we open it. I was a bit confused about why she was screaming. My brother didn't seem to know either, and anyway, by then he had lost the key, so nothing could be done. We wandered through the empty house listening to the noise made by the nanny.

She must have opened a window. We heard her shouting for help. She must have attracted the attention of a passerby, because suddenly a man was ringing the doorbell and pounding with the knocker. We weren't sure why. We only knew not to open the door to a stranger. So we sat on the stairs and listened. The man must have gone to a neighbor's house, and the neighbor must have made some phone calls. Much later both our parents rushed in together, all excited and angry, and demanded the key, but no one could find it.

So they called a locksmith. But the locksmith couldn't come right away, and by then the nanny needed food and water. Our dad got some clothesline, went outside, and threw it into the open window. The nanny then dangled it down, and our dad tied a basket of supplies to it. She pulled the basket up. Our dad had also brought a potty. She pulled that up too. Meanwhile, my brother and I were in our parents' study behind the window curtains, watching all that went on outside but not quite sure what we were seeing. At last the locksmith arrived and released the nanny. She burst through the door in a raging fury, which she took out on our humbly apologetic parents. Then she quit.

Our parents never hit us, rarely punished us, and seldom even spoke a discouraging word. But not that time. That time we were banished from the society of decent people. We had to stay alone in our rooms for months, it seemed, with nothing to play with, and eat our meals alone in the gloomy, closetlike back hall.

 

Our parents should have left us with our other nanny, the one whose orders we didn't challenge. We loved her dearly even though she was strict, but that's why we obeyed her. She wouldn't let us cross the street, for instance, although we knew that people could cross if no car was coming. But this nanny didn't care if no car was coming. If we started to cross, she'd push us back on the sidewalk. Her name was Mishka. She was every inch a grownup, and also a Newfoundland dog.

She was even stricter when, the summer before our dad built his house in New Hampshire, our parents rented a house by a bay on Cape Cod. That summer was blissful for the adults in the family. Every day they went swimming, boating, or fishing. But it was dreadful for me and my brother. The enticing ocean spread out before us, but Mishka wouldn't let us near it. The bay was so shallow we could have waded out for miles, but Mishka wouldn't even let us wet our feet. She didn't care that we only wanted to fill our pails with water to make sandcastles. If we went toward the water, she'd give a loud, commanding bark which meant
No!
If we kept going she'd grab our clothes with her teeth and drag us backward. Then we'd cry with frustration and yell at her, commanding her to sit, to stay, to lie down. She gladly did such things for the adults in the family, but when we gave her these orders, she'd look at us blandly.
You little things, who do you think you're talking to?
her manner said.

When Mishka and I faced each other, our eyes were level. I remember looking into hers and seeing that she meant business. Sometimes with angry tears I'd demand from her at least as much freedom as my parents gave me, but she paid no attention. She was in charge, and whether we liked it or not, we were forced to obey her. Yet she loved us and we knew it. Thus she felt like a mother. We felt like her children. We'd lie beside her on the floor and fall safely asleep, leaning against her soft fur. My favorite photo of that time shows her lying on the floor but with her head raised and me in a white dress behind her, ready to climb on her back. She knows what I'm about to do and she's going to let me.

So all in all, I felt about Mishka just as I felt about the adults in our family. She outranked me, but I knew I was young and I bowed to her authority. A bit later in life, it came as quite a shock to learn that some people think that dogs are their inferiors. How can that be, I wondered, when dogs are just like us?

 

The other dog in the family was smaller and younger than Mishka. His name was Taffy and he was a cocker spaniel. If Mishka was one of the grownups, Taffy was one of the children. He came to us on Christmas Eve, a gift from my dad's business partner, and his first act in our house was to grab a tinsel streamer on the Christmas tree and run with it so fast that the tree came crashing down in an explosion of lights and ornaments. My brother and I were shocked by the destruction, but also thrilled by his daring.

Unlike Mishka, who would lie on the porch and watch us while we played in the yard, Taffy would play with us. Our dad had made us a swing with a board seat that hung from the branch of a tree. Side by side, we would lie face-down on the board and swing out over Taffy. He'd bark as we sailed over him, then chase us as the swing went back the other way. He wasn't adamant about this, though, unless he had a bone. Wanting to be with us, he'd chew his bone near the swing. Then, when we'd sail over him, he'd get upset. He'd bristle and rush at us, barking furiously. We thought this was fun, and we'd keep it up until his bark was almost a scream and he was chasing us with blazing eyes and gnashing teeth. The adults of the family often told us not to tease him, but because he could always take his bone somewhere else if he didn't like what we were doing, we reasoned that we weren't really teasing. And it was fun. We didn't stop.

One day our dad heard Taffy roaring and came out to see what was going on. He walked up to the swing and Taffy, in his frenzy, bit him. Our dad yanked off his belt and lashed Taffy with it four times, which devastated Taffy. Nobody punished me and my brother, although the whole thing was our fault, and I felt terrible to see Taffy trembling and cringing and looking up at my father. That Taffy was beaten for our misdeed is one of my lifelong regrets.

Soon enough, though, Taffy and Dad forgave each other because of the deep bond between them. For all his willingness to play with us, Taffy at heart was a one-man dog, and that man was my father. Mishka developed arthritis in her hips and couldn't go walking with us, but little Taffy would follow our dad whenever he could, even through the juniper on the Wapack Range. He'd push right through it, never questioning or resting, just like Dad.

Dad and Taffy did favors for each other. Dad sneaked bites from his dinner plate to Taffy under the table, and Taffy took care of baby mice that we'd find in places like my mother's desk. My mom thought that Dad released them in the woods. Instead, he'd take them outdoors and secretly show them to Taffy, who ate them.

 

Mishka came to our family before I was born. She died when I was in my senior year in boarding school. Taffy came to us as a pup when I was four. He died when I was in my freshman year in college. On both occasions, my dad telephoned me with the terrible news, and both times as he described their deaths, his voice broke. For as long as I could remember, these dogs had been with us. Even now I miss them. No wonder we picture an afterworld where we can be with those we love. But even if there is no afterworld, those dogs live in my heart. As my mother's friend May Sarton famously put it: “The dead move through all of us still glowing.”

3

F
ROM MISHKA AND TAFFY
I saw that dogs and people were alike, just with different kinds of bodies, and never since then have I questioned the commonality of people and other animals. Yet it was from our cats I learned that the lives of animals can be fascinating all on their own, without involvement with people. Unlike Mishka, our cats took no responsibility for me or my brother, and unlike Taffy, they never played with us. Instead, as I was to discover, they had a world of their own, a world of mystery and importance that had nothing to do with our family.