AROUND THE KITCHEN TABLE

By Lloyd Ratzlaff

Elsie Gliege was born on June 24, 1918, the youngest of nine children whose parents had emigrated from a Krimmer Mennonite Brethren settlement at Marion Junction, South Dakota, to a new community in the Springfield district of central Saskatchewan. Elsie grew up attending Springfield School and Salem KMB Church, a few miles from the Ratzlaffs who had also come from South Dakota. She attended school and church with Albert, the second of 12 siblings in his family, and eventually these two fell in love. They were married on Oct. 1, 1939, in a large tent on the Gliege homestead, it not yet being customary to hold marriages in church. The next day they began farming a strip of rented land along the North Saskatchewan River about a mile from Petrofka Ferry.

Their farmland was scenic in all seasons, and quite accessible from spring till fall; but in winter the couple became isolated, and Sundays provided welcome relief. On those mornings they rose early to do their chores, harness the horses to a covered sleigh built by Elsie’s father, cross the snow-covered flat and drive uphill to the correction line leading four miles to the Salem Church. Their mornings were taken with Sunday school and worship, afternoons filled with visits to relatives and friends, and after the evening Jugendverein, they took the horses from the church barns and made their way back down in the dark, re-lit the fire in their house, fed the animals and milked cows before retiring; and although they got up during the night to stoke their fire, by Monday morning the water in the kitchen basin was frozen solid.

Elsie and Albert lived and worked at the river flat for six years, then moved back up to Springfield where they had rented another farmstead. In November of 1946 their son Lloyd was born, and hardly a month later, on Albert’s 31st birthday, the farmhouse and most of its contents were destroyed by fire. The family spent that Christmas with Elsie’s parents, and were invited to stay on for the rest of the winter as they re-organized their lives. Neighbours aided them with food, blankets, furniture and even gifts of money, an immense help in their near-cashless economy.

In spring of 1947 they bought a small house in the village of Hepburn and moved it to Laird, where Albert and two younger brothers began operating a garage. The business had plenty of work from seedtime till harvest, but in winter when the roads were impassable, most people put their cars on blocks; then the brothers heated the garage and brewed coffee for customers who brought them small gadgets for repair, but wanted mainly to pass the time in their snowbound village until spring thaw. That first winter the business sold barely 10 gallons of gas.

After a few years, the brothers sold the garage and returned to farming, trying their hands also at commercial potato growing, custom bush-plowing and operating a sawmill, which was also lost to a fire. Elsie and Albert continued living in Laird, and though others from both Gliege and Ratzlaff families lived briefly in the village, only these two made Laird their permanent home.

The small family began outgrowing their house as two daughters arrived, Eileen in October 1950 and Lois in November 1955. Three years later, an acreage at the very edge of Laird became available, and they moved to a larger house on land bordering the schoolyard, so that the children only had to cross the driveway to get to school.

Elsie taught herself to play the piano, and developed a lively and unique style that kept her in demand as an accompanist for community and church events. She was one of the first women in the district to obtain her driver’s license. Albert became much appreciated for his inventive mind, and for a good-neighbourliness which was sparing in words but prodigal in deeds.

After the children left home, Albert and Elsie kept working the farm together. Shortly after their retirement, just before Albert’s 65th birthday, he suffered a major heart attack and his remaining years contained complications that weakened him further. He died at the age of 75 in March 1992, and was buried in Salem Cemetery just across the road from the farm where he grew up.

Elsie stayed at her acreage, and with tireless energy delivered meals, chauffeured neighbours to appointments, played the piano, looked after kids, and eventually was dubbed “Mother Teresa of Laird.” Everything she did was done with gusto, and she remained healthy and vigorous until the age of 85, when a meningitis attack left her in a coma for some weeks. Though given up for lost, she regained consciousness in a palliative care ward, and after shuttlings among hospitals, bouts of grand mal seizures, and left with multiple handicaps, she went to live in the Mennonite Nursing Home in Rosthern, near where her parents had first come to Canada in 1907. There, too, Elsie was known for her cheerful disposition, endearing herself to staff and residents alike. She died in the early morning of June 10, 2012, two weeks from her 94th birthday, and was buried beside her husband Albert in their home ground of Springfield.

We seem to give them back to you, O God, who gave them to us. Yet, as you did not lose them in giving, so we do not lose them by their return. Not as the world gives do you give, what you give you do not take away, for what is yours is ours, if we are yours. And life is eternal and love is immortal and death is only a horizon, and horizon is but the limit of our sight (St. Bede the Venerable).

For Mom

Rain falling so hard drops
on the pavement stand vertical
to the thunder’s attention

And here comes the windstorm, rain lashing sideways
it’s good to be on the patio
not out walking where
my umbrella would uninsideout itself
the words I wanted to write bleed off
and dissolve in rain

Now the elements settle
raindrops small street dancers in white
a last thunder cracks and rolls away

Mother, you taught me to be intense
to fight the good fight, finish the course
stand up till I can’t
breathe until the spirit goes elsewhere

Once when you were widowed you called
you said, Just to hear your voice
and listed things you had to do
like playing the piano at a friend’s funeral
then added your laugh, But we have to take time
to bury the dead, hahaha

You and I were more alike than I liked to think
until twenty/twenty hindsight came
We had been worthy opponents
but since you became the new mother
new child
it only made it harder
to let go

Ratzlaff is the author of two books of literary non-fiction, The Crow Who Tampered With Time and Backwater Mystic Blues. Formerly a minister, counsellor and university instructor, he now makes his living as a writer in Saskatoon.