The sun shines on a cold October day 1942, baby girl is born at the family home, the last of 6 children. The sun peeks from behind a cloud, mother needs bed rest, recovery is slow. Sun is obscured when surgery is scheduled. Two older sisters step in to care for the new baby and sun shines again as the new little girl grows like a newborn calf, as she drinks jersey milk from a bottle. Soon her mother can be found working in the garden. The sun shines as the girl plays cowboys and Indians with the neighborhood children or runs through the sprinkler, clad only in underpants as the sun bakes her skin to a golden brown and leaves her bum as white as that of an antelope. Then on a sun filled day she starts to school, has to wear dresses and tight shoes. The tooth fairy arrives; a gap-toothed smile shows in the 2nd grade photo.
The sunshine dims as Father becomes disgruntled with endless days of work and mooching relatives. Clouds obliterate the sunshine as trucks are loaded with machinery and livestock. A touring car and a pickup truck complete the caravan and they travel for 2 days and 500 miles, from Utah to Idaho over treacherous roads arriving at their new home nestled under Jug Handle Mountain, late at night in a raging blizzard.
The sun shines on a frigid December day and Santa arrives that night to fill the stockings, one orange in the toe, mixed nuts and hard candy on top. Gaily wrapped packages under the tree adorned with icicles popular in the 50’s. Sunshine dims when her sister clues her into the fact that Santa Claus and parents are one and the same.
Sun shines as little girl starts school in one room with a potbelly stove and children dressed from head to toe in wool, most of them fluent in Finnish as well as English. The sun shines high in the sky when spring arrives, slowly melting the deep snows of winter. The next 4 years fly by as she and a fellow classmate spend the summers riding bikes, mixing skunk cabbage and dandelions into mud pies they leave to bake in the scorching summer sun. The sun shines as she learns to milk cows, drive a tractor and a team of horses named Bert and Dick and also learns to play the saxophone.
Cloudy skies cover the sunshine, puberty strikes and she remains her Daddy's girl, a “short curly do” replaces her braids. Sticking close to her father’s side, she is his right-hand man, always trying to lighten her father’s load. Then sunshine hides behind a dark cloud as she enters high school, where it matters what you wear, jeans and t-shirts are exchanged for pleated skirts and sweaters with tags that say Jantzen, or White Stag, that is, if you belong to the “in group”. This girl watches from the sidelines or maybe settles in the middle group while the sun makes a come back. She enjoys making new friends and relates well to the teachers. Parties, dances, president of “Girls Club” gives her the social interaction she needs and she finds a niche in the music program, fills her spare time with bus trips as the band goes to festivals and the pep band follows the sports teams to ball games, as the sunshine hovers in the sky.
The sun shining now moves into the autumn sky, her parents smile and sigh as baby girl now 17, climbs into the family car, a 57 chevy, as she leaves in a cloud of dust to meet the college boy who entered her life only one short month ago. These two have been inseparable, spending every spare moment together and she now wears his class ring on a chain around her neck. Her parents having raised other children accept this sudden romance with a wait and see approach.
The sunshine takes on a luminous glow as he drives with one hand on the wheel and his other arm around her as she snuggles close in the front seat of the ’53 mercury, for this their last date before he returns to college and she stays behind.
The sun shines on this her senior year, Christmas brings a diamond to her left hand and a commitment to a wedding in June. A cloud with an ulterior motive appears in March. The sun still shines as plans change, wedding postponed for one year, girl’s life takes a brief detour as she enrolls in beauty school, giving her a chance to mature and grow before the wedding.
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