My mother had the farmhouse door painted red, a protest to something though as a child I did not understand what. She also planted one Oriental poppy and nursed it through several seasons of Iowa winters. They were the same red, both testifying “I promised myself I’d never marry a farmer.”

I too was her proof of being special. What she could not reveal of herself, the world would see through the brain and beauty and poise of her daughter. She believed in genes and hated being underestimated. She had sold apples on the street corner during the depression as classmates walked by on their way to school.  

The house was not a typical white wooden farmhouse with creaks and openings around the windows and doors. It had wooden floors, but they were narrow slats of prime grade oak fit together as tight as Puritan’s lips.

The house was a top-of-the-line Sears prefab house built by a man from Minnesota who invested in Texas oil and wanted to live out his life on an Iowa farm. Seems he invested in the only spot in Texas without oil. Before he ever lived in the house, it was foreclosed to people who put a potbellied stove in the middle of the living room. 

The house was stucco with leaded windows, built-in china cabinets, and a solarium. My mother, in a misguided attempt to be modern, bastardized it with fleur-de-lys Wall-tex and blonde Swedish furniture. The ceilings were lowered with acoustic tiles, the copper chandelier replaced by a Nordic thing of teak.  

I, the child, cringed for myself and the house. 

I look now for the ways she showed love for me, and it is difficult unless I go inside her and feel the trap that held her from affection. Then I understand, then she is young, then she is lost, then she is determination, then she is a 20-year-old teacher in one room school houses who drove up a 1/4 mile lane to ask directions and saw a young man asleep in the yard after lunch and before returning to farm work. She felt ugly and saw a handsome man in the grass. 

Now, old enough to be her grandmother, I look for ways in which she showed love for me. She took her talent for sewing and knitting, and created cloths for me that made those bought in stores for the town children look second-hand. Still, I longed for store-bought clothes in their bright colors and round skirts. My fine clothes made me stand out.

She took her talent for sewing and knitting into creating whole wardrobes for my dolls— precursors of Barbie and much more beautiful. She made skating outfits, skiing outfits, Dutch girl outfits, cheerleader outfits, and a wedding dress with lace and net. They are now with her great-granddaughter and only slightly the less for time and wear. 

She took her talent for sewing and knitting into matching ensembles for me of wool skirts and intricate sweaters that made me stand out in college in ways that set me apart and that I liked. By then, I appreciated them and wondered, as I do now, at her craftsmen. 

My closet has jackets she made for herself, some with false labels of designer fashions—one in thick golden wool labeled Dior.

Who was this woman who knew clothes, who needed an Oriental poppy, who painted the door red, who scaped decades of shellac off the oak floor, the cabinets, the window seats, and stairs, but had no sense of interior design or art. The woman who made sure I got contact lenses when the town girls did because we were not less than them. The woman who did not allow me dance lessons but made sure I had piano lessons from the time I was eight. 

I ask myself, how did she show me love that was not tied to showing me off? I remember no hugs, no sweet touch, no “I love you.” That is because there were none. The trap inside her, the fear of touch, the possible coming undone of showing love. 

I remember the ski poles that went with the skiing outfit, the skates that went with the skating outfits, I remember the skating outfit itself knit in yellow with fuzzy baby blue trim and matching cap. I remember the wooden Dutch girl clogs. I remember the skiing pants in deep blue and the top in deep red with gold double-vested buttons down the front. 

I never learned to ski or ice skate, but she dreamed something, and made it for me. 

Knowing that is not quite enough, but knowing that and now being able to feel inside of her—the strictures, the determination against insecurity and feeling ugly, her resentment towards her mother for making her tend the five younger and more adored children—her resignation to being a farmer’s wife. Those two are enough. I shelter her in my arms across time.

I escaped. I think she wanted me to.