Today’s guest blog comes from Steve Grooms

Today’s guest post comes from Clyde.

I love serendipitous juxtapositions. Last month a book and a picture careened into my life at the same moment.

This is the picture. I’m with my father and my sister, and he is just home from the war.

The book is Hamlin Garland’s memoir Son of the Middle Border. Today an unknown author, Garland was one of the writers who inspired my interest in literature and writing. His rather stolid and overly political fiction reflects the life of my mother’s ancestors and her own life. Because my mother’s family history is set in northwest Iowa, his writing would also touch the history of a few other Babooners.

Another way to describe Garland’s early fiction is as the tale of the hard life that Laura Ingalls Wilder wanted to tell, except her daughter urged her to make them children’s stories (who could argue with that decision). Garland’s childhood oddly parallels Wilder’s. He was born in West Salem WI, which is near LaCrosse. His father then moved them to Hester, Iowa, for a brief period and another brief period in Burr Oak, Iowa, where the Wilder family also lived briefly. The Garland’s moved on to a homestead north of Osage, Iowa, or to say, southeast of Albert Lea. From there the Garlands moved to Ordway, SD, long since gone, near Aberdeen.

When Garland’s first book Main Traveled Roads was published in Boston in 1891, it released a storm of criticism because people believed that the life of the Western farmer was full of joy and reward and not dirt, hard work, and deprivation. Garland was an outspoken activist traveling through the country, urging land and economic reform. His early fiction is driven by a point of view called “naturalism,” which portrays humans as caught under the control of powerful impersonal forces, such as weather, plagues, economics, genetics, politics, and random chance. Stephen Crane of Red Badge of Courage, whom Garland encouraged and supported, wrote to a similar point of view with better narrative skill.

I had my mother read Main Traveled Roads when she was about 60. She understood it fully on instinct. She told me of how the details of early Iowa farm life were the details her father told her about his childhood, which were not unlike her own childhood. People sometimes think my childhood was hard, but I do not think so, nor does my sister. We know how hard it once was.

Garland’s memoir begins with his first meeting with his father. Garland was almost four years old when his father came home from the Civil War. It was their first meeting. As I read that opening chapter, I paused to reflect as I often have, that the two great untold stories of America are the lives of the women while the men were off to war and the adjustment men had to make coming home. William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives tells that story very well. Almost every man in the cast and crew was a war veteran, including Harold Russell, who lost both hands in the war. He won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Just as I was contemplating all this, my sister sent me that photo of the two of us with my father. But there are a couple of things you don’t know yet about that image. One is that it is my first meeting with my father. I was born while he was away at war. And the second is that the version you’ve seen has been adjusted. The original photograph was shot at a distinct angle.

My mother took the picture. She took two others that day with my siblings, one of which is as tilted as this. I have a thousand pictures taken by my mother. Only these are off-kilter. I always assume we are seeing her own emotions in that angle. Obviously, With photoshopping it is possible to straighten that picture. How prosaic it is without the tilt.

What do you view from a unique perspective?

Today’s guest post comes from Steve Grooms, and was first offered on Trail Baboon as a comment at the end of the December 25th entry. I thought it was worth re-posting for everyone to enjoy. Steve writes:

The topic of “family” brings up the fact that I’ve been anxious for my daughter. Molly and Liam visited me a year and a half ago, and the trip was stressful. Liam was terrified by the plane and then unable to relax in his new surroundings. Molly got tense about that, and the two of them fed off each other’s fears.That trip was saved by all the toys I borrowed from kind Baboon ladies, and it did end up being a good trip.

Molly and her husband John recently made a difficult decision to fly from Portland to upper Michigan for Christmas with John’s parents. Jack, John’s father, is in perilous health. He has advanced diabetes, and he has recently fallen seven times hard enough to break bones. His most recent fall was last week. Liam and his grandfather have never met. The feeling was it would have to happen this year, or it might never be possible. After the most recent fall, Jack has been confined to a nursing home. Jack would be allowed a brief trip home to meet Liam and open presents.

John’s parents live in an interesting place, in a 100 year old home that overlooks the St. Clair River. Canada is across the river. Huge freighters are always moving through.

Molly wrote to say that Liam was an angel on the flight. And then she described Christmas: What follows is Molly’s letter:

We had a truly magical day. Ice floating down the river, one flow carrying a great big snowy owl, my first ever to see in the wild and absolutely breathtaking. The Kelleys have never seen one either so I feel so lucky.

Freighters ran up and down the river and Liam slept til 11, waking just as Jack arrived home with Nancy and the boys. Jack confided to Jamie yesterday that he feared Liam would be afraid of him. He doesn’t look good these days. I coached Liam to give him a warm welcome and tell him about the freighters he’d seen. Liam immediately did so and it was so wonderful to see him eagerly and sweetly engage Jack all day. He also went out of his way to tell Nancy how nice his air mattress bed is and thank her for all sorts of cookies and kindnesses throughout the day.

Overall, Liam was an absolute delight – opening presents and relishing them, playing on his own quietly for an hour at a time, chasing or being chased by his favorite and much adored uncle around the house, delighting in the two inches of snow that fell throughout the day and shoveling with feverish industry. John, Liam and I walked up to the Port Huron lightship and back in time to watch the Coast Guard cutter, the Hollyhock, undock just feet North of the house and head up into the lake to bring in more buoys.

I went upstairs to rest for an hour, at which point the tree fell over, narrowly missing Liam and John who were putting together a train set. After that excitement things settled down again. Dinner was delicious – Swiss steak followed by cookies and a session of Lego building and listening to KSJN carols.

The whole day was unplanned, unstructured, nothing monumental and no single “Oooohhh Ahhhh” gift. And none needed. It was perfect and so special to experience it with my wonderful child. I am so impressed with his good nature, his delight in others and his flexibility. Taking a page from his book today, I went with the flow, like the ice down the river.

Describe your most memorable Christmas.