Our new two-story Cape Cod house was painted a soft pink, as was the small hip-roof barn on six wonderful acres that my dad purchased a few months after we moved to Dallas. I still sometimes dream of that home. I’ll never forget the day I came home from school and my mother told me to look in the pasture. I caught my breath and ran to the corral. There by the pink barn I broke down into heaving sobs! All my life I had longed for a horse, drew horses, and fantasized about riding. There in the pasture was a beautiful bay mare. . . for me! My parents, too frugal to actually buy one, were offered one to lease. As far as I was concerned, “Angel” was all mine! I spent many hours riding my Tennessee Walker on our acreage, through the woods, around local strawberry fields, in a parade, and on many adventures. God truly granted me the desire of my heart!

One very gusty October day I braced against the wind as I got off the school bus. Mother had gone shopping in Salem so I was free and eager to go horseback riding. Galloping bareback in the wind felt absolutely glorious! However, my freedom flight suddenly turned scary as things began flying through the air. I brought Angel into the barn and ran for the house. Suddenly Daddy saw the front of our doorless garage begin to lift off the foundation. He anchored it the best he could, then we knelt down and earnestly prayed for Mother, my little sister, and Aunt Ruth to get home safely.

That was the Columbus Day Storm of 1962, which struck the Pacific Northwest coast. As a contender for the title of most powerful extratropical cyclone recorded in the U.S. in the 20th century, the system linked 46 fatalities from heavy rains and mudslides (Wikipedia). Miraculously, Mother arrived home safely and described trees and power lines all over the road. As the power poles lifted up in the wind, she quickly drove under them before they came down again. Too obviously, life can be fragile! Nevertheless it goes on…

Besides my horse, my art class was a dream come true! The vice-principle asked for some of my drawings after our school art show, and I told him to take what he wanted. My art teacher figured he’d taken advantage of me. Naive or not, I felt very honored. Mother gave me the small sewing nook between our upstairs bedrooms for an art studio where I began oil painting.

God also gave me friends. Karen was a Catholic with long, wavy, brown hair whom I met the first day of school on the stairs down to PE. Kathy and I had fun in art class. Sandy became my dear neighbor friend. I remember talking and laughing with DeeDee and Patty in History class, which was way more fun than listening to the lecture. In Algebra, writing stories kept me awake better than doing equations. I really liked Science. In Home Economics I actually learned to sew (sort of). In English class the teacher commented to an answer I gave with, “You’re a typical teenager.” Ahhh—a balm to my teenage soul. How badly I wanted to be “typical”! I even tried to lose my Canadian accent for the same reason.

Induction into the ninth grade girls ensemble as the only eighth grader firmly established me into the church group. I also felt excited to take piano lessons. However, my first recital was horrible! All my Canadian cousins were accomplished pianists as children. As a beginner at a recital with younger children playing more complicated pieces felt so humiliating. My hands shook so badly that I made an unholy vow never to do a recital again. Although I kept taking piano and then voice lessons, I really preferred creating my own songs, and horseback riding over practicing.

At the end of the school year I was asked to sing a solo at the school talent show. Aunt June helped me learn the song, Tammy (I hear the cottonwoods whispering above, Tammy, Tammy, Tammy’s in love. . .) I was so nervous, I forgot the words to the second verse and repeated the first verse (Déjà vu). However, the kids kept clapping until the vice-principle asked for an encore. This naive, frightened, Canadian farm girl didn’t even know what an encore was. Not having grown up with television, I didn’t know what a comedian was either, which encouraged the boys to tease me unrelentingly.

Summer arrived and kids earned money in the fields for school clothes. Mom took us to pick cherries. After that season ended, Richard and I caught a school bus at 6:00 each morning to join other kids in strawberry fields where we socialized beneath the hot sun with berry fights. After that, the pole bean crops kept us until school began. It was hard labor to fill ten gallon buckets with green beans, empty them into gunny sacks, and haul them to the end of long rows to weigh. A good looking row boss gave me a nosebleed one day when he helped fill my sack. His head came up when mine went down. Embarrassment of dirty bitten nails also motivated me to stop biting them. I learned the value of money in those fields and began to evaluate everything I bought by how hard I worked for it.

I fell in love with Oregon and felt more than grateful for all the “milk and honey” God so graciously gave to me in this “Promised Land”! However, a storm raged within me and I needed to anchor to a firm foundation. God did not just want to bless me with relationships, dreams-come-true, and a land “flowing with milk and honey.” He wanted ME—ALL of me. . . .