Provenance ii

That one is, I believe, among the most beautiful portraits I've ever taken, and it wasn't the least bit posed. A smile is breaking across her sunlit face from some thought. She's hanging up dish towels to dry, and the weather is fine for the retreat. 

Sometime during my stay in Emo, at the Veldhuisens, an idea came to me--why not tell what I could of their story? What seemed to me a beautiful family--15 kids!-- bears for neighbors out in what Canadians still call "the bush," an immigrant Dutch-Canadian couple, passionate about faith and so selfless that their medium-sized farm house, just down the road from town (just as Jake described), was two-story house big enough to put up all those kids, the retreat speaker, and a half-dozen kids from Thunder Bay--why not try to tell their story? The Veldhuisens were big people, not physically but in every other measurable way; and I was blessed--and I knew it even while I was there--to stay with them for these few retreat days.

I remember little of the retreat, but two images come immediately to mind. One has to do with play--it was rough-and-tumble and totally sexless. In the afternoon's free time, the whole bunch played soccer, men and women. Jake turned out to be as rangy as he'd sounded on the phone. I remember him tackling--tackling--one of the girls when she had the ball. No big deal. She got back to her feet, never gave him a look, and went back to the game. When I thought back to church stuff when I was a kid, what came to mind was "winkum," a dinky parlor game, not soccer, no-holds-barred. These were immigrant Dutch-Canadian kids, and very few of them were 13. Some were, but Jake was old enough to drink beer, and likely did.

The other image was an inescapable feature of the old church, something I'd seen only in my dad-in-law's grain bin. Emo CRC stood just across the river from the States. By any measure at all it was nothing fancy. A firmly cinched steel cable right over the center pews held the walls together. It was no cathedral, but I remember being nervous when I looked over a big crowd in such a little place. I hope what I did and said was memorable in some way--I have no idea.

What I do remember is that it was a joy to be there for just a couple of days, to share life with a beautifully devout wilderness family. 

Sometime while a was there, the emerging writer in me began whispering that hundreds--maybe even thousands--of others would be greatly blessed if they too could visit a farmhouse in the bush filled with all these people and this impossibly gregarious couple. "You ought to tell their story," that writer's voice kept saying. "This is really something. This is wild. This is great."

I must have taken a camera along because I took pictures, not of the retreat but of the Veldhuisen place. Hence, that portrait up at the top of the page. If I say I admired Mom and Dad Veldhuisen, it gets nowhere near describing how they stirred my soul. What emerged from that Emo weekend was a story that starts like this. I'll reprint it all tomorrow.

Brown sugar melts quickly into the ladleful of por­ridge Nick Veldhuisen slaps down in the bowl of anyone who happens in for breakfast. The coffee is hot and strong--Canadian strong; it can barely be swal­lowed black. The eggs are fried in a broad iron skillet, and the children eat their eggs on toast like their father, cutting it up into a hot sandwich, lightly pep­pered. The raw milk is cold and thick, just brought in from the cooler in the barn. The toast is store-bought, but the light gold honey is from the hives, the same hives that attract the bears. The bears catch the scent of the fresh honey and wander in from the "bush." The bush is the wilderness, and the wilderness sits like a stubborn landlord all around the Veldhuisen dairy.

When I read that opening paragraph over forty years later, I can't help but remember how super-confident I was, totally inexperienced, but a true believer that recreating the Emo experience was blessed. 

More of the story tomorrow.