Gayla Marty

Twelve days of Christmas

In the long school break for Christmas during fifth grade, I wrote my first long story, a chapter book called "The Twelve Days of Christmas." I wrote it to entertain myself, using a stack of beautiful paper that our substitute teacher gave to me when she cleaned out her supply closet before the break.

On the farm, I felt the lack of a sister. In this photo taken that Christmas, I'm surrounded by my brothers and boy cousin—it would be two years before my girl cousin would arrive. My best friend lived half a mile away, quite a distance in the winter.

So in the story, I dreamed up two girls, best friends, Lottie and Susie. They lived in a big orphanage in a big city, waiting to be adopted. I was inspired by hearing the song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas," and I was curious. Our congregation of Baptists did not make much of the liturgical calendar, so the idea of extending Christmas for twelve days was very appealing.

After that, I kept writing. I always thought maybe someday I might publish a book, but it took me awhile. This year, I'm grateful to so many people who made it possible. Happy new year!

Marty children, Christmas 1968. Photo by Gordon Marty.

Christmas eve

Christmas 1960 we celebrated in the big house where the newlyweds, Auntie and Uncle, lived with Gramma Marty. But Gramma Marty was gone that year—she had gone to spend Christmas with a relative in California, partly to get some relief for her arthritis. Auntie and Uncle had the house to themselves. They invited Gramma and Grampa Anderson and us.

Only a year before, we had lost Grampa Marty. The premie twins had been spending their first month—including Christmas 1959—in the hospital. Since then, the twins had grown into normal active toddlers, and the family had gained a daughter-in-law.

In this photograph taken by my dad, I see Auntie and Uncle's hi-fi record player, left rear. I see their long-needle tree. I see Auntie's hand-tooled leather purse. I see Gramma Anderson and I remember what it felt like to sit on her lap. She was the Santa Clause in our family...it didn't take me long to figure that out.

Our family always opened presents on Christmas Eve. We didn't go to church unless it was a Sunday. Gramma and Grampa made the circuit, going to each of their four children's homes, all within two miles of their house.

In January 1961, Gramma Marty would come home from California and fill a scrapbook with mementos from the rose parade in Pasadena. Her arthritis would get worse. And before long, the house would be divided up, with an upstairs kitchen for her and a remodeled downstairs kitchen for Auntie Lou.

Gramma Marty broke the news to me about Santa Claus so early on that I don't remember believing in him. But we kept getting presents from Santa Claus under the tree, delivered to our houses that had no fireplaces, apparently in advance of his annual sleigh ride. I recognized the handwriting by the time I was four or five, and I loved Gramma Anderson all the more for being anonymous.

Christmas 1960, Marty farm. Photo by Gordon Marty.

Solstice

Minneapolis, view from Coffman Union, east bank, Dec. 21, 2010, 5:30 p.m.

What I remember from winter nights on the farm is darkness. What I know of winter nights in the city is light.

The solstice occurred today in Minneapolis just after 5:30 p.m. The day was snowy, so we didn't see the sun set about 4:30. Darkness just fell, quickly.

I went to an after-work gathering at Coffman Union. I left the group for a few minutes, walked into the dark west wing and took this photo facing west. From left to right, you can see Comstock Hall (where I lived as a freshman in 1976-77), the Washington Avenue bridge over the Mississippi River, the city in the background, the Weisman Art Museum in the foreground (its new galleries under construction), and our new Science Teaching and Student Services building on the right.

It's one of our snowiest Decembers, but Minnesota is known for this, after all. Just last night, our new campus football stadium hosted the NFL game because the canvas roof of our downtown stadium caved under an earlier snowfall. Walking to the bus, I got a glimpse of the stadium lit up like a snow globe and heard the roar of the crowd in the night.

Tonight I took a different bus home, through downtown, and walked part of the way home, crossing back over the Mississippi on Hennepin Avenue. The river channel is still open, spooky and dark. Here the wild feeling remains, that brooding darkness moving through the city.

This is my home now. I have lived here far longer than I lived on the farm. The snow crunches under my feet. Passing the park, I hear the slap-click-clap of a hockey puck and the slice of skates. I came to love that sound from watching my son play on park-board teams in this city of parks.

I love the country, and I love the city too.

Earth in orbit passes a point, and the length of our days and nights stands still, then reverses. Blessed solstice.

Mississippi River, view south from the Hennepin Avenue bridge, Dec. 21, 2010, 8:15 p.m. Nikon digital by Gayla Marty.

Digging out

It's not a great photo, but I love it anyway. This is my dad around the age of 13, out shoveling the path between unseen buildings, the farmhouse on the right and the woodshed and outhouse on the left. You can barely see the handle of his shovel above the drifts.

Behind Dad is the cedar tree that his own dad loved and his mom disliked. To the left are the granary, tractor shed, and little milk house and windmill, all surrounded by impossibly high drifts.

Today we're digging ourselves out from a big snowstorm in Minneapolis. The main problem is freeing our cars. Dad's chore in 1950 was more basic and urgent—hygiene and heat.

Gordon Marty shoveling snow on the Marty farm, ca. 1950. Photo from an album of Viola Marty.

Snowed in

So many of my gramma Viola's photographs are vistas of snow, huge piles of it, hanging on evergreens or plowed into towering white walls. As a rule, her other photos included people, but she didn't seem to think the winter photos required them.

This photo is undated but the caption is in her hand. I think she took it on the way to the mailbox, a view of the south bank looking east.

Tonight we've got a humdinger in Minneapolis-St. Paul and points south. The airport has closed, and so many buses got stuck that Metro Transit parked the rest. There's a comeraderie among anybody outside, freeing stuck cars, giving a lift to somebody stranded. Pat's on the road but I'm not alone, I'm surrounded by neighbors, by houses with lights on inside...connected by phone and internet besides.

I can only imagine the isolation on the farm in those days during a snowstorm of any magnitude, the wonder of the next morning, the awe that lies at the heart of the word awful. Winter is so much larger than we are.

Pine-Chisago county line, Minnesota, ca. 1930s or '40s. Photo by Viola Marty.

Double blessings

My mother didn’t know until a couple of weeks before her second baby was due that she would have twins. Two heartbeats. When my brothers were born, six weeks premature, their total weight was less than my birth weight of about eight and a half pounds.

It was touch-and-go there for a while with 1959 technology in a small-town hospital. But they had a healthy mother, two grandmothers (one next door), and plenty of aunties.

Before long, they looked like this. It's a photo captured by Daddy and Uncle's cousin, Oliver, at a family celebration. Despite the fact that Uncle Gaylon’s eyes were closed in the background, Mom could never throw it away. Two sets of brothers, two generations. And the twins were sleeping! Quiet and still.

They came into a family full of pairs. Dad and his brother farmed in partnership as Marty Brothers and were married to the Anderson sisters. Before them, the previous generation of Marty Brothers ran the farm, which had two barns and two houses. Gramma Marty had a pair of bachelor brothers on her home place a couple miles east.

There was a joke about the water near our farm because a set of triplets lived a mile west of us and another set of twins was born to our neighbors to the south a few years later.

Bruce and Blaine were a year old when major-league baseball came to Minnesota in 1961. The team was named the Twins for the twin river cities 60 miles south of our farm, Minneapolis and St. Paul. In the 1970s, researchers at the University of Minnesota began to study twins and established a Minnesota twin registry.

What’s more, the Bible had twins in it—two sets in the book of Genesis—and therefore offered some perspective. Jacob and Esau were the most famous, with a rivalry that made our twins seem downright angelic. Zerah and Perez, the sons of Tamar, were another pair of contenders. In the Christian gospels, Thomas was a twin, although it was never clear who or where the other twin was, which was kind of disturbing.

The story goes that my Marty grandparents disagreed about whether to support my dad going to college and seminary or to let him stay on the farm in order to ensure its future. Their older son had gone into the army, and Grampa had cancer before he let on to anyone else about it, so he prevailed in blessing my parents’ marriage.

But when my parents had a girl (me), Gramma took it as a sign that Dad could go to seminary after all. He was a bookworm, the class valedictorian—it was obvious. To her, my arrival meant the call could be answered.

Not so fast—Mom was expecting again in a little more than a year. This time it would be a boy, Grampa declared to the family. He somehow managed to have his Christmas shopping done early and bought the new baby a riding tractor—which, for a man who never gave up his horses, was something.

By the time Mom gave birth, Grampa was gone, but a set of twin boys gave him the last word anyway.

There’s no doubt that twins gave our whole family a sparkle. Look how proud Dad looks in this photo. I grew up hearing stories from him and Uncle as well as complete strangers about our late great-uncle Sam, Grampa’s brother, a fun-loving storyteller and extrovert. Having Bruce and Blaine was like have two Sams. I have always thought that somehow they inherited his huge spirit, larger than life.

Marty brothers photo by Oliver Westman at Hjalmer and Julia (Hendrickson) Westman's 40th wedding anniversary, Rock Creek, Minnesota, fall 1962. Kodachrome.