A few others of Buchman’s team who had married and had children also continued “on the road” as did my parents, creating home life on the fly and bringing their children with them. Talk about commitment. Our family life can best be viewed in the light of my parent’s experiences and training during the war in the US. Seen in any other light it is very strange even in these days of international travel.
On January 2nd 1948 we flew to the States via Iceland where the plane had to make an emergency landing because of ice on the propeller blades. Signe travelled alone with her 5 month old baby. No paper diapers. No ready-made food or powdered milk. No baby bed on the plane. On top of all this, as she didn’t have enough breastmilk to satisfy me, she had heated a bottle of milk and put it in her bag of nappies to keep warm. But in those days baby bottles were not air-tight and due to changes in the cabin pressure the milk leaked all over the nappies in her bag!
When we landed in Rejkjavik, Signe rushed with me in hand to find somewhere to clean up. The restroom luckily had huge sinks with geysers of endless amounts of naturally hot water and even drying area. Signe washed and dried the nappies while a kind fellow passenger took care of me. Half an hour later everything was clean and dry and we made it back to the plane just in time for take-off!
In Washingon, Arthur had arranged for our family to stay in the home of a friend who was away on vacation – the Finnish ambassador! Arthur was hard at work with his camera and it was natural for Signe to join him, bringing me along in my basket. Arthur was soon due to report on meetings in Los Angeles and we were warmly welcomed. We travelled to California but my mother found it all emotionally challenging and longed for ’space’ for us to grow together as a family unit. Little did she know how that would happen.
We stayed for a while in a cottage in Ojai and Marge, the daughter of a friend, helped to care for me while my mother found her feet again. While we were in Ojai my parents needed to go to the dentist in Los Angeles and had planned to take me along but Buchman, was adamant that they should leave me in Ojai. They had thought it would be a short trip but the driver fell asleep at the wheel and the car plunged down a 50 feet ravine before turning over and landing back on its wheels. Arthur was thrown out of the car and couldn’t move. Signe was stuck in the car when they actually said good-bye to eachother. Meanwhile the driver was unscathed and rushed up to the road to get help. An ambulance was called and they were taken to a Seventh Day Adventist hospital where it was discovered that Arthur’s lungs were both punctured and he was not expected to live. Signe stayed with him for 3 weeks untill he was off the critical list and she could come back to me in Ojai. Signe had x-rays too but it took years before a later X-ray disclosed that two of her vertebrae had been crushed in the accident.
While my parents were in the hospital I was cared for in Ojai by Marge who brought me once to my parents for a visit. As a mother I now know how traumatic this must have been for this little 8 month old girl. At a time when a baby is tightly connected to her parents and needs to be close to her mother – mine vanished. No doubt this was challenging at this formative period in my life. But this story was a well-kept secret in our family and I never thought to ask who the driver was thinking that it was a hired car. I was 70 when I learnt that, it was a car they had been loaned and the driver was my father’s best friend, later to became my godfather.
Since I learnt these facts, I have wondered how my life was affected by this experience. The veil between life and death is thin. As a young child I developed a very strong spiritual connection. Was this when my experience of the before and after was still fluid? Was cared for spiritually?
We moved back to LA soon after this and were loaned a cottage on Seal Beach where there were real seals! We lived there for 3 months while my parents recuperated and we grew together as a family. We no longer had a car so shopping in the little town was done on foot with me sitting or sleaping in my much-loved go-cart. Signe and Arthur’s friends came to stay and brought some of my “brothers-with-their-other-mothers”! Dorothea and Erik Parfit came with Mike and Mary Jane Broadhurst with Dan and it was a happy time!
When the time came to move, my parents cleaned the cottage and waited by the road with all our belongings till the MRA hospitality team picked them up! They had no idea where they would go next and as there was a huge conference being planned in the area, our accommodation was far from optimal and I became very unhappy and unsettled waking up 4-8 times every night, hating my bed, hating my room. These experiences led Signe to see that they needed to create centers that would provide the security we children needed despite our moveable life.
After Arthur had recovered sufficiently to carry his camera bags he started to work again and covered a large conference at Riverside while we continued to live as a family. The accommodation was often challenging until we were moved to live with the Parfits at George Eastmans beautiful home on Sunset Boulevard where we kids could roam around freely. Dot and Signe talked a lot about how the needs of children could be met as they continued on the road.
At times Signe found it hard not to get too absorbed in the details so that her mind became uncreative, making her unable to fathom God’s perfect plan for us me.
I had been through some traumatic experiences as they were moved from one accommodation to another and had also been mauled by a dog. Although I generally loved animals and seemed to be happy daytime, I was terrified and demanding at night, hating my room and my bed, waking 4-8 times at night and not wanting to sleep or be alone. Signe had to face the criticism of older ladies in their team who felt that she should just fit me into her life and accept the situations in the homes where we were staying. As the original thinker she was, she was searching for a way to provide me with appropriate care to grow up in. She felt that she needed to pioneer daring and lasting ways for families to stay together as much as possible in order to bring up their children adequately, within their family environment and under healthy circumstance, spiritually and physically.
During this period she was invited to stay with Gertrud Stadtmueller who had a Montessori nursery school in California. Signe found that family life in her nursery school was quite remarkable. Gertrud loved and understood children and parents and though she didn’t have all the answers herself, she helped parents to think and act on the child’s level instead of fitting him or her into an adult’s idea of what behaviour should be.
Signe saw how that nursery school bunch of happy, considerate, well-trained 2-5 year olds, knew directly in their hearts how to behave, rather than being imposed on. She longed to find a way of creating this framework for the children of the MRA task-force as they moved around the world so the children remained secure as they travelled from one center to another, free to play and run around without being controlled or scared by adults they didn’t know. She envisaged several small units in the main centers like in California, Caux and London where the parents knew they could be with their children or keep an eye nearby.
Signe and Dot planned to leave California and join their husbands in Caux after Christmas and leading up to this move they started to create a plan for the care of the task-force children in Caux the following summer. At this point the families included in the mobile task force were the Parfits, Broadhursts, Jaegars, Thornhills and Caulfeilds.
Signe never stopped being amazed at how we children were unique “little people” and God’s creation. Yes, we were rascals and had minds of our own but she found that when they as parents were reasonable and sought guidance from above, so did we.
She wrote to her friend Elizabeth in Europe and suggested that they try this in Caux as a prototype for other centers in the world where the task-force took us as families. While she recognized that separations could certainly deepen relationships, “Both to your man, to God and others.” she could also see how important it was for couples to be together with their children at this important time in their developing relationships.
Meanwhile, Signe was pretty penniless and worried about the winter clothes she needed to get for us for the winter months in Switzerland. The day before we were due to leave, Gertrud took care of me so Signe could go shopping. She needed so many things but all she came back with was some things for me for the boat trip and a red belt for herself. When she got back several of her friends and parents of the nursery school children had come to say good bye. She was longing to go off and pack but her friends stayed and stayed. Finally one of them said “Aren’t you going to go and pack?” and so with great relief Signe headed for the bedroom – but to her initial dismay they all followed! When she opened the door there was a huge array of winter clothes on the bed! New clothes and beautiful used ones that fit perfectly! These gifts from her friends met every need that we had and the red belt was the perfect addition to her new winter collection!
We spent five months at Caux before flying to Norway in August just in time for my second birthday. By now Signe had packed our bags and moved 82 times since I was born and after the time with Gertrud, Signe recognized that we needed to stay longer in each place to avoid the many changes that I was becoming more and more aware of as I grew older.
While Arthur continued with the task force, we spent the following winter with my grandparents, at Thomas Heftyesgate, in Oslo. I learnt to speak Norwegian and experienced life like other Norwegian children who go to the park to take part in the outdoor nursery school.
Signe wanted me to feel just as home speaking Norwegian as English. She had grown up with young girls from the North of Norway helping out in the Lund family in Stockholm enabling her and her sisters to grow up speaking perfect Swedish and Norwegian, which is unusual. So while she was in Oslo, she took a page out of the Lund family book and sought out a young Norwegian who could be part of and travel with our family. There were many people who became part of our family at different times but Inger Östmo was the first. She was 18 when she first met me in Oslo. She stayed with us for several years till she went on to train as a Fröbel teacher. She eventually used her experiences with me in her teacher’s thesis.
“To begin with Ingrid was quite reserved and I took over gradually. Many weeks went by before she accepted me completely and trusted me fully. But once it was done it was truly done! I remember Ingrid that summer as a chubby, healthy kid, full of energy and high spirits. She loved to play with boys who were as robust, or even more so, than she was. Ingrid looked like a true Norwegian with fair straight hair, blue eyes with long dark lashes, a round fresh face and a strongly built agile body. Her little English friend Hilary was her oposite: small and delicate and fond of imaginary games. Ingrid on the other hand was reality in person. She loved playing on the swings, pushing her wagon and physical play. She loved animals and loved people. She had a big warm heart – but a very strong will, and she had a terrible pride. About the hardest thing she knew was to say sorry. It still is so.
The concept of “mine and yours” were strong and she had a hard time understanding why she should lend her things to others. But she soon learned. She was learning to dress and undress and loved taking clean clothes out of the cupboard and put them on. Clothes had become one of her great interests. There were no limits to her questions! During the following winter I was alone with Ingrid a good deal of the time in Caux. She began to understand more of who Jesus was and to love him. One day she said, ‘Are there two Jesuses? One in Oslo and one here? Or maybe he walks in heaven from here to Oslo?’
Not all the people who came from Norway to live with us were a hit! There was one girl who I am sad to say I couldn’t stand. One evening when my parents went to eat dinner with friends, I can remember hiding behind the bathroom door and standing on the edge of the bathtub, and to my shame, I gave her a whack with the toilet brush and told her so. She never returned.
From then on the Norwegian and English languages developed side by side. Even if I sometimes used English words while speaking Norwegian, I knew instinctively with whom I should speak English or Norwegian and refused to speak the “wrong” language! Some of my parents’ friends had spent time in Norway and liked to try out their Norwegian on me but I always responded in English!
After the previous year’s attempt to create a safe environment for children in Caux, Signe and her friends now knew that this was one of the places where we kids could feel at home. As summer 1950 approached we rejoined Arthur in Caux – reinforced by a new generation of ‘little revolutionaries’ as my mother called us, including Mike, Dan, Hilary and several other well-known and new playmates. This time we stayed in Chalet de la Foret with another couple who had been part of the task force in America, John and Ellie Vickers, and their daughter Ginny.
Chalet de la Foret was just down the path from the English protestant church where I was baptized that summer, along with several other children. Signe and Arthur wanted Buchman, a Lutheran minister, to baptize me and this was the first opportunity. David Channer was my godfather and Eithne Viney my godmother. David was a fellow photographer and my father’s close friend. My parents never told me but he was also my parents’ driver from Ojai! A few days later we walked by the church and someone commented that that was where I was baptised – I said “My wibbon” commenting on the woven band in my hair that got wet!
My very first memory is from Caux at the age of three rolling down the huge grasscovered slope and being stung by a bee! This probably stuck in my miind because of the huge bubble of a blister that followed. The doctor lanced the blister holding a kidney shaped enamelled metal dish to catch the juice! Strange how certain things stand out in your mind!
Those of us whose parents worked on the task force didn’t have our own homes. The families we stayed with had a home or center where we were welcomed and became part of their family network for a time. But then when it was time to move on, we would move on to stay with another family in another town or country. If we went places it was for our parents to do a job or to visit team-mates and we usually stayed together at someone’s home. Often somewhere that housed lots of us in one place. In fact my parents didn’t have a home of their own home till I was 27 and about to be married. We stayed with other families when we weren’t travelling and we didn’t have a car of our own till I was in my teens.
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