Blue

An excerpt from Chasing Eden: A Memoir

My mother in 1972 with her parents and children surrounding her.

The biggest bonus for me in writing my childhood memoir was the opportunity to honor the important people in my life. This chapter holds one of my early memories about watching my mother go from living like normal people in a house, to living with four little kids in a 16x 24 cabin on Whidbey Island without any plumbing.

The life of Laura Ingalls Wilder intersected with mine somewhere between Whidbey Island and the banks of Plum Creek. Even though we lived a century apart, I was able to make a smooth transition from modern life to pioneer living, because Laura’s books felt like a letter from a friend. Laura and I had a lot in common. Both of our families moved a lot, and we both knew how to cook over a fire. We adored our fathers and worked hard to help our mothers while exploring the outdoors with our dogs.

It didn’t take long for Daddy to get tired of tripping over four sleeping kids to make a fire every morning, so he made a lean-to porch along the front of the cabin. He stacked the wood on one wall and built a set of double bunk beds on the other. I thought Daddy was the smartest man in the world to make furniture out of plywood. Seven-year-old Mara and I slept on the top bunk with our heads in the middle, while four-year-old Jake and three-year-old Abby slept below us. It was nice to have a bed again, but the narrow path between our bunks and the woodpile meant we often shared it with an occasional spider.

If the Persuader wasn’t hanging in its place next to the stove, I felt jumpy about wherever it might be lurking. In the clutter and chaos of six people living in a small space, it often got lost. I knew from experience it could rear its ugly head in a pile of dirty laundry or under a stack of newspapers. I never knew when it might strike, but I was beginning to realize the Persuader’s rage was triggered more by Daddy’s moods than by something I’d done. At nine years of age, I was learning to stay alert, check the climate of the room, and escape to the woods until things calmed down.

Most of my life I’d stayed safe from the Persuader by being Momma’s right-hand helper, but island life brought new rules. There wasn’t much housework. Nothing to vacuum, only one floor to sweep. One window with no glass to clean. One port-a-potty, which Momma emptied. We had even fewer dishes to wash because Momma relied on paper plates and convenience foods.

The task that took up most of our time was maintaining a fire in the stove. A constant flame was required to keep us warm, along with heating our food and water. We were never through chopping, stacking, and putting wood into the firebox. We had to feed the stove every half hour if we wanted to cook and stay warm.

Despite the coastal dampness, which permeated our bedding and curled the paper in our books, the cabin felt cozy as long as we kept the fire going. The stove was the center of our life. The fiercer the winds outside, the more the fire’s warmth drew us closer toward each other. On rainy days, we hung around the stove long after we had savored Momma’s bread and vegetable stew. If the temperature dropped too much, we huddled in multiple blankets on the king-sized bed to stay warm.

One cloudy day, I was lounging on my moss carpet, next to the hollow log where I hid my treasures. While I read my book, I maintained my solitude by ignoring Abby, who kept calling for me to play hide-and-seek. Her calls were interrupted by the sound of Daddy yelling. I wasn’t surprised to hear him angry, but when my usually quiet Momma raised her voice, I dropped my book and raced up the hill to see what was going on.

As I rounded the corner of the cabin, I saw Momma chasing Daddy with her fists clenched. In one hand was a carrot peeler, which she used to jab at him, before running behind the VW bus. Daddy ran around the bus from the opposite side, but she took another swing at him and reversed her direction.

When Daddy came around and reached toward Momma again, I heard her yell, “Don’t you dare touch me!”

I screamed, “Stop it!” and started to cry.

Daddy jumped into the bus and backed out of the driveway. Once he was gone, I followed Momma inside the cabin. She sat down on a chair, and the other kids and I gathered around her like bodyguards.

Momma was still holding the carrot peeler as if it was a lit candle. She looked like an angel I’d seen in a Christmas book, but her lips were pressed together as if she was determined to set the record straight. When she finally spoke, her tone was intense. I paid close attention.

“As a grown woman, I will never allow any man to lay a hand on me. And I hope you girls, won’t either when you grow up.”

I’d never seen Momma cry about anything. She once told me she and Daddy had made a pact to remain a united front at all times—partially to protect themselves from us kids overpowering them, but also because her own parents’ constant bickering had plagued her childhood.

“What about when Daddy uses the Persuader?”

As soon as I said it, I knew I’d spoken too fast. I could tell Momma’s anger was subsiding when, instead of answering me, she focused on a knothole in the wall. Her lips remained in a tight line while she put the carrot peeler away and stoked the fire. She slumped back into her chair before she spoke. “There’s a difference between punishing a child and punishing a grown woman.”

Momma didn’t say any more, but I could tell she wasn’t going to justify me defending myself against the Persuader.

Momma lowered her voice to a whisper. “Cherie, you can’t tell anyone about the carrot peeler, do you understand? Not Nana, not the kids at school, and especially not the pastor.” Her tone was serious and determined.

I nodded my head in agreement. When she paused, I decided to ask the big question on my mind—even though I was afraid of the answer.

“Are you and Daddy going to get a divorce like Uncle Joe and Aunt Bessie?”

Momma rolled her eyes. “What a ridiculous question! Of course not! That’s one thing you never need to worry about!”

I could tell she meant it. As if rewarding her for staying in her marriage, I tried to cheer her up. “Momma, I don’t mind living in a cabin. It’s fun to live like Little House on the Prairie.”

If I thought my words would encourage her, I was mistaken. Momma bit her lip.

“I’m the kind of woman who likes to have a place for everything and everything in its place, and it’s pretty near darned impossible to live like normal people in this cabin.”

Since we’d moved onto the island, Momma kept talking about normal people. We’d only lived in the cabin a few weeks, and I already knew all the things normal people did and didn’t do. Normal people have a refrigerator and cupboards and beds and sofas and a dining table. Normal people don’t move all the time. Normal people don’t take showers at the state park or heat water on a woodstove unless they are camping. By normal people, Momma meant her parents and grandparents. None of them had lived like this. It was hard for Momma, but she never spoke one disparaging word about Daddy.

Despite not living like normal people, Momma did her best to make the cabin look nice. As soon as Daddy brought the plywood counter inside, she’d opened her hope chest, pulled out a set of curtains with flexible rods and hung them across the edge to hide the pots and pans and food stored underneath. Those curtains gave a sense of order to the cabin, but they were not without one drawback–they also provided a place for spiders to hide.

Momma got up and shuffled through the boxes under the counter. When she screamed, I jumped out of my chair. Momma ran over to the kindling box, grabbed a piece of wood and frantically beat a spider into the plywood floor until it turned into a dark, greasy spot. She went back to the counter, found the box of food coloring, and opened the blue.

“What are you doing?” I knew the fire wasn’t hot enough to bake a cake.

Wearing a little smile on her face, Momma opened a paper sack and pulled out a long stick, and a pint-sized can with the words “latex paint. She motioned toward the unfinished sheet-rock on the kitchen wall, “I’m going to make some blue paint.”

Momma dropped a few drops of the liquid food coloring into the paint and stirred it. The color still looked white, so she dribbled a few more drops into the creamy mixture. Half a bottle later, the paint remained as pale as the sky on a cloudy day. Momma sighed. Blue was her favorite color. Ripping the lid off, she dumped the entire contents into the can of paint. When the paint turned dusky blue, Momma seemed satisfied—as satisfied as a woman can be when she’s about to paint her one finished wall with food coloring.

Momma pulled out a paintbrush and hummed a little song while she painted until she ran out of paint. It was a slight improvement over the unfinished sheetrock, but whenever I wiped the surface with a sponge, it always bled blue, causing the wall to fade in time.

For the first eight years of my life, I’d taken for granted Momma’s nurturing and hard work. She’d sewn my clothes, bought presents for my birthday, and insisted on my taking a bath every night. I’d never been hungry or cold because Momma had always provided whatever I needed. But island life had changed everything, including Momma.

She was stuck in a drafty cabin with a smoky stove and dirty floors and no hot running water unless she built a fire. She had nowhere to bathe her children unless she pulled out a metal tub and filled it and emptied it herself. She was forced to take one shower a week at the state park. If she wanted to use any appliances, including the sewing machine, she had to turn off the TV and lamp, and everyone knows you can’t sew in the dark. After every meal, if we had any leftover food, she had to put it in the cooler since we had no refrigerator. Even that had to be continually be fed more ice from Nana’s freezer.

I hadn’t thought about how much Momma’s life had changed until she pulled out that blue food coloring. Momma, who had once loved to decorate, was stuck with knotholes for décor. She had no space to bake or entertain, and most of her tools were in the shed. When I thought about all the things she couldn’t do anymore, I couldn’t blame Momma for sleeping late every morning.

I wondered how I could stay safe from the Persuader. Momma often complained about her feet hurting, so I sat down on the plywood floor, next to the dead spider and rubbed her feet. We didn’t have any lotion, but I massaged her toes through her socks.

“Don’t worry, Momma. I’ll help you! When I grow up, I’m going to buy you a house so we can live like normal people.”

I said it to cheer her up, but also because I figured that’s what Laura would say.

© 2025 Cherilyn Christen Clough All rights reserved.