A Pint of Cream
... and so much more
Reformation Sunday this year is also “Phyllis Sunday” in the small country church where we’ll gather for worship… where extended family members of mine have gathered to sing “A Mighty Fortress” since Six Mile Grove Lutheran Church was founded in 1859. For 60 years, Phyllis has been the organist at this church or at the other country church, Mona Lutheran, two faith communities straddling the Iowa-Minnesota state line, five miles apart, yoked together since the Mona congregation began 17 years after Six Mile Grove. (My Norwegian forebearers were founders of both churches.)
Recently, I was asked “to say a few words” to celebrate Phyllis’s faithfulness. Here’s what I pulled together.
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I never knew my great-grandmother, Lena Martin Hanson, Dad’s grandma on his mother’s side, although our lives overlapped briefly. By the time of my birth, she was my only living “blood” great-grandparent of the eight possibilities. (I had a step-great-grandmother who married Mom’s grandfather a half-dozen years before his death in the mid-1930s. But that’s not quite the same.)
Mom attended Lena Hanson’s funeral pregnant with my brother, who is 18 months younger than me, which puts me around a year old when she died. I know of no photos of me in my great-grandma’s arms, although I suspect she probably held me once or twice. I’ve seen photos of her… but not the two of us together.
This great-grandmother of mine, “Grandma Lena” as Dad called her, was a remarkable woman. She gave birth to seven children who lived to adulthood. Sadly, Lena’s husband, John, died young of cancer, which meant she parented these children largely on her own, including my great-uncles Francis and Lloyd, who lived near this wonderful church and raised their families in this same rural township.
Lena’s oldest child, a daughter, Clara, was born in 1896. And Clara’s firstborn – Lena’s oldest grandchild – was Ervin. Born in 1924, Ervin Helgeson served our country in World War II and, for our focus here today, had the uncommon good sense to marry Phyllis Dockstader, from Otranto Township on the Iowa side of the state line, 75 years ago, in 1948.
Now Grandma Lena was what you might call a full-blooded Norwegian: modest, hard-working, decisive… a much nicer word than stubborn. That her first grandchild, Ervin, would choose to marry outside the one true heritage – Norwegian – apparently didn’t sit too well with Grandma Lena. (Furthermore, marrying someone of German descent, gasp.) This tidbit comes from an unimpeachable source, Phyllis Dockstader Helgeson, who we honor here today.
But Phyllis and Ervin were patient. Periodically, they’d swing by to visit Grandma Lena. And then, a year or two into their marriage, one time when just Phyllis stopped by, upon leaving, Grandma Lena said, “Oh, wait, I have something for you,” and gifted her a pint of cream.
Of course, that little jar represented much more than something skimmed off the morning’s milk. This was the cream of acceptance. This was “welcome to our family”. This was love… and what’s not to love?
By my reckoning, dear Phyllis has served as church organist, first at Six Mile Grove, then at Mona, for approximately 60 years, give or take, I’m not exactly certain. Cream is an appropriate metaphor here, since it rises to the top, the visible “tip of the iceberg”. What we can’t always see in the person at the keyboard is years of solitary practice. Practice – not just practice for weekly worship, but rather practice starting in childhood, in the parlor, on the upright. Scales. Lessons. Practice. Repeat, week after week, year after year.
Also invisible are choices: an appropriate seasonal prelude, an offertory, the postlude. It’s one thing to select, quite another to run through these pieces, perhaps not having played them for several years, only to find muscle memory is somewhat faulty. Maybe ten more minutes of practice.
We don’t see the organist jotting down page numbers for Sunday’s hymns. And learning which liturgical setting will be used. Or hearing there might be special music. “Wait, am I to play for them? (Interesting term, ‘play.’ for it’s not really ‘play’ when the selection is unfamiliar… AND in three sharps!) So, when will they decide? Will they let me know? Will I get the music ahead of time? When will they practice? I’m busy on Saturday morning…” Etc., etc.
Imagine, sixty years of this. Unfailingly handled with grace. With a smile and good cheer. With an attitude of acceptance. And faithfulness. And love.
I not only wanted to attend today, Phyllis, I wanted to mark the occasion by giving you something. Maybe the piano bench… or perhaps the handsome organ bench. I know you know them both. But, of course, they’re not mine to give. Hmmm, what might I contribute as a symbol of love for this wonderful woman?
Borrowing an idea from Grandma Lena, here it is… a grade-A dairy product, love in a humble Ball jar. With heartfelt gratitude, Phyllis, for sixty glorious years.
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I’m pleased to be part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. These are my colleagues:
How fortunate the churches are to have Phyllis for such an incredibly long time. The organist at our Congregational church in Osage showed me where she kept the key to the organ when I was a teenager, and she and a succession of ministers pretended they didn't know how often I came in at night to "practice."
Very rarely does the role of the church musician get such loving attention. Thank you.