Godparents

For most of us, one set of parents is sufficient.  Perhaps the Lord knew it would take two additional people to raise me.  In 1941, Jack and Mary Jane Nielson moved to Bishop to teach music.  My parents soon afterward joined the LDS church, and that joined them to the Nielsons.

Mary Jane, who was soon pregnant, suffered through a stillborn birthing. There was no hospital and no time to get to LA.  Mom helped the doctor, but there was nothing anyone could do in those days before ultrasound and pre-natal check-ups.  On the table, still dazed and damaged, Mary Jane took the news with a hardy soul: “We’ll manage; we still have Larry.”  At that moment, I became adopted, swept under a second umbrella of love—and discipline.

The poignant memory of helping Jack build and cast the headstone for the child would not flee from me.  It was my first encounter with death, which seemed to be the smell of wet cement, a small square of it, inscribed with a child’s name, which I don’t remember.  I never saw the grave.

In a miraculous way, Jack filled the vacuum my dad created. Buried in a new business adventure [liquid gas] and often drawn away by the sirens of fly fishing when he had a break, Dad left me [unconsciously, I think] to Jack.

Jack was a Renaissance Man.  He played several instruments and brought half a dozen home over the years for Dad to "learn."  Dad, of course, was not focused enough to take lessons or even master the art of reading music.  He was a “play by ear man,” filling the house with the sounds of clarinet, saxophone, guitar melodies, and, in time, a piano he purchased.

But it was Jack who made me a pair of skis, spending hours cutting, soaking, bending, and even creating bindings.  Then as soon as we had 5 inches of snow, he pulled me behind his car in vacant lots and down empty streets.

My first of two fishing trips in Bishop was with Jack.  I yanked with gusto a 5 lb. trout out of Crowley Lake.  A few weeks later, Jack, Mary Jane, Dad and I went back up to Crowley Lake with the boat Jack had built.

My dad, who had never water-skied, rolled up his khakis and buzzed behind Jack, who drove, while the rest of us cheered.  He never spilled; was barely wet.  Mom?  Home with my brother, Gene I guess, listening to the wind.

My first day of kindergarten, I walked the two blocks to Jack and Mary Jane’s, and from there, Jack and I went off to school.  Every day.  Occasionally, he would take me down to a dank basement at the school where supplies filled the shelves.  I can still remember the smell of the raw cement, the smell of wood pencils and the faint odor of paper and glue.


Mary Jane was tall, black-haired and beautiful.  She took care of the choral work at the elementary school, so she and Jack and I were often in school functions.  Larry, the ersatz child, riding shotgun.  No other babies came to them.


My memories of Mary Jane are fleeting, yet poignant.  With her at JC Penney’s, I saw and heard for the first time the elaborate aerial wire change system.  No cash registers:  The clerk relayed the money in a small plastic jug to the lady “upstairs” behind the glass.


With Mary Jane nearby, Larry stayed on a short leash.  She actually had a pancake turner [a spatula today] but never used it. One look from those fiery eyes and a pat on the purse [where the pancake turner lay hidden], and I was on target immediately.

We were often all together.  Dad, lying on the floor, his favorite conversation posture, the lights low, Jack and Mary Jane and Mom sitting on the couch or in a rocking chair.  Always talking and laughing.  We were two families, together, safe and snug in our little wind-swept village at the foot of the mighty Sierras.

One Easter, I went with them to Gridley, California, where  they both had parents.  My first trip anywhere except Del Mar to see Grandma.  Later, Jack and I would drive 10 miles to Manzanar to help Grandpa deliver liquid fuel to that infamous retention camp. I saw a sea of light-brown faces.  Twenty years later, I learned what Manzanar and retention were.

The other day, I wrote of those intervening angels who enter our lives and change us or save us.  I know Mom’s sister-relationship with Mary Jane saved her.  Later, when we moved within 15 miles of her blood sister, Irene, she missed her “real” sister, Mary Jane even more.  Irene could never find the time to visit—not once.  We did the visiting, always finding her puffy-eyed, feeling her way through an alcohol fog.  That situation and Mom’s growing affection for spiritual things froze all chances of an enduring relationship with her sister.

And Jack was my other father.  He filled the gaps Dad couldn’t fill. He was the one who, after we built our first home, came over and followed through, doing the stuff Dad would never even see: thresholds in the doorways, handles on doors, a latch here, a bracket there.  He was the Great Finisher.  Yes, he played a critical role as one who helped me along the way as one of many “authors and finishers of my faith” [Paul].

Mary Jane drove down alone to LA for my wedding in the LDS temple.  Jack was ill.  But I had two mothers, a royal, rare gift.  Now that they are gone, they reside in a better place together.  I'm sure they get together occasionally and talk about the "Bishop days."  Maybe even the wind.


I hope my Godparents miss me half as much as I miss them.