THE FAMILY GNOME

The gnome in this photo resides here at the homestead, but he hasn’t always lived here. When I first came to know him, he lived in the yard of 534 Brown Avenue, Orofino, where I grew up. I was told that he was there in 1945 when the Walrath family moved into the house. Holding a fishing pole in his right hand, he sat in the rock garden presiding over the fish pond. Yes, there was a fish pond there. Mother said she had it drained and filled with rock before I was born. “Why?” I asked incredulously. “Because I didn’t want any baby girls to fall into it and drown,” Mother replied with conviction.

So, the gnome sat around the “side yard” for many years, but about the time I began junior high, I asked if I could have a garden of my own. Mother was delighted and designated the space under the kitchen window as my garden. Every summer until I finished at U-I, I kept that little garden. And the little elf gnome came to live there. He was badly faded by the 1960s, so I painted him, and it came to feel like he was mine. When Mother moved from the house in 1991, she suggested I might take him to my house. “Maybe he should stay here,” I said. But both Mother and Joni shook their heads. “No, you take him,” Joni said.

When we sold our house on Broadview Drive in Lewiston, the gnome was among the first things I loaded into the pick-up to go to the farm. Now he sits in my little shade garden. Once again he is badly faded. But today is his lucky day! I brought little jars of paint with me to give him new life.