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GOODBYE AND HELLO

When Vida is not yet five years old, Uncle Ogden comes for her in Los Angeles. Her father, Louis, a twenty-seven-year-old police officer, has been killed in the line of duty. She’s never known her mother, who died in childbirth. Theirs is a family that has thinned out generation by generation, and no one is left to take her but her sole uncle, who is in fact her great-uncle, brother to her mother’s mother.

Ogden is seventy-one, tall and fit. But for his snow-white hair and seamed face, he looks as though he might be the star of that old movie, To Kill a Mockingbird . His impressive vitality, direct stare, patient manner, and tendency to speak directly and succinctly, using silence as if it were itself a word, intimidates the child-welfare bureaucrats who would prefer to deny him custody if only to confirm their power. However, in his will, Vida’s father leaves everything to Ogden and strongly expresses that his daughter should be awarded to her great-uncle. No one can claim that Ogden is motivated to take custody of the child because of the wealth that comes with her. Once the mortgage and other debts are paid, her inheritance totals just sixteen thousand dollars. A hearing is conducted, during which the old man’s determination to do what Louis asked of him convinces the judge and the masters of the system that he will exhaust them with his persistence if they don’t relent on their desire to consign the girl to a torturous series of foster homes.

Although Ogden could have driven her to his mountain home in two days, he makes a four-day journey of it in the Ford F-1 pickup, showing Vida the wonders of nature en route and providing her with simple but charming pleasures that are new to her. A petting zoo. A church carnival where he throws baseballs at tenpins and wins a teddy bear. Her first experience of snow and first snowball fight.

Our memories from early childhood are far from indelible; they fade until, by our late teens, if not before, they are like yellowed photographs from a previous century. However, though Vida remembers little about her heroic father and nothing about the house where she lived with him, her memories of that journey from Los Angeles remain vivid more than twenty years after the fact.

By the time Uncle Ogden brings her home, she knows that she is safe and that he will never fail her.

The house in the forest is out of a fairy tale. Many weeks pass before it seems more real than magical. As the years go by, the place holds for her—and always will—a quiet enchantment.

In preparation for Vida’s arrival, her uncle has added a second armchair and lamp to the library. Under the window stands a twin bed with a cream-colored chenille spread, and folded across the foot of it is a beautifully patterned Pendleton blanket in soft blues and grays and rich red. For years to come, on many an evening, they sit in this room while he reads to her. When she is older, each of them settles down with a different book in a shared, comfortable quiet. Through thirteen years of primeval nights, as owls make their queries and wolves celebrate the moon, she sleeps here; sometimes lulled by the rataplan of rain on the roof, sometimes by a soughing wind that ferries snow across the mountains, she sleeps; in quiet weather and in storms, she sleeps encompassed by the amazing people who live within the pages of the books that are shelved on every wall of the room. When she dreams of those storied souls, she feels watched over by the kindest of them, and she does not fear those who are unkind because this is her uncle’s house into which the wicked dare not venture out of their chapters.

If Vida’s first view of her new home charmed her (as very much it had), and if the library-bedroom delighted her (of which there was no doubt), her uncle’s workroom intrigued her no less than might the quarters of a venerable magician and seer. The arcane tools and devices on his workbench—a dop, a lapidary’s magnifying glass, a tumbler-polisher, a variety of grinders, a small lathe with a diamond blade—are mysterious, but the contents of the shallow drawers in his product cabinet are what most inspire wonder.

Some of the drawers are lined with black velvet, others with white, and all are divided into compartments. The gemstones—sorted by variety, size, and color—are displayed against whichever velvet best presents them. Perhaps two-thirds are small, but others are large enough to be cut for centerpiece stones in pendants, brooches, and rings. The sapphires come in several colors—shades of green, yellow, blue, and red. There are gems of other kinds—topaz, garnet, amethyst, and chrysoberyl.

The stones in a natural state are dull compared to those that have been cut and polished, but all of them dazzle young Vida. At first, she thinks her uncle must be rich. She will learn that placer mining of gemstones such as these, including their preparation for sale to makers of jewelry and decorative items, can reliably provide a middle-class living and allow for the accumulation of savings by a freelance prospector like Ogden, for as long as the deposit lasts; however, his only chance of getting rich is to unearth a few megagems of splendid brilliance and without unfortunate inclusions, which is unlikely to happen. Meanwhile, there is the hard work of panning the placer mine and long hours in the workshop.

The first night that she sleeps in her new home, in spite of the delight she has taken in this place, she weeps for her lost father, who is trapped in her dreams and can never know the joys of this new life of hers. Once, she comes awake to find that a reading lamp is switched on and turned low. Her uncle sits in an armchair, watching her. Maybe he is some kind of magician and seer, for he knows what misery sleep has brought her. He has a soothing voice that rumbles on the low notes when he says, “It’s all right, child. He’s safe now, and he knows that you are, too.” When she slips once more into slumber, her dad is there to say goodbye. He walks away into the faceted light of a gem, which shines brighter with him in it. At least for that night, she weeps no more in her dreams.