Betsie and Martha

Martha Ballard, The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

Wife, mother, homemaker, homesteader, midwife, friend. This is a fictional account of the very real Martha Ballard, who left behind not only a huge family but also her journals. I loved the way she was presented in this book as a woman at home first; a woman raising her children and loving her husband first. I loved her workshop! It seemed like such a cozy place. I loved her herbal knowledge and her knowledge about women and giving birth. I love how the act of giving birth overcame so many inner personal problems between the women.

I loved the big, happy, protective family. You don’t see that very often anymore. You don’t see marriage portrayed as something good, or children, or the home. It was refreshing to read a book where that took up so many pages. I loved that Martha was a woman in her 50s with grandchildren. That she had roots and experience. I loved the production of the home and of Martha and her daughters. Quilts, candles, food, and herbal remedies abounded. They always made what the family needed and then more for giving away or bartering.

“Yet each young bride finds herself in a new home and does not know how to make it her home. This, a simple piece of bedding, is the answer. Everyone must sleep, and to do so beneath a warm quilt, tenderly made, is the first thing that makes a house a home.”

My favorite part, though, was the drumbeat through the journal entries of “I have been at home.” Martha’s journal entries were only a few lines about the weather, births and deaths, and then often this refrain, “I have been at home.” This is the last line of the book and it made me tear up. You can tell that being at home, taking care of her people, being with her people was her favorite thing. That nourished me for several days.

This isn’t a life-changing book or even a great book. The murder investigation was a distraction. The book suffered from a bit of the same thing many criminal procedurals do: the person investigating ends up doing unrealistic things. I found Martha’s continued obsession with the murder to feel unreasonable. I felt like the book was about fifty pages too long. There is a fair amount of mocking of men throughout the book. It is by no means a perfect or great book. But it was a nourishing weekend read, reminding me of the beauty of what I do and what women before me have done. I think reading her journals would be fascinating.

Betsy and Corrie, The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boon

I have so many quotes flagged in my poor little paperback copy of this book, that it looks silly. I listened to this book while knitting, cooking, and cleaning, often with tears, and then immediately purchased a copy for myself and started reading it with pen in hand.

When I first read this book as a teen, I associated most strongly with Corrie. It’s Corrie’s story. Corrie is the brave one, the one who has the adventures and the one who survives. I wanted to be like Corrie. Not this time. Don’t get me wrong, Corrie is amazing and I’m thankful for her and her story. But reading this book through the eyes of a woman invested in her home, this time Betsie stood out. (I think Corrie would approve of that.)

Then I was abreast of the door. Betsie’s back was to the corridor. I could see only the graceful up swept bun of her chestnut hair. The other women in the cell stared curiously into the corridor; her head remained bent over something in her lap. But I had seen the home Betsie had made in Scheveningen. [The Dutch Prison.]

For unbelievably, against all logic, this cell was charming. My eyes seized only a few details as I inched reluctantly past. The straw pallets were rolled instead of piled in a heap, standing like little pillars along the walls, each with a lady’s hat atop it. A headscarf had somehow been hung along the wall. The contents of several food packages were arranged on a small shelf; I could just hear Betsie saying, “The red biscuit tin here in the center!” Even the coats hanging on their hooks were part of the welcome of that room, each sleeve draped over the shoulder of the coat next to it like a row of dancing children—

We believe that HearthKeepers can make a home anywhere and in any circumstances. Here is proof. Betsie made even her prison cell homey, welcoming, and beautiful.

One of the things I found fascinating as I read this book, that impacted me greatly, was Corrie talking about color and beauty and how starved she felt of it in prison. Even in the concentration camps, she notices the seasonal changes, the beauty of nature, but in the prison, she is starved of beauty and color.

A birthday had to mean a party, but I searched in vain for a single cheerful object. At least in the other cell there had been bright bits of clothing; the baroness’ red hat, Frau Mikes’ yellow blouse. How I regretted now my own lack of taste in clothes.

Have you ever thought, HearthKeeper, about how important color is? Have you ever thought that even what you wear might be as vital as bringing color to your prison cell? Reading this book made me far more aware of the importance of color. In fact, one of the expressions of hope is a bright blue sweater passed around from sister to sister as they endure their different harsh prison sentences. Beauty is one of the great themes brought out over and over and almost always associated with Betsie.

The house had been clean under my care; under Betsie’s it glowed. She saw beauty in wood, in pattern, in color, and helped us see it too. The small food budget which had barely survived my visits to the butcher and disappeared altogether at the bakery, stretched under Betsie’s management to include all kinds of delicious things that had never been on our table before.

The soup kettle and the coffee pot on the back of the stove, which I never seemed to find time for, were simmering again the first week Betsie took over, and soon a stream of postmen and police, derelict old men and shivering young errand boys were pausing inside our alley door to stamp their feet and cup their hands around hot mugs, just as they’d done when Mama was in charge.

…while Betsie stirred the soup pot and plotted magic with three potatoes and a pound of mutton.

Oh, my heart! May the Lord bless me with such abilities and eyes to see and share the beauty around me! I love that her work in the home immediately started pouring out to bless others. Betsie and Corrie were not married and had no children but they loved each other, loved their home, loved their father, and poured this out onto others. Don’t let anyone tell you that a single woman can’t manage a home with wonder and magic! I love how as soon as Betsie starts to tend the home, home becomes beautiful and nourishing. I love that when she starts there’s soup for the hungry and coffee for the friends always ready. She learned this from her Mama:

Mama’s love had always been the kind that acted itself out with soup pot and sewing basket.

Betsie also developed the skill of tending to people’s mental and emotional needs, not just their physical.

That it could have been happy, at such a time and in such circumstances, was largely a tribute to Betsie. Because our guests’ physical lives were so very restricted, evenings under Betsie’s direction became the door to the wide world. Sometimes we had concerts, with Leendert on the violin, and Thea, a truly accomplished musician, on the piano. Or Betsie would announce “an evening of Vondel” (the Dutch Shakespear), with each of us reading a part. One night a week she talked Eusie into giving a Hebrew lesson, another night Meta taught Italian.

The women in this book are so amazing. The desire of their mother to constantly have something ready to give to the needy around her was such a touching inspiration. I love the moment when Betsy and Corrie both realize they enjoying doing each other’s jobs better and Betsy leaves the shop to spread magic through the home, while Corrie enters the shop to help her father actually balance his books. I love that Corrie loved taking care of the home and it oozes out of her, that even switching things up with Betsy wasn’t a leaving of home but an internal restructuring to better use their gifts in the home.

This book is harder to read the second time around because you know what’s going to happen, you feel the dread. But what a nourishing, nourishing book. I can’t recommend reading it enough. Have your daughters read it. Read it yourself. Look for how beauty, color, home, and Betsie’s tending heart blesses family, friends, the persecuted, the persecutors, prisons, and concentration camps. Never once think that what we do in our small, little homes is worthless. We have no idea what we’re training for. Let’s stay at the work of HearthKeeping.

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