About Sofia

About Sofia

            Call her SO’fia, in the Finnish style,  not soFI’a  like the Italian actress.

            Sofia Helmi Heidi Keskimaki was born in Finland in either 1879 or 1880—there was some talk that she didn’t want to be any older than her husband, so said 1880. She was short, no taller than 5’, had long black hair that she always tied up in a bun, and Finn blue eyes.  Vake said that in Finland, she had worked as a servant girl, but left for the USA with a group of young people during the huge European immigration of 1900.  During some stage of her life in the U.S., she cleaned hospital rooms for a living.

            Sofia married Eli Sampson in Minnesota in 1902. Eli performed in a musical group at the time. His biography calls it an “orchestra,” but Vake called it an “Oomph Toot Toot” band, where Eli played a baritone horn. In any case, his group played their wedding march.

            My memory of Sofia starts with my preschool years, when she was already about 70 years old. They were living in Inglewood in Coos Bay, on the hillside above Minnesota Street, just a block or two farther along the street beyond the house on the swamp where she and Eli had lived when Vake was born. Now, in about 1950,  I lived in the little house next door, and Milly complained that my grandmother spoiled me rotten. She always had a big hug for the grandchildren, and fed them candy:  she kept spice gum drops, lemon drops, and white mint with wintergreen centers for just that purpose. But her specialty was “makia leipa,” a braided bread flavored with cardamom. When she served us slices of makea leipa, she always buttered it then sprinkled a little sugar on the slice.

  Mid-morning, she would entertain other old Finnish ladies with coffee and makea leipa. They would tell me how to say “the Kaffee is ready” in Finnish and send me to the basement to call Eli away from his woodworking projects at coffee time.  (He never understood my Finnish, so I repeated myself in English.)

She had learned to grow flax and weave linen in Finland, but in Coos Bay, she used the loom in her basement to weave rag rugs with long strips of knit fabric cut from worn-our clothing. The edges of knit curl under, so the strips looked tidy when they were woven through the weft of cotton string.

In the evenings, she and Eli would make a point of reading the newspaper, the Coos Bay Times (now, the World) from end to end, in English, even though English was their second language, and they spoke with strong Finnish accents. They also read Suomi, a large format Finnish- language news magazine like Look or Life.

  After she read the newspaper, she  crocheted. She made elaborate “Southern Belle” and “Hula Dancer” costumes for 7” dolls for Patty, Sandy and me. (The dolls were standard before Barbie.)  She also kept a bag of toys tucked into the closet under the staircase to the second story of their house, just off the kitchen, for the grandchildren to play with when they visited. The toys were empty spools from sewing and crocheting projects that could be stacked to terrific heights before crashing down, a metal cream pitcher than leaked, an empty baking powder can, and an empty wooden container of Old Spice shaving soap. The grandchildren loved the toys, but had to be reminded not to let the spools crash with too much noise: “That makes Grandma’s ears ring because she has high blood pressure.” It might have hurt her because she used a hearing aid.

When we were old enough, we were allowed to go up the stairs to the second story. It was a single rectangular room the length of the house, with a window at each end, and the area under the outermost part of the eves sealed off as a storage area. In the main room, there was a rocking chair that Eli had made for her that we would rock as hard as possible to try to tip over, but it was pretty stable. (She and Eli had replaced it in the living room with a classical 1930s red mohair sofa and couch, and he had an upright wing chair.)  Upstairs, she also stored the chest that she had used to bring her belongings from Finland. It was a large domed chest worth of a pirate, but when we finally peeked inside, it was empty except for a foot-long hatpin with a green glass gem on the end. I assume that at some time in her life, she had worn a broad-brimmed Edwardian era hat, to go with the pin.

When I remember her, I think of Sofia always wearing a cotton house dress with a bib apron over it. She kept one ankle wrapped because she walked with a heavy limp, almost as though one leg were longer than the other, and that put undue stress on the ankle that bore most of her weight.  I had always heard that she had broken her leg when she was a young girl, and no medical help was available, so it healed wrong.  Years later, Vake told me that no, the leg had not broken. One leg had failed for unknown reasons. About then, Vake was examined for fatigue in his hips that made him rest after walking every few steps, but no cause was detected.  Then Mark developed an unusual gait, and a neurologist diagnosed the cause:  muscular dystrophy of the pelvic girdle muscles. Mark speculates that it is a genetic defect that arose in some little village in Finland,and now it has affected at least 3 generations.

Sofia and Eli predated social security for most of their working lives, but each earned at least a small check. Sofia used part of hers to buy pretty birthday cards for the grandchildren’s birthdays, and would tuck a $1.00 bill inside.

With age, Sofia became more and more mobility impaired and began using a walker. Eventually, she was unable to move on her own, and likely had had a stroke. She was admitted to the hospital, but because of her accent, the doctors didn’t realize that her speech had become slurred. She told Milly and Vake that she got through the day by repeating in her mind her daily routine of making the coffee and baking the bread. She died of static pneumonia  in 1963 or 1964.

After Sofia died, when Mark chose a birthday card for Tina, he tucked a $1.00 bill inside.