The Olson place loomed in the distance, its ancient frame structure extending high into the blue Cushing sky. I am struck by its primness, accentuated by neatly kept grounds and iconic character.

Gone is the monstrous black stove that ruled the kitchen and awaited Christina’s cake. Gone, too, is the door that sealed the kitchen off from the rest of the house, exposing the mystery of what lay beyond our childish eyes.

It was nearly five decades ago when our Girl Scout troop, led by my indefatigable mother, packed a Christmas turkey and all the fixings — plus a troop of scouts — into her ancient Cadillac. Over the river and through the woods to Hathorne’s Point we’d go, not to Grandma’s house, but to Christina and Alvaro Olson’s.

Alvaro stood in front of the old Glenwood stove puffing his pipe while his sister, Christina, sat at the kitchen table. On this particular visit she was propped in her chair busily beating a cake batter with her new hand mixer. She flashed a toothless grin to us and beckoned us in. She seemed to know we would be coming and she was preparing for her company.

“Just got her a new mixer today,” Alvaro pointed between draws on his pipe. “She’s trying it out.”

Christina’s thin, wispy hair filtered down her shoulders. To a kid of 11, she looked like she had been born old. I knew very little about her except that she was my school chum’s great-aunt, and, of lesser significance, Andrew Wyeth’s model for “Christina’s World.”

“What are you making, Christina?” I asked, pointing to the chipped bowl brimming with something yellow.

Her craggy face lighted up.

“A cake,” she proudly announced. “I’m making a cake with my new mixer.” She lifted the beaters out of the liquid and the batter dripped across her faded oilcloth. Some drizzled down on her soiled frock, which was held together by an enormous safety pin. She looked straight at me. “Will you stay to have some with me?” She dipped her finger in the batter and gave it the taste test.

“We would really like to, Christina,” I fibbed. “That’s awfully nice of you, but we have another turkey to deliver before it thaws.”

Years later, I can still see her sitting there, her body gnarled with polio and bound to that wooden chair with its frayed, dirty pillows. I can see what I did not see then, an indomitable woman who accepted her lot in life with the steadfastness of the tides themselves, a resolute daughter of the sea. Together, Christina and Alvaro formed a symbiotic relationship with their world at the tip of Hathorne’s peninsula.

I now realize that in those fleeting moments we were given a glimpse of rural Maine life from another time, a rare look at mammoths that had thawed to graze amongst life’s newer creatures. Indeed, theirs was another world. Call it Christina’s world.

— Special to the Telegram