When I was around fourteen or fifteen, I’m not sure just when, my father’s mother, Marie Mazetier, confided in me how she had lived though a horrifying, life changing experience at the age of five.

At that time, she was living in the same Portland house where my family would visit each Christmas when I was young. Early on, it had a kitchen stove that doubled as a wood-burning room heater. One cold winter morning, she was preparing to go with her parents to a church social function and had dressed up in a simple white crêpe dress. While she was feeding wood into the stove, her flammable dress caught a spark that swiftly spread flames over her body. Her father came to her cries, smothered the fire, then raced her to the hospital. She had endured second and third degree burns over 80 percent of her body and fell into a coma. She later awoke for a brief time to find her father leaning over her and praying to God to save her life. But because she was in such pain, she desperately wanted God would to take her, and became angry that her father’s plea for her life would mean more of the pain. At that moment, in her agony blurred mind, she prayed to God that her father would die, and then she fell back into coma. When she later awoke again, she felt so mortified, so guilty over her earlier prayer that she right then promised the rest of her life to God if He would forgive her.

This whole affair, of course, and in many ways, marked her for life. Not only did she end up with major skin grafting scars over much of her body, a fact that made her a target for pity and taunts, she also kept her promise to God, becoming a very devout German Baptist from then on. Her scars toughened her already German-bred stern demeanor. Her church became her social world, a safe haven from social stigma. Nonetheless, she was warm beneath the gruffness. And I am sure she needed some steel to raise three boys.