Elinor Daily Hall
Grandpa’s Valentine
I was the only family member living close by, so I received the initial call from the nursing home. Grandpa was failing rapidly. I should come. There was nothing to do but hold his hand. “I love you, Grandpa. Thank you for always being there for me.” And silently, I released him.
Memories... memories...six days a week, the farmer in the old blue shirt and bib overalls caring for those Hereford cattle he loved so much...on hot summer days lifting bales of hay from the wagon, plowing the soil, planting the corn and beans and harvesting them in the fall . . . always working from dawn to dusk. Survival demanded the work, work, work.
But on Sundays, after the morning chores were done, he put on his gray suit and hat. Grandma wore her wine-colored dress and the ivory beads, and they went to church. There was little other social life. Grandpa and Grandma were quiet, peaceful, unemotional people who every day did what they had to do. He was my grandpa—he had been for 35 years. It was hard to picture him in any other role.
The nurse apologized for having to ask me so soon to please remove Grandpa’s things from the room. It would not take long. There wasn’t much. Then I found it in the top drawer of his nightstand. It looked like a very old handmade valentine. What must have been red paper at one time was a streaked faded pink. A piece of white paper had been glued to the center of the heart. On it, penned in Grandma’s handwriting, were these words:
TO LEE FROM HARRIET
With All My Love,
February 14, 1895
Are you alive? Real? Or are you the most beautiful dream that I have had in years? Are you an angel—or a figment of my imagination?Someone I fabricated to fill the void? To soothe the pain? Where did you find the time to listen?How could you understand?
You made me laugh when my heart was crying. You took me dancing when I couldn’t take a step. You helped me set new goals when I was dying. You showed me dew drops and I had diamonds. You brought me wildflowers and I had orchids. You sang to me and angelic choirs burst forth in song. You held my hand and my whole being loved you. You gave me a ring and I belonged to you. I belonged to you and I have experienced all.
Tears streamed down my cheeks as I read the words. I pictured the old couple I had always known. It’s difficult to imagine your grandparents in any role other than that. What I read was so very beautiful and sacred. Grandpa had kept it all those years. Now it is framed on my dresser, a treasured part of family history.
Elaine Reese
A Soldier’s Last Letter
A week before the Battle of Bull Run (also known as Manassas), Sullivan Ballou, a major in the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers, wrote home to his wife in Smithfield:
July 14, 1861
Washington, D. C.
My very dear Sarah,
The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days, perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.
I have no misgivings about or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American civilization now leans on the triumph of the government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing— perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life to help maintain this government and to pay that debt.
Sarah,my love for you is deathless. It seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break. And yet my love of country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly, with all these chains, to the battlefield.
The memory of all the blissful moments I have enjoyed with you come crowding over me, and I feel most deeply grateful to God and you that I have enjoyed them so long.And how hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together and seen our sons grow up to honorable manhood around us....
If I do not return, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, nor that when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name. Forgive my many faults and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless, how foolish I have sometimes been.
But, oh Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they love, I shall always be with you in the brightest days and in the darkest nights. Always. Always.
And when the soft breeze fans your cheek, it shall be my breath; and as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah, do not mourn me dead: Think I am gone and wait for me, for we shall meet again.
Maj. Sullivan Ballou
Submitted by Nancy Wong
EDITORS’ NOTE: Sullivan Ballou was killed a week later at the first Battle of Bull Run.
A Love Like That
Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.
Zelda Fitzgerald
I was 23, and all the way to the hospital I’d been composing what I would say to Mama before they took her to cut into her heart, whose center I supposed myself to be; hadn’t she told me all my life I was the most important thing in the world to her?
Threading my way through the hospital corridors, I practiced my opening line, which had to strike just the right note. Who but I could give her the strength and confidence she would need? Whose face but mine would she want to be the last one she saw before they cut her open and she died probably? Whose kiss but mine...?
I turned a corner and there was my mother lying on a stretcher in the hall, waiting for them to come for her. My father was standing over her. Something about the two of them made me stop and then, as I watched, made me keep my distance, as if there were a wall between us, and around them.
It was clear to me at that moment that for them, nothing existed outside them, nothing; there was only the man, the woman. She didn’t see me, nor from the looks of it care much whether she did. They weren’t talking. He was holding her hand. She was smiling into his eyes; and they were, I swear, speaking a language that at 23 I hadn’t begun to understand, much less speak myself. But I could see them do it, literally see them, and I moved closer to see more, stunned, fascinated, very jealous that I had fallen in love with someone, married him, divorced him and never once come close to what I was looking at in that hall.
Next time, I said, I will know better. I will love like that.
Linda Ellerbee
All the Days of My Life
My mother and father were about to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Mother called, all excited. “He got me a dozen white roses!” Sounding like a teenager who’d just been asked to the prom, she talked about how happy she was, how good she felt and how lucky she was.
This anniversary brought out a side of my parents that I never knew. For instance, their wedding rings are each inscribed with a line of poetry: I send you a cream-white rosebud. My father told me this in the kitchen one day. My mother said, “Oh, John,” as if to stop him. My father said, “Oh, Claire.”
That’s the way my parents have always been about their relationship: private. There was never any mushy stuff going on that we kids could see. What we did see was buddies, a team.
“Do you remember the poem?” I asked my dad that day in the kitchen, as I examined his wedding ring under the light. He looked at me, took a breath and started reciting “A White Rose” by the Irish-American poet John Boyle O’Reilly. He didn’t stumble once; it was as if he had been reciting it in his head every day for the last half-century.
“The red rose whispers of passion, / And the white rose breathes of love,” he began.
My mother said, “Oh, John!”
“O, the red rose is a falcon, / And the white rose is a dove.”
“Oh, John!” My mother said. Then she left the room.
“But I send you a cream-white rosebud / With a flush on its petal tips,” he went on, st
anding there by the sink. “For the love that is purest and sweetest / Has a kiss of desire on the lips.”
My father stopped. “Isn’t that beautiful?” he said, smiling.
We went to find my mother, who was in the den, her head in her hands. “It’s beautiful!” I said to her.
“It’s embarrassing,” she said.
This is a woman who in her youth had never seen a happy marriage and wondered why anyone would bother. Instead, she imagined a future as a Chaucer scholar. In college she found dating only mildly amusing. But then she met my father.
He was the most fundamentally decent man she had ever met. It was the man, not the institution of marriage, that drew her. She went to the altar, she later told us, feeling as if she were jumping off a cliff.
In their first year of marriage, my father went off to war. My mother was five months pregnant, and terrified. She had the baby and waited. She ate chocolate-nut sundaes to soothe her heart.
My father returned, said hello to his seven-month-old son and, with my mother, soon bought a house. Then they had a daughter, then another daughter and then me.
Even as a kid, I could tell my parents were different. Dad preferred being with Mom to going off bowling with the guys. And when he wasn’t around, she didn’t roll her eyes and make jokes at her husband’s expense as other wives did. Instead, she’d say, “You know, he’s never disappointed me.”
To celebrate their 50th anniversary, my parents renewed their wedding vows in church. Some 75 friends were watching. When my father repeated his vows, he choked up and had to pause. My mother said hers with more passion than I’d ever heard her use. Staring into his eyes, she proclaimed, “. . . all the days of my life.”
After the ceremony we had a big party, where my father kissed my mother and said, “Welcome to eternity.”
She was speechless much of the time, except when she declared, “This is the happiest day of my life.” Then she added, “This is better than my wedding day—because now I know how it all works out!”
Jeanne Marie Laskas
5
ON
MOTHERHOOD
Making the decision to have a child—it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
Elizabeth Stone
It Will Change Your Life
Time is running out for my friend. We are sitting at lunch when she casually mentions that she and her husband are thinking of “starting a family.” What she means is that her biological clock has begun its countdown, and she is being forced to consider the prospect of motherhood.
“We’re taking a survey,” she says, half joking. “Do you think I should have a baby?”
“It will change your life,” I say carefully, keeping my tone neutral.
“I know,” she says. “No more sleeping in on Saturdays, no more spontaneous vacations...”
But that is not what I mean at all. I look at my friend, trying to decide what to tell her.
I want her to know what she will never learn in childbirth classes. I want to tell her that the physical wounds of childbearing heal, but that becoming a mother will leave her with an emotional wound so raw that she will be forever vulnerable.
I consider warning her that she will never read a newspaper again without asking, “What if that had been my child?” That every plane crash, every fire will haunt her. That when she sees pictures of starving children, she will wonder if anything could be worse than watching your child die.
I look at her carefully manicured nails and stylish suit and think that no matter how sophisticated she is, becoming a mother will reduce her to the primitive level of a bear protecting her cub. That an urgent call of “Mom!” will cause her to drop a soufflé or her best crystal without a moment’s hesitation.
I feel I should warn her that no matter how many years she has invested in her career, she will be professionally derailed by motherhood. She might arrange for child care, but one day she will be going into an important business meeting and she will think about her baby’s sweet smell. She will have to use every ounce of discipline to keep from running home, just to make sure her child is all right.
I want my friend to know that everyday decisions will no longer be routine. That a five-year-old boy’s desire to go to the men’s room rather than the women’s at McDonald’s will become a major dilemma. That right there, in the midst of clattering trays and screaming children, issues of independence and gender identity will be weighed against the prospect that a child molester may be lurking in the restroom. However decisive she may be at the office, she will second-guess herself constantly as a mother.
Looking at my attractive friend, I want to assure her that eventually she will shed the pounds of pregnancy, but she will never feel the same about herself. That her life, now so important, will be of less value to her once she has a child. That she would give it up in a moment to save her offspring, but will also begin to hope for more years— not to accomplish her own dreams, but to watch her child accomplish his. I want her to know that a cesarean scar or shiny stretch marks will become badges of honor.
My friend’s relationship with her husband will change, but not in the ways she thinks. I wish she could understand how much more you can love a man who is always careful to powder the baby or who never hesitates to play with his son or daughter. I think she should know that she will fall in love with her husband again for reasons she would now find very unromantic.
I wish my friend could sense the bond she will feel with women throughout history who have tried desperately to stop war and prejudice and drunk driving. I hope she will understand why I can think rationally about most issues, but become temporarily insane when I discuss the threat of nuclear war to my children’s future.
I want to describe to my friend the exhilaration of seeing your child learn to hit a baseball. I want to capture for her the belly laugh of a baby who is touching the soft fur of a dog for the first time. I want her to taste the joy that is so real it hurts.
My friend’s quizzical look makes me realize that tears have formed in my eyes. “You’ll never regret it,” I say finally. Then I reach across the table, squeeze my friend’s hand, and offer a prayer for her and me and all of the mere mortal women who stumble their way into this holiest of callings.
Dale Hanson Bourke
Submitted by Karen Wheeler
As I Watch You Sleep
My precious child, I have slipped into your room to sit with you as you sleep, and watch the rise and fall of your breath for a while. Your eyes are peacefully closed, and your soft blond curls frame your cherubic face. Just moments ago, as I sat with my paperwork in the den, a mounting sadness came over me, while I contemplated the day’s events. I could no longer keep my attention on my work, and so I have come to talk to you in the silence, as you rest.
In the morning, I was impatient with you as you dawdled and dressed slowly, telling you to stop being such a slowpoke. I scolded you for misplacing your lunch ticket, and I capped off breakfast with a disapproving look as you spilt food on your shirt. “Again?” I sighed and shook my head. You just smiled sheepishly at me and said, “Bye, Mommy!”
In the afternoon, I made phone calls while you played in your room, singing aloud and gesturing to yourself, with all of your toys lined up in jovial rows on the bed. I motioned irritably for you to be quiet and stop all the racket, and then proceeded to spend another busy hour on the phone. “Get your homework done right now,” I later rattled off like a sergeant, “and stop wasting so much time.” “Okay, Mom,” you said remorsefully, sitting up straight at your desk with pencil in hand. After that, it was quiet in your room.
In the evening, as I worked at my desk, you approached me hesitantly. “Will we read a story tonight, Mom?” you asked with a glimmer of hope. “Not tonight,” I said abruptly, “your room is still a mess! How many times will I have to remind you?” You wandered off in a shuffle with your head down and headed for your room. Before long, you w
ere back, peering around the edge of the door. “Now what do you want?” I asked in an agitated tone of voice.
You didn’t say a word, you just came bounding in the room, threw your arms around my neck and kissed me on the cheek. “Good night, Mommy, I love you,” was all you said, as you squeezed tightly. And then, as swiftly as you had appeared, you were gone.
After that, I sat with my eyes fixed on my desk for a long time, feeling a wave of remorse come over me. At what point did I lose the rhythm of the day, I wondered, and at what cost? You hadn’t done anything to evoke my mood. You were just being a child, busy about the task of growing and learning. I got lost today, in an adult world of responsibilities and demands, and had little energy left to give to you. You became my teacher today, with your unrestrained urge to rush in and kiss me good-night, even after an arduous day of tip-toeing around my moods.
And now, as I see you lying fast asleep, I yearn for the day to start all over again. Tomorrow, I will treat myself with as much understanding as you have shown me today, so that I can be a real mom—offering a warm smile when you awaken, a word of encouragement after school, and an animated story before bed. I will laugh when you laugh and cry when you cry. I will remind myself that you are a child, not a grownup, and I will enjoy being your mom. Your resilient spirit has touched me today, and so, I come to you in this late hour to thank you, my child, my teacher and my friend, for the gift of your love.
Diane Loomans
To My Grown-Up Son
My hands were busy through the day
I didn’t have much time to play
The little games you asked me to,
I didn’t have much time for you.
I’d wash your clothes, I’d sew and cook,
But when you’d bring your picture book