Letter #19
Fifty-Second Year
17 January 1950
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Dear Heavenly Father,
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Good evening Sir!
Father,
Today is my fifty-second birthday. It snowed that night too. One of the few personal things I can remember my Father
ever talking about to me was how Caitlin’s spirit came to that ole Indian midwife and she walked through a snow-storm
to be here when it was time for me to be birthed. She squatted down and fed off their used up hennies what my Ma didn’t
have the heart to kill and eat, said they was too tough at their age to bother, but I was born the wrong-end fore and without
that ole woman’s dirty hands we both would have died. Afterwards she stole all she wanted even when my Pa he tried to
give it to her. She said we was all cursed cause we lived in house with square corners where the spirits got trapped, that
it was better to take it when they weren’t looking or they’d come after her and hers.
There was a haunting of another kind, but I cain’t help it. I watched as the snow flakes what survived, they
fell straight down into the fire, being devoured in the flames and I thought back to Tom, his being tied in the chair during
the holidays so he wouldn’t keep falling over and draw attention to his self. As if any of the younger children, Mother
or me could help to see anything else but what was left to waste away?
Caesar,
he come over to me and put his cold nose under my fingers like he used to do to Tom when he was just a pup and that was when
it really hit. Mother is gone. Tom, he’s gone too, and my time is short.
I wonder what become of that ole woman?
The patterns in the red
log, Father, it’s just about to turn black and soon, that coal, so good for toasting marshmallows will gray and burn
itself out. It seems I hear the echoes of children in the back of my mind, the smells of gingerbread men and baked, dried
apple slices and cinnamon. Is that why Mother saved those things for these long days between the holidays? How
I did take them for granted. How I long to have them back. Guess that just proves I’m an ole man, LORD. Not ungrateful,
just lonely.
The kids, they invited me to go out sleighing with them. How they did grumble as little children when we made them
get dressed and go out with us. How fancy Rowdy, old as he has become with us, how he did lift his slender hooves as he carried
us across the star-shined snow tonight!
Thank You for another
birthday, another year. But I would trade all I have before me for one of those used up days when I could hear Mother happily
bustling around in the kitchen. Did Caitlin and Woodrow hear the ticking of the mantle clock as loud as I hear it now? We
got four more birthdays still Spring releases us from this house, and it’s memories. When was father Washburn’s
birthday, Father? I don’t rightly remember.
A joy does runs through me tonight that
will stay with me forever. The Judge, he’s too far gone to speak, except with them eloquent eyes, despite the tubes
going in and out his thin, thin body. His chapped lips and sour breath couldn’t have been sweeter as he whispered for
us to cut down that ole tree where his mother’s body hung above her crying children because the Women’s Clinic
and Teaching Center named after Sicily is a better monument, given in hope!
Seeing the ease of his
passage into eternity, I ain’t afraid no more. Not of dying.
Not even of living, any more.
I don’t know how many more I got, but there is such gratitude in my heart for the ones You already gave me. The
mandate to trust You and joy whatever the circumstances of our lives, I’m seeing my children test this out in their
lives. That’s all I can ask! Keep Molly Bea and the children safe as they take the train back to New York City to be
with her daddy. He’s had a stroke that none of his money for doctors can heal. Give him a miracle for her sake Lord,
for Molly Bea, she’s been as good a woman and as Christian a wife as any one could think to be! Maybe being by his self
a while will help James’ heart to heal and mend, then turn it back to his family.
Four new
babies! Penny Acres, she’s bearing twins and so is Cathy Baker, just a few months behind her. We
won’t lack for things to share with the rest of the family on March Nineteenth, will we Sir?
Share my
joy, Father! There’s more here than my ole heart can hold!
Yours in great love,
Me!
