Letter #3
Ishmael’s Son
19 July 1949
-
Dear Heavenly Father,
-
I am a stranger in the land what I helped Maude Amy rebuild after the death of her beloved older brother Tom it snatched
her back from the city to the farm where she thought she’d made good her escape for keeps. But it wasn’t to be
so, and in the end she married me, and us still young and our dreams on a horizon unchanged outwardly since her grandfather’s
time when Woodrow Harkness, him and his first wife Frances, they took the land from Your Hand and what they then considered
‘savages’, not knowing how they would come to like and need them.
I’m sure You can recollect as dearly as I the pure pleasure and fear hidden inside me as we started life together
with two cows. one good Missouri Blue, twelve chickens and two roosters what belonged to Woodrow Harkness and then to Tom
as his sole male heir a’fore we youngin’s took it in our trembling hands because we didn’t have any other
choice less’n we wanted it to be sold at public auction and pass out of family hands! And as how
we ended our long, good life together with one living daughter, herself a missionary for the Red Cross in darkest Africa,
after her best friend Diane Sannyonson took her to that great empty place with her, and four wonderful sons, three of them
still living. Though Tom. he lives with you and his namesake Uncle, I’m sure he looks down from time to time and shakes
his head at how little things have changed for the changes we find going on around us, Father., You have only to pick up one
of those brightly colored magazines and you’ll see how houses with all their modern
benefits and even the whole attitude toward women has changed, for a fact honest!
I wish Maudie could have lived to see it! There’s so many things you used to do that I have to set as a reminder
on the calendar any more Sugar, and sometimes it wearies me, though it means so much to our grown children, for a fact honest.
To be truthful just between you and me.
I’ve been feeling
so alone with you gone, Sugar babe. Thank you for coming to stand next to me. I can ever pretend to myself that that there
soft rustling through the weeds behind my back is you coming to stand here beside me. As if all I have to do to see your sweet,
sweet face is just to move my head to see you from the corner of my eye! Of course. I won’t. I know that you’re
in heaven with the LORD, Maudie, but it feels good to seem to feel you standing beside me, quiet like, like you did in life.
Cause then I don’t have to feel so alone or so lonely, for a fact!
‘ Good morning to you too, Sugar Babe. ‘
I know for a fact that you’re way up there, heavenward, but I’d like to feel you close to me, the best
part of you standing here beside me, even if I cain’t feel your touch. I keep picturing you there in that grave in the
meadow by the family to keep you company as you sleep in death, but its so far away unless I ask someone to drive me there.
It ain’t like I can just throw a saddle over ole Mule and ride out when I want like when I was younger too.
Except for Doctor Sharon helping to operate on me with that new technique so they could prove its effectives in lieu
of payment we couldn’t afford, I’d be with you now, but the children... they was always more yours than mine,
they need me, Mother, or I’d stretch these here wings I feel and join us as swift as bird rises to the sky to meet his
mate! I wonder at the pain but not at the Father’s will. So bear with me again, Sugar Babe. There are days like this,
then tomorrow I’ll rise with wings on my feet! Go tell!
10:45 am
No disrespect intended Heavenly Father,
I actually had to walk away from the
shadows of the house and the sound of the happy teens in ‘Pastor Jim’s’ Bible Warriors group. The shadows
and the sounds of it held too much of the past. Perhaps I can be nearer to You without distractions if I take myself over
here out of the way. Tomorrow is racing past me with every slam of the screen door and the happy footsteps of the teens in
and out of the house, like as though it gets on my nerves and I know for
a fact they are only asking their questions from pure innocence, they are
a reminder of the children who grew up to escape me. If Mother were still here, to remember birthdays and anniversaries and
highlights in their recently shed childhood, I think my boys and their wives would cluster closer, but I’m an old man
who shows them the possible frailties of old age, and that evidence bothers me as much as it does them, for all their carefully
worded protests. Maybe I’d better stop here. I don’t like the sound of my own self pity!
3:15 pm
One of the sole good things about getting old, Father, is the joy of closing your eyes at will in the middle of the
day and sleeping just because your body requires it. Doctor Sharon has just been out to see me. Can you imagine our own dear
Sharon McFadden in Doctor’s school? Or Richard, his being old enough to stay legally with the Army Air Force flyers
he met during the War below the 38th Parallel? How could he be old enough? Nineteen already? Married to a pretty
little Korean girl that I don’t think I’ll ever get to meet on this side of Jordan’s lofty shore, or James
our oldest? A Preacher with one good arm to hold the bible aloft against sinners that were unlucky enough
to perch under the high, pointy steeple in the Church what the City Girl’s built with her late husband’s money.
Making me a grandpa four times over since him and Molly Bea married out there in the meadow! Sandy, him being the youngest
and away in college, ready to be married to his only sweetheart. How can they grow up so fast and all I do is grow older?
Ouch that hurt! But oh, it felt so good to laugh!
It’s been so long since I could just leave a smile here betwixt my lips. Our little Queenie, she’s so much
like a good mother to me the way she is to her Ma, Laura, brought me a chilled lemonade. I liked the sound of the click of
square ice cubes from the new refrigerator, and I know Mother would have loved the children being able to get ice chips for
their drinks without getting water all over her kitchen floor or holding the upper door open to chip away scraps from the
ice block. On hot days we had to have ice delivery twice a week. You remember that don’t you? When
Diane Sannyonson, she had such a crush on young George Crowley so she always made sure she stayed late on the days he drove
up in the ice wagon? Why do times have to change I wonder? You know, Sugar Babe, as little Queenie she hugged me, after making
sure the lemonade was sweet enough? When I closed my eyes I pretended it was Penny Acres.
Africa seems so far away, don’t it, Sugar? I guess you can go there to watch over her there easier than I can,
and listen as she bends over them twin’s bed listening to their little prayers. Such sweet babies they are, I can tell
by the pictures she sends us monthly!
LORD,
I’m trying not to say it, but I keep tripping over it in the back of my mind, so do You mind
if I just come out and say it? I really resent the way James. he keeps trying to act like he’s the
father and I’m the not too bright son! There I said it! They taught him to ‘question and
doubt’ in that modern day Seminary
because they’ll be ‘asked hard questions by people made bitter by war”. Do they think they are the only
generation tested by war? It’s a terrible scourge we’ve had to deal with since Cain slew his brother Able, and
that there happened in paradise, LORD Sir! We’ve never had to change or alter the message before, why do we now? James
gets angry and walks out on me. He can’t stomp with them too artificial legs but he can sure slam the front door with
his one good hand. Yet he’s such a hero to them children he brung with him for this week, that I need help against this
‘drift toward selfishness and isolation’ he’s accused me of. But how, Father? Everyone of my generation
has already passed on, or is buried under the weight of uselessness while the young carry on like this ‘Post War Modern
World’ like he says, or is the simple amour of faith and helmet of salvation sufficient to meet our needs still? I wish
I could know for sure. Even though he’s my son, I feel strange trying to argue with a preacher man, Father.
Could you find some way to answer me on the quiet so James, he don’t know about it, and show me how to mend this
wall coming up between me and my first born? I’d be so much obliged if You’d be so kind, Father!
Them bird songs. How come I don’t remember them being so sweet?
Peace. I’d almost forgotten how good it feels. One of these days, I’ll be like ole Charley Thomas when
he crawled up in Mother’s lap when she was shelling peas and he just slipped away
quiet like at the end of a good, long, life, but till then,
I need Your strength to help give direction and love to these little lives as they stand on their own two feet. You helped
Mother and me to raise them, now I need Your help letting go of them...You know what I mean, LOD?
I didn’t see that!!! My children is like the birds I didn’t have time to hear
when I was young and busy doing needed things. It’s like gathering in your harvest of strong, straightened children
and seeing the promise of the future in the smiles on their faces, a pause before you cross. How lucky I am to have this time
with You and them! Forgive my impatience for racing home to You and Mother!
Maude Amy? I’m going to close my eyes now, so we’ll be free to wander at will. Why don’t
you just show me where you’d like us to meet as I sleep?
Yours forever,
Amos
