Letter # 9
Sandy’s Wedding Belles
02 September 1949
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Dear Heavenly Father,
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Today was the last wedding day I will attend for my own children. It was too moving to try and retell You LORD, You
were right there with us, even though some, they turned up their nose at the dance floor. We spent many
a long winter’s Friday night dancing Square Dances from the first fiddle and bow that come into this
here Valley with Woodrow Harkness and those early Fathers. Their loss, but our gain. Cathy Baker, she was as radiant and beautiful
as any new bride has the right to be, and our Sandy? Didn’t he just look so grown up in his brother’s tuxedo?
It is a union of love, without a doubt.
The last one I attended
was hosted by a Rabbi under one of them pretty white satin canopies and Young Arno Cleaver he crushed the glass what him and
Penny Acres drank from. It was supposed to represent their virginity, that no one else could share. How could we know how
quickly it would end, and them both still so young? I sure wish Sandy and Cathy Baker both more than just three years of happiness,
and here with the family, not so far away in New York City!
We all know what a struggle it was for Penny Acres, still in the throes of new widowhood to make it across the ocean,
even with the money help of Diane and her Spanish Count Mr. Vargas y Murray, but she arrived just last night, and now look’y
here! Ain’t this a special sight? I’ve most of the people I love and hold dear near to me and I’m so proud
of the stranger my youngest son has become while away at Agricultural College that I could but burst all the buttons off’n
this rented tuxedo if’fn it had any for a fact!
I ain’t
been this awed and proud since the day they lay James, newborn and still covered in his mother’s blood into my arms
as Maude Amy she looked up from our bed drenched in sweat but smiling a smile the angels would envy! I miss that closeness
with my two younger sons but the hospital it made it so much easier for Mother to give birth, that I cain’t say that
I would change any of it even if I had a time machine to go back-wards, except maybe now and again. But just to visit them
good times again, like I would today at the Church.
James he pouted because
Sandy and Cathy Baker, they wanted their own lifelong pastor from our little church to celebrate the moment as he is retiring
next month and he did their christenings, didn’t he not?
Little
Esther, our “Queenie”, she stood looking up in awe as Penny Acres, she stepped out of the white mists and fogs
discharged by the train as it came to a full stop, and though I didn’t rightly recognize the baby girl I sent to Africa
so unwillingly but with Mother’s blessings, right away Queenie, she walked up to Penny Acres, not Diane Sannyonson Vargas
y Murray, standing right beside her, and took her gloved hand into her own. Penny Acres, she naturally
looked a little startled because there hadn’t been time to tell her that Laura’s girl child, she was staying with
us till her mother was found, but she tipped her head so the sun caught the real diamonds holding the small feather in that
handsome felt hat she wore? Diamonds from her husband’s own diamond mine.
It made my heart leap into my throat
and catch there too!
She is a woman now, fully growed Father!
“ Are you an angel, Ma’am ? “
The child asked in such a sweet voice that the startling beautiful stranger laughed with Penny Acre’s achingly
familiar laugh, and, she knelt beside Queenie and hugged her with tears in her eyes. Seeing the way Penny Acres, she looks
in the matron’s dress what her dead husband’s surprisingly alive wife let her keep, if only because she couldn’t
fit into them anyhow, I think our little Esther was more right than even she knew.
I understand Penny Acres, her not wanting to outshine the bride on Cathy Baker’s day, but I can not keep from
looking at her and I know I have done it too hard when she rubs the back of her neck and looks around to see who is staring
so hard at her.
My son.
Funny I ain’t never thought of Sandy that way , the way I did his brothers. I love him but there was just another
face at the dinner table. Here he is getting married and he’s
the only one to even love or want the land as I do. Who could know these
mysteries other than You, Father? All I can do is to ponder them and wonder as I see them already having happened!
Tonight, my youngest and his new bride lay in the bed where he was born and conceived of our lingering love for one
another, Mother and me. The last born, the least known. I’m bedding down with my baby daughter, and
Queenie sleeping over my head in the house what The Brothers, Sam and Guff, they built with their own hands. As I finally
get the courage to lay down my head on that fine brass bed, I suspect there will be far more ghosts in my head then just them
two fine youngsters what had to end their lives in my room cause they couldn’t bear to be slaves to another’s
cruel lusts.
Do You think they did have that baby the legend says they did? I don’t usually dwell on such
things but babies and young lovers is heavy on my mind as the people rightfully swirl around Cathy Baker and her new young
husband like bees on a hive.
YOU don’t have to guess, You know. I guess the past ain’t none of my business, leastwise
not the parts that I didn’t live in it. Let me just say how much I love You Father, and how much I thank you that in
the blindness of my grief I didn’t throw away this last sweet gift.
If You would grant the kindness LORD to have the time to get to know my son, this latest and last son that was all
but just birthed me to me a man grown at his own wedding, than I would die a straightened and contented man. But if all I
have is to know they are safe and well and my dear child is home to raise her babies in the U.S. of A.,
then I will not feel myself cheated!
Thank You! From the bottom of my heart!
Good night, LORD, I think I can sleep now that I’ve talked with you.
Good night and sweet dreams, Sugar Babe! We did a good job!
Me
