Chapter 3
Dear Ruthie,
I only wish I’d have gotten a chicken to keep in the backyard, that’s what I’m thinking right now.
I always did like chickens, from the time I was a little girl and first held a chick in my hand, light as air and peeping away, and I could hardly move from sheer delight, those little orange feet sticking out of a ball of fluff, you’d never think there was flesh and bones in there, seemed like those chicks were something you could wish on and blow away.
But talking about chickens, for heaven’s sake, at a time like this!
What I mean is, I have gotten a bad prognosis for a cancer that has reared up and taken off, and my doctor told me that I might want to put my affairs in order.
When he told me, a blush crept into his face—bless his heart, he felt bad.
I’m ninety-two, I told him, and patted his hand.
Still, he said, and I had to agree with him there.
I hope this won’t make you too sad, Honey. I know you too are dealing with some bad news, I read your last letter about your planning to divorce. I have some things to say about that, too, but later.
I have about a month, maybe six weeks. Did you ever think that a little interval of time like two weeks could mean so much?
But here comes the voice in my brain begging for those fourteen extra days I might be given.
Begging! Even an old woman like me who can’t see good or walk far and whose very blood is humming with the going-home song, why I’m still ginned up for more time.
I’ll tell you true, I would live a hundred lifetimes back-to-back if I could, but I can’t.
Oh, I always did hate that word “can’t.” I didn’t believe it.
People would tell me you can’t do this, and you can’t do that, and it was like I had a barrier in my brain where in the front part I listened politely but behind the barrier I was thinking the hell you say.
But I got to face facts now, and so here’s what, Ruthie.
I want to leave my house and everything in it to you.
Perhaps you might be wanting to come back here now to live?
I remember last year when you came home for a visit, you left your children with your parents in that condo they moved to and you and I walked around the block slow and you told me things you loved about this neighborhood, and you shared many memories you had of it.
We stopped by the Filmores’ towering oak tree, I remember, and you got teary and put your hand on my arm and said, Oh, Flo, but then you never finished.
I spect the trouble had started in your house around then.
I remember I said to you, You know you can tell me anything, and you said you weren’t sure what to say or how to say it, you hardly knew yourself all you were feeling.
You said, I’ll tell you once I’ve decided what I’m doing, and I said that’s fine and didn’t either one of us say another word about it but I could see the weight in you, Ruthie, it never did lift the whole time you were home.
And I hurt for you as I always did when you were suffering, whether it was your crying your eyes out over a toy you lost or the time when your first boyfriend broke up with you right after your thirteenth birthday.
(That’s it for boys! you told me. I will never love again!
I said gentle, You may not think so now, but things change.
NO THEY DON’T you said, you were in that terrible phase of yelling when you were upset.
You said, I am just going to be a VETERINARIAN!
And I said, Could you speak up? I didn’t hear that.
And then you had to smile and so did I.)
Anyway, I hired a lawyer to prepare the necessary papers for leaving everything to you, and they are signed and ready to go.
He will send them on to you when the time comes.
Meantime, I would like to tell you some things I never told you before, especially something that I’ve wanted to tell you for years.
Do you remember the day you asked me what had I been doing out there in the backyard behind the roses?
My heart ricocheted in my chest. I had no idea anyone had seen me, and I was scared to death you were going to investigate for yourself and discover my secret, you were always a most determined child, so I told you I was burying ground-up dead things to fertilize the plants, I figured that would keep you away and it sure enough did.
But that is not what I was doing, and I’m going to work up to telling you the truth about what I was burying.
I also want to tell you about some of my favorite things in my house, many of which bring back memories that I cherish.
Lately, though, it seems there’s more to those things than that.
I look in a drawer or a cupboard and I think, Oh, I got to tell Ruthie about this.
You can do with my things whatever you like but I just think you should know why they are not just objects, but pieces of my life that point to something bigger than my life.
I’ll tell you what, a rubber band is not just a rubber band, as you will come to see.
I might have cared about my things too much.
Terrence and the Good Lord used to warn me about that, each in his own way, but I couldn’t help loving some things the way I did.
Take my dishes with the little pink roses on them.
One time I kissed a saucer after I dried it off and wasn’t that the exact time that Terrence came into the kitchen and stopped and said, What are you doing?
and I said, Nothing, and we just let that one go, which if you ask me is 99% of a good marriage, knowing when to let something go.
I also very much loved a silver frame with a picture of my daddy out in the fields, his foot on a tractor and his black hair hanging a little in his eyes, his arms crossed all muscley.
I thought my daddy could just about move mountains, and to me that picture proved it.
I wanted to write all this out rather than tell you, Ruthie.
I believe that something happens in the writing out of things, and in the reading of them, that does not happen otherwise.
I think you believe that, too, and that’s why I have so many letters from you and I have kept every one in my bottom dresser drawer.
My favorites are the ones where you talked about having your babies.
I felt I was right in the delivery room with you, the drama was better than those cop shows.
And I liked when you told me about your children’s antics, there is so much of what I remember about you in them.
You sent one letter when you were up early on Christmas Day, getting the turkey ready, and you sat at your kitchen table and wrote me out the whole menu and you said you wished I could be there and so did I.
You seemed so happy. Snow was falling and you told me how pretty it looked and said you would never forget the snowball fight you and I had against Terrence and your brother and WE WON.
Writing to you always makes me feel like I’m visiting with you. Course, it is just me talking here, but I see your face while I’m writing out these words, and sometimes I imagine pretty good what you might say back.
But about the house and all the things in it.
I hope this letter will give you a record in case you forget what something is and why it mattered, and also I suppose it is a legal document.
I guess I could have it notarized, I have a friend who is a notary public and you would think that makes her president of the U.S.
of A., but let us allow our friends what they need so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else, why not.
I’ll tell you what, though, that notary public, Jeannie Drummond is her name, she makes the best boysenberry pie you ever did taste.
I wonder why we don’t all have t-shirts made up with some of our good things on them.
Imagine, you get on the bus and sit next to someone whose t-shirt says: Champion bowler!
I speak Chinese! Trained my dog to pray!
It could ease some of the world’s tensions, I think.
A lot of things could ease the world’s tensions that we don’t bother with, I never have understood why.
I never have understood why we go from one war to the next to the next to the next.
All those young men, cut off from all they could have done.
And young women, too. After World War II started, I used to ask Terrence why there had to be war, why?
and he would always sigh and say, Flo, it’s always been that way since time immemorial, and I would say but why?
and he would say it’s human nature, and I would say, I don’t believe that, I believe goodness is human nature, and he would hold up his coffee mug asking for a refill like I was his own personal waitress which I guess I was though I didn’t mind a bit since he was my personal garbage man and mechanic and confronter of things in the night.
But that was the end of that conversation.
Human nature. Since time immemorial. Then Terrence got called up for service, and we didn’t either one of us talk any more about why there had to be war.
We just prayed for his safe return. Every night he was in France, I knelt at the side of my bed and prayed with all my might for him to come back to me safe and sound, and I vowed that if he did, there would be nothing, nothing that would ever make us part.
Right after he returned, I tried to ask him what it had been like over there, but he didn’t want to talk about it.
It was not for the reason I thought. Naturally, he was troubled by the great loss of lives, by the horrifically wounded, but something else happened over there and it took many years before we talked about it.
I have so much to tell you, but don’t feel you have to read this all at once. Tell you what, I’ll take my time writing it, you take your time reading it.