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There was the sound of a door opening at the back of the house and voices came up the hallway. Happy voices, chattering away. The voices brought lightness with them, they brought a lighter hearted spirit, chasing away the tough conversations of the morning. Leta turned fully to greet the smiling faces that made their way into the kitchen.

“Good morning Belle, Good morning mother Ellen.” She stepped toward them and gave each a quick squeeze. Abby noticed but said nothing.

Belle was Leta’s mother in law. She was an opposite of Abby. She was laughter and light. She had a life that was not easy, but somehow it did not weigh her down like Abby. It was a different life and a different outlook. Belle had died six months after Leta married her son, so their relationship was uncluttered by any stress or ugliness that being family can bring to it. Ellen was Belle’s mother, she had died six weeks before Belle. She had been spared burying that one daughter. Leta had adored them both, and finding them waiting for her so many years later was truly a reward she cherished.

Belle settled her mother into a rocking chair set back from the table, but nearer the fire. Ellen was a large woman, with white hair, round cheeks and a twinkle in her blue eyes. Her husband had been very thin and they resembled Jack Sprat and his wife, and got on as well as far as compromise went. Belle was tall and thin. Not frail by any means, she was like a willow who could bend in any wind, there was nothing fragile about Belle.

Leta picked up a light silken blanket and snapped it twice, then handing it to Ellen to lay over her lap. The room was plenty warm, but Ellen liked to have something comforting to run through her fingers as she sat and watched the days conversation. Ellen was now the oldest of the women in the room, a contrast to Elizabeth’s sternness to be sure.

Belle pulled out a flat package and handed it to Leta. “I thought you might enjoy this.”

Leta opened the flap and saw a photo inside. On the back were written names. It was a photo of Belle, her second husband (Leta’s father in law), her three children, and their four children. None of her father in law’s children were in this photo. The children seemed to range in age from 2 to 20. Such a range of ages. Leta was caught up in looking at the faces when Ellen laughed gently. “Belle, she’s so taken with the people that she’s missing why you brought the photo.” Leta looked up with a quirked eyebrow.

“The house Leta, the house!” Belle exclaimed. Leta looked closer. The house was a two story design. Plain, with horizontal boards. A door in the middle, window on either side, four windows across the top. She looked around the downstairs of her own home, the kitchen, chimney, living space.

She laughed. “Of course it’s this house, of course. I should have noticed sooner. What better home to be home for us now?”

“Yes, it is this house. It’s the old family home, it was familiar and seemed necessary for this particular vigil.” Belle explained no more. Leta would find out more in time, but for now, she was too interested in the photo. To see the face of her husband as a boy, to see the face that was so similar to her own little boy. She loved her daughter, but that boy, seeing his face light up, watching him mimic the man she loved, there was a bit of heaven on earth there.

She chuckled inside. Heaven on earth. There was a phrase that was just about as silly as they came. If she’d only known that Heaven sat on Earth. That when you were alive, you just couldn’t see it. That the only difference was this Heaven was a step closer to the God you had always pictured and hoped for and hopefully believed in. That in this Heaven there were still lessons to be learned and lives to live. Just different lives and different meanings. Some of it was a blessing – like finally getting the time with Belle and Ellen that she had always felt was stolen from her. She’s always felt that the carefree first year of marriage was stolen from her as her husband mourned so fully the mother and grandmother he had adored. It was so hard to watch him that way. To know that he felt that he should keep it from her, that he should be manly about it, but he was just 20 years old. Which in that day was required to be a man. It seemed in this newer time that 20 years old was only beginning. Leta wasn’t sure if this was blessing or curse or neither.

She pulled away from her thoughts and handed the photo to Elizabeth. Elizabeth surveyed it with a critical air, as if her opinion would change the very structure of the house. She brought the photo close to her eyes and said the words, “That ring.” and looked at Belle.

Belle nodded. Elizabeth did not flap her. Or if she did, Belle never let it be shown. “Yes. I know that ring.”

“Will it go to the girl?” Elizabeth asked.

“Yes, in time it will go to her. For now I will keep watch over it. LaVerne will hold it for her, and in time the ring will be passed on.”

Elizabeth nodded in approval. “Good. The last of us should have a symbol of her motherhood ancestors with her. The last of us should know we continue to matter.”

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“Grandmother,” she began, waiting for Elizabeth to shift her eyes to her, permitting her to continue, “May I look at your Bible?” Elizabeth carefully pushed the book toward Leta’s seat at the table.

“Careful you make no messes of it. Wipe that jam off your hands first.” Leta began to argue that her hands were clean, and at Abby’s soft cough, remembered to let it go.

She wiped her hands and began to gently turn the pages until she came to the part with the history of the family written in it.

Abigail Martha Elizabeth born January 11, 1840 in Scott Co, Ind
married John Henry, March 11, 1856 in Pike Co, Ills
children
William A. born September 11, 1857 died November 21, 1860 *1
Rebecca Abigail born December 11, 1859 died December 25, 1869 *2
Sarah Abigail born January 1, 1862 died February 2, 1898 *3
Lydia Abigail born March 3, 1864
Thursa Abigail born April 16, 1866
Marion Grant born February 3, 1868
Mary Abigail born June 4, 1871
Edith Abigail born July 5, 1878 died August 6, 1881

Leta counted. Eight Children. Four of those children had died before Elizabeth. To place the body of even one child in the ground must be unimaginably painful. By four children was it worse with each one or did you just become numb? How much pain could one heart take before breaking into pieces. Leta stole a glance at her grandmother. She didn’t want to ask any questions this morning. She didn’t want to know anything more. No more pain on this bright morning. She stepped to the doorway of the house. For a moment she longed to walk out into the sunshine in the front of the house, to walk out and join the little girl making the mess of the mud. But to do so would only cause the girl to have some vague shiver of awareness that she wasn’t ready for. It would steal away a part of the beauty that she was longing to be near. Part of that idyllic childishness that was so sweet and so fleeting.

She stood on the threshhold and watched as the girl now stretched her fingers wide on either side of her body and began to spin in circles. She started slowly, swinging her head back to look up at the blue sky. To focus on a cloud and perhaps see a shape in the white wispiness above. She spun faster until her hair flew out and into her face, she swiped a hand up her face to move the strands away from her mouth and once more spun in that childish cross, like a living breathing top.

She stopped but continued to sway. She sat on the concrete step and sniffed at her mud pie. She picked up two of the glass jars and carried them into the house. When she stepped back outside she looked at the weathered old house where Leta stood. Again for just a moment, Leta thought the girl could see her, but knew that wasn’t true. The girl’s life had been too simple, to easy, up to this point, for her to even be aware of the women in the boards so close but so far away.

Leta turned from the sun and looked at her mother and grandmother at the table. She looked to the girl outside and tried to picture the two women seated so carefully at the table spinning as the girl had done. She tried to remember herself being so carefree and had difficulty picturing even that. It seemed she had been an old woman forever. Which was a falsehood. She had no lived to truly be an old woman, only a woman, and not always a good one. She wondered what kind of woman the girl would grow to become. She knew that she would indeed grow to be a woman, if she wasn’t meant to , then Leta and her mothers would not be sitting vigil. Would not be here to watch her grow and help provide hopefully wise counsel through the veil of dreams and seeming coincidences.

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The face that appeared was not attractive. It was difficult to tell if the face had ever been attractive, so severe was the expression on it. The thin white hair was pulled back so tight in a bun knot at the back of the head that the hairline had gradually receded as hairs gave way under the tension of being pulled into the knot. Teeth long gone, allowed the mouth to fall in on itself. The eyes never laughed. The eyebrows were never there. She was not mean. She was not kind. She merely was. Her name was Elizabeth, never Lizzie nor Beth. Elizabeth, which was a concession made from her full given name of Abigail Martha Elizabeth.

Not surprisingly, her chair was the most rigid. A straight up and down, ladder back chair with a tough rope woven seat. There were no arms and no cushions. She moved her long black, never wrinkled skirts into position and lowered herself into the chair. She sat rigid in the chair and said a terse, “Good morning.”

Leta and Abby replied with a well practiced and polite, “Good morning, Mother, Good morning, Grandmother.”

“What have you seen this morning?” Elizabeth asked, as Leta picked up the china cup and saucer for Elizabeth’s morning coffee, pouring the black liquid into the cup and setting it before her. Abby relayed the actions of the young girl, trying to leave out all mention of anything that might imply dirt. A difficult task when relaying a story of a mud pie.

Elizabeth merely nodded. It was impossible to tell if she approved or disapproved given the line of her sunken mouth never changed. Leta mused that even though she herself would be forever 59 years old, far from being a girl, that she would always feel like a flighty, silly awkward child in the presence of this Grandmother.

Elizabeth nodded at Abby. “Bring me the Bible.” Abby stood and went to the far wall, pulling the large book from where it lay large and imposing on a desk too small for it’s bulk. She walked it over to her mother and placed it before her.

Elizabeth opened the book, leafing through it while licking her fingers to assist her with turning the old frail pages. Leta and Abby were silent as she did this. Slightly apprehensive as to what she would find this morning. Elizabeth tended to find the more difficult passages, ones that induced one or both of the women to squirm a bit, feeling as if Elizabeth were attempting to skewer at least one of the women. She settled on a passage and began to read.

“Romans, Chapter One, Verses 28 through 32. ‘And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and, although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.’”

She closed the book with authority and somehow induced her mouth into an even sterner line. “The girl needs to respect her mother and her grandmother. Just because her parents failed to maintain a marriage under God is no reason for her to already begin sinning against her family.”

Leta inwardly rebelled. Mud pies were not disrespectful, and how dare this old biddy try lump a mud pie in with “haters of God?”. No wonder her mother was as off balance as she was when it came to black and white issues. All these years and Leta still had difficulty coexisting in a world with Elizabeth. It was her cross to bear, and she tried her best … or at least she tried.

Abby said mildly, “I’m not sure we are in a position to do much of anything, Mother.” She glanced at Leta, caught her eye and glanced at the book. Leta followed Abby’s gaze and thought she knew what she was thinking. It was not going to be a morning to ask any questions, for Elizabeth was even more irritable than was typical, but she might at least be able to get an idea of things.

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Leta was immersed in another thought by this time. Her mother’s words were coming back to her. “Mother, do you think it would have been different for Glenna if Dr. Welch hadn’t have died? If Father would not have needed to ride so far for a doctor?”

Abby was just slightly past the point of contemplating possibilities. “I believe it was Glenna’s time to join our savior, Leta. It does no good to question God’s plan.”

Leta knew the moment of closeness was passing, she chose to think her thought without sharing. Dr. Welch was her mother in law’s first husband. If he had not died, she would not have married Henry, if she would not have married Henry, she would have never had Charley, without Charley there was no LaVerne and there was no little girl in a yellow sundress. However, with Dr. Welch, her sister might have lived. Her mother might have been a different person, one who laughed a little more and worried about the Godly scales of justice and right a little less.

She began to spin scenarios in her mind, before deciding that in this case, it really did not do to spend too much time thinking about it. God’s plan was the one that dictated the circumstances. Her mother was ….. oh, she could barely think the words without some rebellion long established in her soul rising up. Her mother was …. right. Oh so hard to think those words without almost a visible shudder. It made her throat begin to close to think on it too long. She felt uncomfortable in her skin to think that no matter what her own opinions were that she was never far from her mother’s edicts. She stood to attempt to rid herself of these uncomfortable thoughts. She poured herself more tea, stirred the fire and reached for some bread to eat with a spoonful of apple butter. She placed a hand on her ample hip as she chewed quietly.

“It was hard to lose you, Mother.” She said the words quietly, and they surprised her when they came out. She’d only barely consciously thought them and they popped out. She would have never said them if she had the chance to bite them back.

Abby turned around in her chair to gaze at her daughter. This daughter who was headstrong, faithful and independent. This daughter who, of her three to reach adulthood, had done so the least scarred. This daughter who she felt the least amount of guilt over. Her sisters …. Abby shut out the thought. She was not strong enough to think of her other daughters this morning. Was not sane enough in mind to ask for the strength to think of her other daughters, she corrected herself. “It was not easy to leave you. But it was time. The cancer was too much, I needed to rest. Death was the only way my soul was going to be clean. There was ….” she stopped here. There were things to say, but all these years closer to the Mother than ever and she still was not ready to say some things out loud. She was not ready to be forgiven some actions, and was not ready for some conversations that would eventually come. She simply turned back in her seat and returned her attention to the sock in her hands. The sock that never seemed to be done. Like a dream where you tried to get dressed, but with every piece of clothing you put on, it seemed another one had found its way back to the floor. A dream of frustration, that was how this sock seemed.

Leta shuffled back to her seat, rearranged the pillows and settled her bulk into it again. She wiped a hand across her face, she was becoming warm in the room with the fire and the sunshine. The breeze did not quite reach where her chair sat. She picked up the corners of her apron and began to flap them to increase the breeze.

The women sat in a barely uncomfortable silence, with only the flapping of the apron and the breaking of a stick in the fire to make any noise. Until the sound of a raspy cough and a scrape of a cane on the floor began to emanate from the back hall of the house.

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Abby smiled. “It seems your daughter has donated her spice rack to the making of mud pies.”

Leta wondered, “I wonder if she knows she’s donated it?”

“Oh, look closer. Look at the corner of the house.” Indeed, there at the right corner of the house, right at the very edge, stood LaVerne, barely peeking around the corner to watch what the girl was doing. For a moment, she looked out at the land around her and it was as if she could see Leta and Abby watching her watch them. But then she shook her head and switched her attention back to the girl who was now gently mixing the mud with the spice. Her hands were dirty and the mud began to dry on them. She began rubbing her hands together and sent knots of mud onto the concrete patio. Making a mess. LaVerne turned away, knowing she would have to sweep the walk before she would be able to sleep that night.

The girl finally went to the side of the house to rinse her hands from the spigot there. In her way, she sprayed water on the side of the house, along with the dust and the dirt. She took her small hand and tried to clean the side of the house with it, only leaving muddy smears on the once immaculate house. She turned off the water, and walked away, obviously hoping that no one would notice what she had done. She sat next to her drying mud pie with her feet in the grass. She looked out at the road and counted the passing cars, never noticing the house or the women who sat inside.

Abby looked back to her sock, she had misworked some stitches and now set about removing them. She thought for a moment and then said, “It was hard to lose your father when I did.”

Lena sat up with a jolt. Her mother never spoke of her father. She had kept one small photo of him out where the girls could see him, otherwise, there was no mention made of him.

Abby continued as if she had not noticed that she had startled her daughter with her words. “While you said that you never thought that losing the babies hurt, I never thought of how old our ancestors were when they were dealing with real life until I lost your father.” She focused on the stitches, never looking up at Leta while she spoke. “I was 18 when I married him, The same age you were when you married your Charley. Two years younger than your LaVerne when she married her Charles. Two years older than my own mother when she married my father. I was 19 when Glennie was born and 21 when she died. I was 21 when I had Grace, 26 when I had you, and 28 when your father died and I had Josephine right after he died. Twenty eight years old and I was a widow with three children. It was seven years before I decided to marry Bud, never imagining that I would have Bob at the age of 42. Forty two! You made me a grandmother when your brother was four years old! I never thought I’d have children in different generations! But then, I never imagined a lot of things that happened in my life.”

Leta sat and digested this. She had never thought much about the ages of her mother when these things happened. Leta thought that being 31 with a sick child was a lot of God to ask her to handle. The way her mother was so expressionless as she listed off the ages at which she had been handed much much more to deal with made Leta contemplate her in a new light. Again. She found that her relationship with her mother was ever changing, it was never simple, never black and white. Which was odd considering Abby showed the world a face that never allowed you to consider shades of grey. Actions were either Godly or not Godly and there was no middle ground in the house of Abby.

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Leta watched Abby’s face. It was different that before. She felt an honesty there that was usually lacking. Not to say that Abby had ever lied, but she had always kept the part back about feeling that failure, feeling that despair. This was thing that Leta had always needed to hear. Leta had felt a touch of that failure before, when LaVerne was stricken with the Polio on her 9th birthday, as she grew up with a crippled leg. Leta had felt that failure of not protecting her child well enough. She’d always wanted to share that with Abby, but always felt that her mother would only speak to her of God’s will and faith, and chide her for ever doubting what was happening in her life.

Leta let out a sigh of relief, there was no way she could quickly find her words, to tell her mother that she had finally said what she needed to hear. She only nodded at her mother and tried to let the light in her eyes say what she could not find the words to express.

She started slowly, wandering down another path of thought. “I remember looking through Grandfather’s Bible at all the names and dates. I remember seeing all the babies who died so early and I thought they didn’t matter. I thought that because it happened before I was born, and because there were just so many babies, that somehow the babies weren’t loved until they were older, that they weren’t valued until they could do work, that they weren’t real until you got to know them. It took holding my own babies to even begin to understand that those little babies mattered. That they meant something from the time you could feel the quickening, through their birth and their life and their death. I never understood how much it must have hurt to lose Glennie. How hard it was to be pregnant and mourning and baby at the same time.”

Abby nodded. “I do understand that. We don’t think of the humanity in the stories. In the dried ink on the brittle pieces of paper in some musty book. We don’t think that those names drew breath, that they cried, that they breathed their sweet breath onto the necks of their mothers. I didn’t understand either until I watched your Grandfather write the date of Glenna’s death in that very Bible. Then I understood with ever fiber just how much my own mother must have grieved for my siblings.”

“May I ask her about it when she comes in next?” If Abby was tricky to question, then Elizabeth was the Sphinx of Egypt.

“You watch me, if I nod at you, then you may feel free to question. I can not assure you that she will answer you, but you may attempt if you feel necessary.”

This was the best Leta could hope for. That Abby had not shut her down with a thin lipped, stern glare, was nothing short of amazing.

They sat in silence and watched the girl in the yellow sundress. Leta’s great granddaughter. Abby’s great great granddaughter. The girl was walking in and out of the house, carefully setting small glass jars on the steps of the while house, where there were 6 jars, she returned with what appeared to be a metal pie pan. She carefully walked in her bare feet to an area of the lawn that had soft mud in it. She scooped the mud in her hands and walked it back to the house where she set it in the pan with a soft “plop”. She opened the small jars one by one, sniffing at their tops until she found one that suited her. She went to sprinkle a bit of the contents onto the mud in the pan, but seemingly overshot her sprinkle and created a cloud of dark brown powder around her that she tried to sweep away with her hand in front of her face, but not before she let out a sneeze.

The breeze carried the smell over to the wood slatted house, through the window to the women. Leta was confused. “Cloves? What on earth….?”

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It’s done. Well. It’s done for now.

I’ll put chunks of it up for you to read for the parts that are okay, once it starts to wander – in true NaNo unedited style – I will spare you.

My drive for writing this particular story is that I’m so invested in the history of my family – to me, anything resembling theology isn’t the point, it’s just the means to get me the setting I need. I have spent so much time collecting names and dates – but I wanted to humanize the stories. So, things like the names and births and deaths that you’ve read so far – that happened, that’s all real – I just don’t know the stories behind them, but I can imagine…

I’ve learned a lot, just from taking the time to do some simple math.

Like I didn’t realize that my great great grandmother Ellen was 15 when she married.

Or that another spent a span of 23 years more often pregnant than not.

Or that my great great grandmother Abby had her first daughter die while she was pregnant with her second, and that her husband died 16 days before she delivered her fourth daughter.

I’ve always known of these women in my family because their photos were on our walls, and most of my mom’s side of the family is buried in 2 cemeteries within a couple of miles of each other – I’ve always known these names.

DNA passes from mother to daughter and from father to son. There’s a lot of to-do about genetic DNA testing to find halotypes to match family genealogies. Which this has really brought to my attention that I am the last female in my mom’s family – the DNA of several women terminates with me – I am the end of a branch of the family started in 1866 with the birth of my great great grandma Abby. Things end with me. The feeling of being in a matriarchal family, filled with strong women – I am the last – It’s the thing that makes me second guess not having any more children.

I wanted to get to know these stories better. To find the humanity. It was going well and then …

My great great grandma Ellen had a boy named Sheridan – I knew he died young, but I did the math – and none of this was fun anymore. Not for now. Sheridan was 7 months old when he died. Which didn’t seem like anything … I kind of already knew it … he was a baby, he died … okay … lots of babies died back then. It didn’t hit me … It wasn’t personal … I couldn’t relate …
But … now … Alex is 7 months old. I know what Alex does – I know how he crawls and laughs and smiles at me – I know what his voice sounds like – I know how he eats – How he pulls up, how he wants to see every. thing. I. am. doing. I know how he’s daily more of a little person – his own little person. And now I know that little Sheridan mattered. He wasn’t just another number – he was his own little person too – and …

I have no words. I got what I was looking for – I found the humanity – I’ll do more with the story at some point, but for now I’ve done what I set out to do, and I need to set it aside – I think I got more than I bargained for. And it kind of hurts.

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“I should not speak of it, but I was. I always pictured that the Almighty was a Heavenly Father. It should not matter if the Almighty has a male or female form. The Almighty is greater than anything we can picture.” She straightened in her seat as she said this. Ever concerned that she let her audience know that God, in any form, was nothing to trifle with or question.

“Mother, were you surprised?”

“Yes, Leta, if you must know, I was surprised. But it doesn’t *matter*.”

“It *shouldn’t* matter, Mother. But after spending your 72 years picturing God as one way, was it hard to change your perception?”

“No, because it made perfect sense, once I was here. Once I saw her shining face. It has always been the procession of mother to daughter that has been the strongest bond in the world, the most important link to how the world continues to carry on.”

“Was your life so very painful that it was a relief to finally be done with it?” Leta asked, feeling bold on this crisp, sunny morning. Asking questions that she normally wouldn’t ask.

“My life is not done. We are living eternally with the Heavenly Mother, Leta.” Abby gently chided.

Leta stifled a sigh. Conversations with her mother always went like this. She was so concerned that anything she said might just give her listener the idea that the free will she was granted would lead to free thought, which might lead to possibly questioning that sometimes God was just a big old toad with warts and slime and just because it was God’s way meant that human suffering could, for a moment overcome faith. It had always frustrated Leta to never have the opportunity to question. To wonder out loud the questions, that, in the end, might just lead her closer to the Mother. To the mothers. Her earthly one and her heavenly one.

Abby considered her daughter’s face. She knew what she was asking. She took a breath, and said a silent prayer that her words would be the right ones. She was always concerned with saying the right words, doing the right thing. Her daughter had never understood, but her granddaughter, Leta’s daughter, understood perfectly.

“I was pregnant with Grace when Glenna died, Leta. In those days, being pregnant was harder than it was for you. I was expected to stay in the house for my confinement. There were no clothes I could wear. Glenna got sick, your father rode for the doctor – but he had to ride far, because Dr. Welch had died and no one had come to replace him. I was alone in the house, so pregnant with Grace, holding Glennie in my lap. I rocked her as she coughed, and I held her while she took her last breaths. As she died in my arms, as I felt that I failed so completely, as I felt dispair and pain settle in my heart, in my very soul, for the first time, I also felt Grace stirring in me. I felt her moving gently as if to say that there was still grace and love in the world. I clung to that comfort. I clung to that proof that there was a God and she loved me, no matter what. I felt Glennie’s soul connect with my own one complete time, I felt her touch Grace and I knew Grace’s name for the first time.” Abby paused here. Setting her face into steady lines to show her steadfastness in this belief.

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She relaxed and said, “Good morning.” The other woman smiled gently, as a mother to a daughter and replied, “Good morning, dear.” She gently smoothed her hand over the younger woman’s hair as she shuffled past to her own chair at the table.

The older woman was thin, angular and harsh looking around the edges. Her hair was drawn back in a bun, but there were springs of hair that escaped from around the temples and hairline. Her eyes were blue and sharp, her mouth was a firm line, that meant business, but was not unkind. This woman emanated serious with every move. She sat in a firm chair, cushioned by a simple needlepoint pillow. she adjusted the brooch at her high necked collar and picked up a sock and needle. With tiny, perfect stiches she began to close the hole in the heel.

“I see our girl is out playing already this morning.” the older woman commented.

“Yes, she’s been at the grasshoppers again.”

“It’s a wonder that LaVerne can stand to have her mess in her flowers like that. She’s surely knocking the blooms off the stems as she bats away at those grasshoppers.”

“Oh, I am fair certain that it’s her grandpa who lets her get away with it. I’ve seen him carefully bending into the flowers to hide the mess that she makes. He dotes that girl. Actually, he dotes both those girls.”

“How long until LaVerne will join us?”

“Many years, best I can tell. Should be twenty or so. She’s so careful, that I can’t imagine she’ll leave any before she needs to.”

“She’s a strong woman, for sure. She survived the cancer few years back. Better than I could manage when the cancer got me. I was a strong woman, but too much, too much had cracked my heart long before the cancer came to rest in my bosom.”

“I know all about cracked hearts Mother. That’s what sent me here sooner than I was ready for.”

“I haven’t forgotten what got you here, Leta. My mind never slipped, and I was ever watching you after I came here.”

“Always, Mother? Has it always been like this?”

“Yes, daughter. As far back as Mary, the mothers have come here to wait and to watch our daughters in the world. We keep a simple life, we watch through that window. We keep vigil over our girls. We watch our genes pass from woman to woman, ever hoping that each new generation will be sweeter and stronger than the last.”

“Have you ever been disappointed, Mother?”

“I have not been disappointed since I came here, Leta. There were too many heartbreaks long before I came. The only thing that kept me steady was the faint knowledge that somehow, someday, if I stayed steady and true that the Father would bring me home and my days of disappointment would be of the past.”

“Were you surprised to find that the Father was actually the Mother?”

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Here’s the first page of the novel:

The table was wooden, walnut, stained and scarred from years of use. Shiny like many hands with many rags had swept over it’s surface to keep it clean. It was hard, dented, worn, and loved. The chairs that were placed around it were in similar condition. Mismatched, selected for the comfort of the user, rather than the beauty of a matched set. The chairs were decorated with an assortment of colorful, but worn, pillows, afghans, light blankets, and sweaters.

Women lived here. Women sat at this table and did womanly things. There had been years of talking, observing and working by several sets of hands at this table.

The room was not a large one. The walls were wooden, with some light streaking through a crack over by an east facing window. The window was simple, with pink curtains made from a potato sack framing the extreme brightness on the other side.

There sat a small stove in the corner, not a modern stove, but one you would find in a history exhibit. It now sat small and cold, unused, unneeded.

The fireplace held a small fire, with a cast iron bucket hanging over it, the bucket contained water with herbs that cast a homey smell across the cozy room.

Out the window, off in the distance, a young girl could be seen. She had strawberry blonde hair, held back with barrettes. She was wearing a yellow sundress with ties on the shoulders and white sandals. She was a picture of delicate girlhood with skinned knees and dirty hands from all her hard playing out in the grass and the dirt. The girl looked to be four or five, she was busy taking the cane of a tall man and poking it into a marigold plant. Each time she poked the cane, a cloud of grasshoppers would jump into the air, scaring the girl, making her flinch. Each time, she came back to the plot of flowers and poked again, curiosity winning over fear and flinching.

Now a woman came into the kitchen. She was about sixty. She had a lovely face, with dark hair. She was the kind of woman who people would have said, “she’d be lovely if she weren’t so fat.?” It was true, she was a well padded woman. This morning she had clean, neatly pinned hair, a dry face, and a touch of beeswax on her lips. Other mornings, when she looked as if she had been working hard, when her hair flew around, and sweat made her face shine, no one would call her pretty. She poured a cup of the tea from the fire into a white stone mug decorated with blue flowers. She settled herself into a wide, comfortable chair with arms, next to the table. She pulled the pillows around her and set them so they would gently hold her body in their puffiness. Around her shoulders, she pulled a soft blanket, made from velvets in a crazy quilt pattern. The velvets were bright, the brightest colors in the faded room. She held the mug of tea in both hands, and watched the young girl outside, with interest. She did this every day, so she was used to the routines of the young girl as they meshed with the routines of her own.

She twirled a ring around her finger on her left hand. Idly pulling it off and over her knuckle. She did this unconsciously as she had done many many mornings before this one. She was so focused on watching the girl play with the grasshoppers, that she jumped slightly against the needlepoint pillows when a hand lay on her shoulder.

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