June 23, 1859

Chapter Three

June 23, 1859
Dear Lucy,


Child, I know your story.  You don’t have to tell me.  I’ve known you since the day you were born, you just don’t remember me.  I was the first of Julia’s friends to hold you, and maybe that’s why she chose me to write you.  We will never know.

    That atrocious Cindy MacJohns.  I don’t blame her husband Henry much, he’s been thick in the head since he was a boy, but by God Cindy was one of the smartest girls in your mother’s class!  She should know better than to treat you in such a way.  And little Bobbi and Jack being pampered!  I guess Cindy was pampered since she was a child herself and she doesn’t know any better, but that is no excuse!  I will have to write her.  Or send someone.  Either way, something must be done about the situation.

    About that imaginary world of yours.  It is lovely to have dreams child, but if we live in those dream world too much the reality will keep getting worse and worse.  My parents used to send me to my aunt’s house every summer where she treated me worse than dirt, and I lived in a world like your imaginary world where I spent every waking moment with my sister, but Auntie Louise just punished me for having my head in the clouds when it should have been on my chores.  Don’t let that happen to you.

    And my goodness, Julia never told you who your parents were?  I can hardly believe that, but she was always a bit scatter brained.

    Your father was sweet little Adam Sommerson.  He had blonde hair like yours, and it was always impossible to control, and lovely chocolate brown eyes that shone in the sunlight almost as much as his hair.  Fine, strong boy.  He was the son of Julia, and her pride and joy.  He never really liked to read his history books, but he loved to write poetry.  It was strange in a boy when he was growing up, but he was always a strange boy.  Your grandparents loved him.

    Your mother was Samantha Hendricks before she got married.  She had curly auburn hair and bright green eyes, and all the boys loved her for both.  I must say that she had a fine figure as well, and she used it ever so well, but you’re not old enough to know about that yet.  She was always top in her class in every subject, and she also went to the University, but she missed home too much and came back to teach at the schoolhouse.  That was when she was sixteen.

    When Sami (as they called her then) was seventeen she met your father, who was a year older than her and working in his father’s fields.  He had sprained his ankle and she was the daughter of a doctor, who had moved to the city and she was being taken care of by her mother.  She fixed his ankle and said, ‘That should be well sir.  Best not work on it for a while yet.’

    He said to her, ‘But how will I work in my father’s field?  I have to make my living, you know.’  Confused, she had asked, ‘But why would your father make you earn your living?’  ‘So that I will have money for when I find a real job so that I can move out and live on my own.  That’s how he shows his love,’ your father replied, laughing.

    After that your parents were great friends.  They ate lunch under an apple tree every day, and when it became cold and Sami needed a ride home from the schoolhouse, Adam was the one to give it to her.  The summer after that they got married, and a year later you were born.

    A few months later, in the fall, they died from the fever, he twenty and she nineteen.  Terrible way to die.  But it can’t be helped.


Sincerely, Safiya

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[Dini]

OMG! I really want to know what will happen next! When are you putting the next chapter? I really enjoy reading your writing. :)