A Splendid P.M.

            Packing more boxes this afternoon, I find some stray pages from the writing project I intended to work on when I moved to Whidbey Island in 2008.  (However, I never got around to it, choosing instead to write about the daily details of caring for my mother, experiencing life next door to cougars, and finding my faith again.)  It is a project I hope to return to someday, but in the meantime, let me explain . . .

            Back in the 1990s (I think), my mother and one of her cousins took on the Herculean task of transcribing their grandmother’s daily diary entries.  Rarely more than a sentence long, the diary entries spanned the years from 1922 to 1946.  After reading through all the assembled entries more than once, I decided to write in the voice of my great-grandmother and expound upon some of the more memorable statements, drawing upon what she had written, what my mother told me, and a sprinkle of my own imagination.

            So, here is the first of the three vignettes that I completed.

            After dinner Geo. kissed Dana and we had a splendid P.M.—November 29, 1934

            “Mamma!”  My own voice wakes me as Priscilla bends over me saying “Grandma?” in a concerned tone.  She gives me a sip of that cool, clear well water.  I remember now.  This is 1946, and Priscilla is home from Oberlin College on winter break.  I’m staying with Dana and George in their farmhouse in the country, the one they built back in the thirties.

            I believe it was the fall of 1934 when George bought the farm here in Vergennes on the Flat River.  It seemed that most weekends that autumn were spent at the farm, where they worked so hard.  I came along sometimes.  Other times they would leave me at their house in Grand Rapids.  I’d sit there in the shadows during the hot afternoon and crochet in silence waiting for their return.  Or I’d mind the two youngest—Priscilla was just seven and Humphrey six.

            There was so much for Dana and George to do to get that farm ready so they could build their house.  One day we cleaned the old house and got a lot of wood.  When George pulled the roof off the old shed, we carefully pulled all the nails to use again when we built.  After dinner Geo. kissed Dana and we had a splendid P.M.

            But I did not get to see the new farmhouse built.  That happened while I was living with my sister Lizzie down in Tulsa.