One of the delights of attending last year’s family reunion was meeting my talented first cousin-in-law once removed (translation: she’s married to my first-cousin’s son). Devon graciously granted me permission to share this sweet story of hard-working love, excerpted from her novella, Never a Mere Mortal (which also happens to be on my list of all-time favorite books and, now that I think of it, I really ought to write a review on Goodreads!)

 

A Gentle Answer

 

He had sacrificed his youth for his country, serving proudly in the days when the greater good was valued over individual comfort. He had served alongside honorable men, eaten unrecognizable meals with them, drawn on their strength when he wanted to run.

Those days had rattled him with fear, but he had taken pride in doing his job well. But although they had been assured this work was for the ultimate good, he still had to push back the confusion each time he saw the great cost of the “good.” By the age of twenty-five, he had seen more death and lived through more adventure than the forty-year-old employees in his shop today, the ones who roll their eyes at each other when he drones on about his experience in the war or his love for his country.

After the war, he met Alice by chance when he stopped at the ice cream parlor one afternoon. She was everything pure and bright to his sad, disillusioned mind. Her cheerful greeting caught his attention, but it was her peaceful spirit that convinced him she would always be a safe place for his experience and pain. Over the course of the next few months, with the intuitive use of her words and her silence, she soothed the places that hurt his soul.

For her part, Alice loved the depth in his eyes. She loved the way his smile did not take pleasure for granted, but rather collected each one and turned it over and over in his hands, thankful for its healing presence. Where she would see a pretty meadow from the car window, he would stop the car and get out and walk among the flowers, running his hands over their cheerful faces with a childlike appreciation. He would get on his knees and collect the prettiest daisies, threading their stems together into a makeshift bouquet.

“Come on, let’s go,” she would plead, “we’re going to be late — this is not the time to be picking flowers.”

And he would smile and rise, presenting her with the bouquet in an elaborate show. As she looked down at the bundle of daisies in her hands, each time — without fail — she would find one ugly, drooping flower among the bunch, one that did not fit with the rest. She would look up at him with a furrowed brow.

“Because,” he would say to her unspoken question, “that’s real life.”

They had not been going steady very long before they fell into the comfortable recognition that she would be his lifeline and he would be her anchor till death did them part. As a step in that direction, he got down on one knee in that ice cream parlor nine months after they first met, and they were married a few months later.

Their first year of marriage drifted by with the ease of an autumn leaf floating on the river, as conversations every evening stoked a bright fullness in their relationship. Each discovery brought new intimacy as they found themselves more fully known and loved. Everything was as it should be.

The next few years brimmed with fun adventures — a new home to enjoy, new babies to love, and a new business to run. He observed Alice, appreciated her dedication as she invested late nights and early mornings in their family. His heart swelled with pride as she alternately played with and disciplined the children according to their need. She was strong, with solid opinions that sharpened his own — his capable partner in business and in life.

But as they worked together toward their common goals, they gradually forgot how to be together, to rest in each other’s company. Early on, they had taken great care in arranging the store and spent many a happy afternoon dusting and rearranging their wares without distraction. Now those distractions were usually boisterous, often dirty, and routinely picked up dead animals.

As they corralled the children and managed their growing business, they found less time to speak to each other, and when they took time for conversation, harsh words crept in where harmony had always been. Afraid of this dangerous shift in their marriage and unsure of the best way to close the distance, Alice tried to hold him to herself on a tether of control, becoming critical of the things she had always loved about him.

“Could you pick up some flour so I can make bread with supper?” she had asked him one afternoon.

“I will, but I’ve got to say a few words over the squirrel. I think one of the dogs got him. The kids found his body in the yard this morning and made up a little box for his burial. They’ve asked me to see to it he has a proper funeral,” he explained, offering, “I’ll go get some right after that.”

“It’s not even a real funeral,” she insisted with frustration. “It’s a squirrel, a squirrel. Please just do the service after you get the flour.”

“But, Alice, it’s not just a squirrel to the kids. They want him properly laid to rest, and I intend to help them. The bread can still be ready in time for supper. Just give me a few minutes to finish this.”

She disapproved of the ways he spent his time, bossed him as if he were one of her children. She hoped to pull him, harnessed by her criticism, back onto the path she desperately wanted to walk with him. He felt her critiques keenly and began to withdraw to safer ground. It was an ominous cycle that made each desperately unhappy, though neither could see a way of escape.

One night, he found her in tears as she brushed her hair before bed.

“We’ve been married for ten years today,” she said flatly. “Happy anniversary. We made it.”

He had forgotten their anniversary. The monumental day had passed like any other — an afternoon sandwiched between a morning and an evening. Alice generally didn’t make a big deal of holidays, but anniversaries were different — they were a celebration of the hard work they had poured into their marriage thus far, and when lavishly observed, were an investment in the next year’s happiness. Until now, he had never spared an expense in honoring the day. But things at the shop had been so busy recently.

“Oh no, I am so sorry — ” he began.

“I guess I saw it coming,” she cut him off. ‘What are we even doing? We’re running this shop together, we’re raising a family together. But we don’t ever just spend time together like we used to,” she cried. “Why should today be special when none of the other days are? It shouldn’t have surprised me, but still — ”

“Now, Alice, don’t turn this into any more than it is,” he said. Of course today he’d made a critical mistake. Of course they’d been busy and lost touch lately. But all families have rough seasons. And, he noted bitterly to himself, she hadn’t mention their anniversary today either, until she wielded it now as a weapon.

“Any more than it is?” Alice burst into tears and told him exactly what it was. He stood staring at the floor, listening to her words as she verbally dismantled all that she had devoted her life to protecting. She got into bed, rolled to face the wall, and cried bitterly as she mourned both the years that had driven them apart and her words which now would fix them there.

He cleared his throat and quietly said, “If that’s how you feel,” then opened the door and walked to his truck. Though at first it would not crank, he refused to go back inside to finish the fight. After fifteen minutes of struggle, the engine finally yielded and sputtered to life. He drove dark back roads throughout the night, preparing his words and steeling his heart for the inevitable confrontation. He was only a few miles from home when his truck shuddered and then coasted to a stop. He pounded the steering wheel, cursing first his truck for its betrayal, then himself for the empty fuel tank. He kicked the door open and slammed it behind him as he started walking.

Trudging through the fields before sunrise, he rehearsed her faults, fine-tuning his monologue as he prepared for the clash. As he gained confidence from the evidence mounting against her, he suddenly remembered a verse his mother had made him memorize decades ago. Man that was a lifetime ago when we were kids. His sister had knocked his bicycle into a puddle so he threw mud on her and called her a dirty name. She tattled on him, and they had both been ordered to memorize a passage from the Proverbs. Why would that surface now? This situation is totally different. How did it even go again? It began to come back to his mind:

A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.

The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright: but the mouth of fools

poureth out foolishness.

The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.

“Probably best you look away, God,” he said to no one in particular, “this may get ugly.”

But as he walked on those verses began to perforate his arguments, and he struggled to keep his points in order. He wasn’t sure if it was the beautiful sunrise, the brisk early morning exercise, or those pointed words from the King James version, but as he strode for home, his anger dissolved as a new feeling emerged in its place. He had spent the last couple of years watching his marriage swirl as the bathwater does before it goes down the drain — slowly at first, then faster and faster and faster.

No more, he decided as he walked through the fields. I’m plugging the tub. Armed with this new resolve, he abandoned his interest in the easy road, the one tempting him to walk away from a fight and keep on walking. As he passed through the fields that morning, he picked a handful of daisies like he had done so often during their early days.

When he got home, he placed the flowers on the kitchen table with a note that said, “Since the war, I haven’t had anything to fight, mostly thanks to you. But somewhere along the way, I drew up battle lines with you on the other side. I don’t really know how we ended up here, but starting today, I want to be on your side again. I want to fight for us.” Then he slipped out the front door again to open the store before she woke up.

When she walked into the kitchen that morning, she glanced apprehensively at the bouquet, which evoked so many memories of their early years. She stepped closer for a better look. There, in amongst the beautiful flowers, was a hideously withered one. It was the one for which she was looking.

“Because that’s real life,” she smiled as the tears began to form. “I’m ready.”

It was the biggest fight of their lives — the daily falling in and out of love, the constant swelling and humbling of selves, the moment-by-moment strain of choosing to honor each other. But they fought it, and in the end, they won. Many times, they had feared they might not. But as she lay still, waiting peacefully as the sickness nudged her further into eternity, Alice’s final words to him were, “We made it. Come soon.” And that lovely smile.

It was the proudest victory of his life. He had learned in the war what it meant to serve the greater good, to offer oneself for the masses. But he learned in his marriage what it meant to sacrifice himself for another individual, one who often opposed or hurt him. In the end, the victory over the struggle brought a fulfillment only known by those who have experienced it.

During their first year of marriage, he thought he knew what it was to be fully known and fully loved. But as the years passed, Alice had shown him more and more what it meant…