she stayed by Daddy the days I was away.
The first time I met her she came to dinner bringing
two baskets of food.
She’s a good cook
without showing off.
She has a way of making my father do things.
When Louise came to dinner,
Daddy got up and cleaned the kitchen when we were
done eating.
He tied an apron around his middle
and he looked silly as a cow
stuck in a hole,
but Louise ignored that,
and I took a lesson from her.
We walked around the farm
even though she’d probably already seen it
while I was gone.
She didn’t ask to be taken to my favorite places,
the loft in the barn,
the banks of the Beaver,
the field where you can
see Black Mesa on a clear day.
she knew Daddy and I had a history before her,
and she wished she’d been there for the whole thing,
but she wasn’t and there wasn’t anything to do
but get over it and get on.
We both stared in wonder
at the pond my daddy made
and she said,
a hole like that says a lot about a man.
I didn’t intend to, but I liked her,
because she was so plain and so honest,
and because she made Daddy laugh,
and me, too, just like that,
and even though I didn’t know
if there was room for her
in me, I could see there was room for her in Daddy.
When I asked him if he wanted me
to go off to Aunt Ellis after all,
Daddy said he hadn’t ever wanted it,
he said I was his own and he didn’t like to
think about what Aunt Ellis might do with me.
And we laughed, picturing me and Aunt Ellis
together,
and it wasn’t a nice laugh, but it was
Aunt Ellis we were talking about after all.
I’ll just have to watch how things go and hope
she doesn’t crowd me out of Daddy’s life, not now,
when I am just finding my way back into it.
October 1935