Story: Tough Going

***

1

And she died. Their trusted employee, their neighbor, their friend, their mother… She was taken from them.

She was thirty-nine. She was buried after a short ceremony in a beautiful, large cemetery outside the city to the northwest. Now it is called “historic,” but then it was considered new. Her headstone said, "Sarah Decker Davis, 1879-1918." There'd been many burials about that time period, especially just before. So many died then…

Sarah (or Sallie) Williamson had been born in Charleston, South Carolina. Her father was a ship’s carpenter from Sweden, who died unexpectedly in 1896 when Sallie was seventeen. Sallie’s mother Betty Lee had married a man named John Newburg just after the Civil War. He had died ten years later, just after their son James was born.

A year or so after her first husband's death, Betty married again, and three years after that, Sallie was born. Altogether, Betty and Erik Williamson had three daughters. One of them died only five months after she was born, her death record in the Charleston cemetery not even listing a name for her.

Life was tenuous and fragile, especially back then in the mid-to-late nineteenth century.

In 1900 Sallie herself married Wallace N. Decker, a ruler for one of the larger Charleston printing businesses. They lived with "Mama Betty" and Sallie’s younger sister Winnie. In 1902 their first son, Newton (“Newt” for short) was born, and Winnie moved to a rooming house near the millinery shop where she worked. A year later, Winnie too died, carried off by a sudden fever.

3

My dear Wallace,

We are all so sad. Mother cannot stop crying. Even little Newt seems to miss his dear auntie. It happened so fast. Mother was called to her bedside late in the afternoon Thursday, and by Friday evening little Winnie was gone.

She was always quiet and sweet, just as I’m sure you remember her. She would have made a good wife and mother -- I can’t bear to think she will never have that chance. And I will never again share a bed with her, or hold her dear little hand. I wish you were here to hold me close.

Mother says we have to “keep a-goin” is how she says it.

I miss you but I hope you find what you are looking for out there in Dallas. Thank you for writing now and then. I know it’s hard to find the time. Is it still very hot? Please, please take good care of yourself and don’t work too hard for Mr. Isaacs.

Your loving Wife,

Sallie

P.S. Do you still think you’ll come home for a while in the Fall? At least we have the trains now. SWD

*

Dear Sallie

I am very sorry about Winnie. I will always remember those days when we were first married. We didn’t have much room, did we, there in your mother’s house? But your Mama Betty and young Winnie accepted me into the family, which made it all right.

I hope Betty is getting along better by now. Having lost two husbands and now her beloved little girl – as she always called Winnie – is just too much.

And little Newt, is he well and happy? I know you like working in that shop, just like Minnie liked calling herself a milliner, but I wish you could have more time with him. Not that Mama Betty doesn’t love him about as much as you and me!

Anyway, yes, I will get a week off in November, unless there’s too much work for Mr. Isaacs to do without me at that time.

Hope you and Betty are as well as possible.

Love,

Your husband

*

“I don’t mind working,” he said to himself, mailing the letter at the downtown Post Office. “I like the print shop. But when the day’s over and on the weekends… well, a fellow should be able to have a little fun. You need some life, some excitement,” he was thinking as he headed down to the river bank to sit a while in the shade. Maybe there would be a little breeze. “Gosh, it’s hot in the sun,” he was thinking.

Sallie was a great partner, he had to admit, smart and a good talker, pretty too in her way. “But with her mother and her, it’s all work. When it’s not the job, it’s straightening up the house, doing the washing, discussing how much can we afford for food this week …and all that.”

He spotted a live oak on the slope near the water with a ring of shade underneath.

“Now, Molly’s mom and dad aren’t like that," he said to himself, thinking of his new Dallas friends, the Corcoran family. "Why didn’t we meet in Carolina? That new Victrola thing is really something, isn’t it? I’ll even know how to dance a little in a while. What would Sallie say to that?”

But he knew she would say they had to save their money. “It’s too bad about Winnie, though. I should have been there…”

4

A hundred years later, his grandson Byron, as an old man, tried to imagine what it had been like for his grandfather Wallace Decker in those days. Why had he left his wife and family in Charleston to look for work way out in Dallas anyway? Was he already restless? Looking for something new? Or were the opportunities in old Charleston really that limited? Or had he already been in some kind of trouble?

It didn’t seem right in the first place for him to have left his one-year-old son (odd-ball “Uncle Newt”) back in Charleston. Then before six months had passed, Wallace had started cheating on Sallie with a mere girl out in Dallas. No, not right.

Byron remembered sitting on the living room couch twenty years ago with his Dad, Evan Decker - Sallie’s last surviving child - when he first saw the old letters that showed how much Evan's father Wallace had failed to live up to the common decencies that Byron knew his Dad himself had always considered so important. Evan Decker rarely showed emotion, even to Byron his only son. At that moment, though, it was obvious how bad he felt.

5

Dearie

Last night was the best night of my life. I’ll never forget it. I wish you could come back tonight but we have to go to a supper at the church.

I hope you can think of another excuse for us to go off alone.

I love you!

Molly

*

My Dearest Husband Wallace

We are all looking forward to having you back with us again soon, at least for a little while. It’s mostly me of course who is eager to see you again. I wish we could meet you at the station but of course we can’t be sure when your train will arrive.

Mr. Wood the printer was going by this morning and looked in to say Hello. “How’s Wally?” he said. It sounded so funny, him calling you that. Did the other men at work call you that? Does Mr. Isaacs?

I guess I’d better help Mama get supper. I think about you all the time. I hope you make all your train connections all right, without too many delays.

Your Loving Sallie

6

By the time he reached Atlanta at the end of what was scheduled to be a three-day journey, he was running six hours late. But all that meant was that he had only an hour or so to spend in the station. He sought out the shoe shine stand. He knew Sallie would have preferred to do that for him, but he paid the 25 cents anyway. He wanted to look respectable… and to have people treat him like a somebody. Altogether, after all, he still had almost $11.00 to give to Sallie and her mother.

He had dinner with the Corcorans – and Molly, of course – once or twice a week now. They wouldn’t hear of his pitching in… so he'd been able to save up.

He realized he was looking forward to seeing Sallie and little Newt more and more as the time and the miles went by. It surprised him a little that he felt that way. And they would be coming out to join him in Texas before too long, wouldn’t they? Betty would be pressing him to find them somewhere to stay, Sallie would say somewhere near the shops where she could find work.

He paid the colored boy for the shine. “Yassir, sir. Yassir,” he said bouncing his head down each time.

“That’s all right, boy,” he nodded as he strode through the lobby. Maybe he’d pick up a little flower for his lapel when they pulled in at the Charleston station.

*

For her part, to be honest, Sallie didn’t seem to have time to think about anything. She found herself thinking about her baby all the while as she was working. And that naturally involved her mother Betty in her thoughts. But until the last couple of days, she didn’t find herself thinking much at all about Wallace out there in Texas. And now she couldn’t think of much else.She and her mother Betty were busy cleaning and straightening things up in the house. They had decided to move the baby’s crib into Mama Betty’s room the morning of the day Wallace would return. Gosh, if he didn’t get in that day after all, she didn’t know if she could stand it!

7

Later, in their little Dallas apartment, little Newt was beginning to talk pretty well even though he was barely two. Like Sallie, Betty remembered. “Gramma,” he said now pulling at her skirt as he stood there a little unsteadily. “Gramma, why Mommy cry?”

Sallie didn’t seem to be able to stop weeping the last couple of days. Even while she was nursing the new baby, as she was doing now, she couldn’t stop. Why had they named him 'Evan'? she wondered. Well, at least it wasn’t Wallace junior. They would have to go to a judge now, she thought, if they had, and change it.

“Gramma,” the toddler insisted.

“She’ll be fine,” Betty said leaning over to hug him and stroke the back of his head. “You’ll see.” She knew Sallie was strong-willed. She’d keep a-goin’ as she had said when Winnie died. That damned bastard had given that young tart a child a full month before he visited them in Charleston that one time. Little Evan was on the way when he left. That’s what hurt the most. They would never have had to leave her house in Charleston! Her anger rose up into her throat and her face felt hot, but she heard Sallie coming out of her bedroom and turned back to the stove.

“How is the little one getting on?” she asked.

8

The judge granting the divorce said it was customary for divorcees to be prohibited from remarrying for a year. Wallace knew Mr. Corcoran, Molly's dad, wouldn’t like that. He’d show the old man the divorce papers when he got them, rather than telling them now. After all, how could he remember details at a time like that?

He and Molly would get married all right, first thing they could. He’d start now taking care of the baby and Molly, since he was out of Sallie’s life altogether. It'd be wrong not to, wouldn't it? He wasn't that kind of a man, was he? Maybe she could go to Ft. Worth to have the baby. No one would have to know. He felt another thrust of regret, was it shame? Think about Molly, he told himself.

Could they name Molly's baby “Wallace junior”? he wondered.

9

Well, at least Wallace and that low-life girl had left Dallas by then, two years after the divorce. They had eloped to Ft. Worth, it said in the newspaper at the time, and now they had gone off somewhere North. Her mother and the boys were doing okay. She had a pretty good job in that big store downtown. She could even walk to work each morning.

She was on her way now, in fact, striding purposefully through the heat and damp air. They could start rebuilding their life together. She could count on Mama, couldn’t she? They had a decent, affordable apartment on Plum Street. The boys could help out in a few years… Lots of boys had part-time work by the time they were six. She'd talk with Marybeth next time she stopped in at the ladies’ garments. Marybeth worked at the Evening News. They had boys… Newt would be six next year.

Soon, she told herself, I won’t worry about running into that Wallace out here on the street. Thinking of his name made her burn...

10

Mama Betty knew everyone. When she told you that family who lived in the modest, well-kept house across Plum Street was a good family, and the father owned a good business, you could count on that. Somebody in the rooming house would know. Sometimes, when Sallie was walking by the house on her way to work, a young man would nod to her as he came out of the house. After a while he started saying,“Good morning.” She nodded, and later she smiled a little.

Eventually he introduced himself. Jack Davis was his name (as Betty had said before). His father Abe Davis ran a well-known tool and die shop down by the railroad line, four blocks away. Sallie wondered if that was where Jack was headed, even though she had to walk almost in the opposite direction and he accompanied her most of the way.

This was four years after that bum Wallace had walked out. She didn’t think of him much nowadays, and never wondered anymore if she might run into him on the streets. She started to wonder, though, if she might run into Jack Davis.

He liked children, he said. And in a year, Sallie became Mrs. Sallie (Sarah, actually) Decker Davis. At Sallie’s request, after the ceremony in Ft. Worth, he moved in with Betty and the boys, there on Plum Street across from his dad's house.

11

By the time Newt was eight and Evan almost five, a year after they had gotten a new Daddy, they were already becoming the best team of newsboys in downtown Dallas. Evan had the spot outside the door where his Mom Sallie worked, but he didn’t pay any attention. He liked calling out, “Paper. Get your paper here!” and exchanging a few words with the men in the suits who gave him a coin or two when he offered them a paper. He put the Evening News’s money in the canvas belt they'd issued to him, and he put his own tips in his pants pocket. Newt had always done it that way, so Evan did too.

The wagon brought the boys one edition of the paper at noon. Newt called it “the bulldog.” Then around four o'clock, the next edition was delivered. The boys spent the time in-between in the grand public library down the street. Newt, Evan marveled, could shout out the words in the big print, although sometimes he forgot and said the Bulldog words instead of the later-edition ones. Not often, Evan admitted to himself, but he could still tease his big brother, couldn’t he?

In the library Evan mainly spent his time looking at the pictures in the children’s section. He made up stories to fit the pictures. Sometimes, quietly over in a deserted corner, Newt would read one of those books to Evan. He didn’t know all the words but he did pretty well.

Newt got to go to school in the mornings. Evan stayed with Gramma until 11:30.

Mom would walk home with them around six-thirty, and after supper they would compare the money in their pants pockets. Newt always had a lot more.

12

I’m sorry, Gramma Betty said to herself as she swept up, but that man Jack's going downhill. It’s Sallie’s lookout but it affects us all. The boys see it, I know. They look so glum now when they come in for supper. They used to be teasing each other and laughing, so glad to be home. They would run over to their Gramma and give her a big hug.

Now, especially when their Mom was with them, so tired from being on her feet all day, everyone was quiet, not so affectionate anymore.

And that Davis man was the reason. Gramma Betty thought he might have started drinking.

Four years after the wedding, over there in Ft. Worth, it had really gotten bad. Jack Davis quarreled with the boys all the time, over things that didn’t matter, like where they left their jackets, or their books. Sallie tried to defend them. Betty herself pitched in. But he was getting worse, not better. Was he drinking while he was out?

It was good when he was away – they could be a real family again – but when he came back, he always seemed to be looking for a fight. It seemed as though Sallie was not getting the invitation to go across the street with her in-laws as often as before either. When Betty would ask about them, Davis didn’t seem interested.

Maybe the elder Davises were having trouble with him too, and they didn’t want to spend much time together. That was another bad sign.

The arguments with Sallie got worse. Everyone – Gramma Betty, both boys – everyone could hear them quarreling in their bedroom. Almost every night. How could anyone get relaxed enough for bed with that going on? It hurt the boys most of all.

Finally, he hit Sallie. She ordered him out and threw his jacket and hat down the stairs. Betty packed up his things the next morning and took them over to his mother. Old Mrs. Davis wasn’t angry. She didn’t look happy, of course. Who would?

The divorce papers – six years after the marriage – granted Sallie Decker Davis's petition, on the grounds of “cruel treatment.”

By the time Newt was fifteen and Evan thirteen, three years after that bad Daddy Jack Davis had moved back in with his parents, their beloved Gramma passed away. She hadn’t been herself in the last year or so, gradually losing her short-term memory. She'd remained the same tough and loving Mama and Gramma she’d always been. But by the end she could not recall the boys’ names, and she didn’t know exactly who Sallie was. A sister maybe…?

Afterwards, Sallie had bought a little house on Royal Circle in a different part of town, and she got work in a real fancy department store only five or six blocks away. The boys kept their afternoon newspaper sales territories. One of the ladies at the Evening Edition, Marybeth, kind of looked after them after school. And then, they’d added evening paper routes to all the houses and boarding houses along the way between the big boulevard and the streets there and the railroad tracks four blocks on the other side of their own neat little house on Royal Circle.

Their Mom’s new girlfriend, Billie Mae, who lived in the front bedroom, would usually be helping out in the kitchen when the boys got home for supper. They were like sisters in only a few months. Billie Mae worked downtown too, as a secretary. She was seeing someone she called "I. O."

Their mother was almost her old self again. They all missed Gramma, but Mom seemed happy and energetic again. With a little help from Billie Mae, she took good care of them herself now….

14

And then, she died. Sarah (Sallie) Williamson Decker Davis was gone.

The biggest outbreak of the 1918 Flu in Dallas and Ft. Worth had come in the spring, but Sallie wasn't hit till the end of December, ten months after her mother Betty had died. Sallie wasn't yet 40. It wasn’t any use sending her to a clinic or a hospital, as Billie Mae told the boys when she came in to take care of their mother as best she could. The hospitals were still over-crowded, with doctors and nurses having been taken off themselves. And so many folks were still dying.

Billie Mae was married now and lived across the street with her husband Mr. Forrester (she called him "I. O.").

The boys were scared. But when Sallie was not sleeping or having a bad episode of fever, she seemed sure she could survive. Look what she’d lived through up to now, she must have thought. Billie Mae told her not to worry about the boys or the house, but just work on getting well.

But then, on December 26, she was gone, like so many others. A doctor or somebody else they didn’t know came by. It fell to Newt – who was only sixteen – to sign the death certificate. It said the cause of death was pneumonia. Evan looked it over and wondered about… lots of things.

15

They boys didn't stop going to school and selling the newspapers. They fixed their own meals, after Billie Mae got them started. It turned out that Billie Mae’s husband Irv Oscar Forrester (or I. O.) had told a judge he would act as the boys’ guardian. Their Mom Sallie had bought some life insurance when she closed the deal on the Royal Circle house, which helped pay off the mortgage.

With I. O.’s help they fixed up the garage with one apartment for themselves upstairs and another downstairs to rent out. They rented the house to a family, so they were actually able to start saving for college. An old bachelor reporter at the Evening News took the downstairs apartment.

They never saw their father, Wallace Decker, never heard from him. The bank with their savings in it crashed in 1919, so they lost everything. Newt worked full-time at the Evening News as Evan finished his last two years of high school, and in 1921, they were able to sell the house and go off to Texas A & M together. To make ends meet, both of them had two, and sometimes three, part-time jobs while in school.

They realized they’d learned a lot from Gramma Betty and their Mom Sallie. They thought they could manage.

***

Poem: Raking Leaves

***

I

The wind’s
Always blowing
The wrong way

II

And they are
Aren’t they
After all
Pretty good
Mulch?

***

Reminiscence: Child Health Problems

***

1

Was I a sickly child? I think so. I believe my mother thought so too, based on how she looked after me in the later years, in periods of which my memories now are sharper than of the earlier times. For example, I don’t remember much about having asthma as a toddler, but I do recollect that episode’s being recalled to me enough times later. “You don’t want to make your asthma come back, you know, ‘Byron’.” And that kind of thing.

And I also remember my sister’s getting the chicken pox, and then my getting them, and the two of us both at home all day. Soon, we had the measles. I think she got well after a fairly short time, but while I was still weakly recovering from this run of bad luck, I came down with a chest flu… which eventually developed into pneumonia. More on that later.

Our children’s doctor was Dr. M--------, not to be confused with my parents’ doctor who went by the nickname “Dr. Happy.” (It seemed appropriate.) All of this was in the late 1940s and the 1950s.

To a little boy, Dr. M-------- seemed a big man, even taller and rounder than my Dad, who was 6 feet tall and weighed about 175 pounds. Dr. M-------- had a hearty manner and talked what seemed loud to me. Mother and Dad had a lot of confidence in him, and remarked that he was right on top of all the new developments. I have thought later, for instance, that he might have been one of the first generation of family doctors and pediatricians who never made house calls.

Mother would have to drag me out of my nice, comfy, warm bed, stuff me into itchy and too-warm clothes, help me stagger down the stairs and climb stiffly into the family car, before driving me down to the shady-lawned, pleasant new office that looked like a house and was in a residential neighborhood… and then cuddle me and talk sweetly to me – amid the soft gurgle of the aquarium - until Dr. M-------- was able to squeeze me in between two of his scheduled appointments. There always seemed to be several Moms and children awaiting their turn.

When we were all done and getting up to leave, Dr. M-------- always held out a candy cane to “such a good patient.” Then when I would reach for it, he would abruptly shift it just enough to one side so I couldn’t touch it. After I’d make another stab at it, he would laugh cheerily and give it to me: “There you go, sport,” he would say. I guess my Mother let me keep the candy, but I don’t recall eating it.

2

Central Texas is well-known as a center of pollen allergies, and that certainly applied to me. I suppose that was the cause of the asthma troubles early on, and “hay fever” symptoms dogged me all through childhood right up until college, when I wasn’t even in Texas anymore. Many were the bottles of brown glass from which I had teaspoonfuls of red, sweet Benadryl. Boy, did I feel sluggish and sleepy then, but the worst of the sneezing, sniffling, and itchy eyes did seem to be much better. Many too were the times when Mother would drive me to visit the aquarium and the other Moms and sick children so that Dr. M-------- could give me a shot in the bottom.

When I had my pants down and was bending over a little chair, Dr. M-------- always followed the same routine. He’d say, “Now I want you to tell me when I give you this shot.” I’d get ready. Then he would slap my poor little behind and plunge the needle in. When he would pull the needle out and wipe the spot with a cotton ball with alcohol in it, he would say, “See? I told you you wouldn’t be able to feel it!”

He was very disappointed when I would say, “Now!” just as he stuck me. I knew after one or two little visits like this that as soon as he slapped my bottom he was going to strike, so even though I certainly did not feel the needle, I timed my cry perfectly every time. As a reward for getting it right, guess what? I got a candy cane! Dr. M-------- seemed impressed when instead of reaching for the candy cane, so that he could snatch it away from my grasp, I would reach for his hand and take the candy with my other hand. How dumb did he think I was? I wondered. After all, I had dozens of shots like this over the years. His routine never varied.

3

One day Mother picked me up at school. My older sister was already in the car, picked up at her school. This was in the 1950s. We went to Dr. M--------’s office I think four days in a row. First she would go in, and then when she came out I would go in. In other visits when both of us went to the doctor, we both went in together. So right away we knew this was special.

When she came out, my sister’s eyes were red as though she had been crying. That was sufficiently scary. In an office with a gurney, where I had not been before, the nurse explained that we were starting a new treatment that would prevent my getting sick so much, with all that sneezing and itchy eyes. I was thinking at that moment that maybe the slaps on my bottom weren’t so bad…

I got up on the gurney and lay flat on my back. A small cushion was placed under my shoulders so that my neck could be tilted back. The room seemed a little cool. I remember it now as being sort of dark too, but that may be because I had my eyes shut… tight.

With Mother holding my hand, the nurse and for a brief part of the visit Dr. M-------- (uncharacteristically soft-spoken, I thought), they explained sympathetically that I was going to get a special, new treatment, the very latest thing for a little boy with my allergies. It would take a few minutes, while I would need to lie there very still until the treatment was over. I should keep my eyes shut too.

It was called a radium treatment. When I was properly positioned and had my eyes sufficiently closed (that part was no problem), something thin and cold was inserted up my nose, it seemed like a foot or more, in any case farther than I had thought my nose went! Then I had to just lie there, very still, breathing through my mouth until after what must have actually been three to five minutes – not the eternity I thought it was – when the long needle-like rod was slowly removed.

I was surprised that it didn’t hurt. But boy, was it obnoxious. Waiting outside for the third and especially the fourth of those treatments was even worse than the treatment itself.

No candy either. I didn’t mind. At least it was over.

I know now that the purpose of this treatment was to shrink the adenoids, which were thought to play an important role in sinus trouble and hay fever symptoms. And I did seem somewhat better afterwards. And unlike many of us who had the radioactive radium treatment as children, thank goodness I have never had any hint of thyroid cancer.

4

At Boy Scout camp one summer, I was exposed to polio.

In my generation children were still vulnerable to polio, and we all knew that the best outcome of really having polio would be some kind of paralysis. You’d have to walk with crutches and braces. And you might have to spend the rest of your life in a big old tube, an “iron lung,” that breathed for you. We knew all this and didn’t talk of it, tried not to think of it, and did not actually think about it very often.

It had been hard for me to adjust to Boy Scout Camp. I had trouble sleeping that first night on my top bunk in a big tent with five other boys, but I was really enjoying the knot-tying, the lanyard-making, the search for arrow heads, and the lessons about the various kinds of tree leaves all around the campground. And then, it was all interrupted and suddenly we were going back home. I was taken right to a special doctor – could it have been Dr. Happy himself? – for a really big shot, in a really big needle. It was something called gamma-globulin, and they had to figure the dosage very carefully based on my exact current weight.

We heard that one of the other boys in the camp had been diagnosed with polio, not someone I knew. We never knew what happened to him.

I do remember that one boy whom I did know well from school, a popular guy who was really good at football and baseball, came down with polio. He was said to be scared; who wouldn’t be? But after a time, they said he was all right. I don’t know or recall whether the diagnosis had been wrong or if he had just managed to throw it off, but he wasn’t the only one who was scared during that time. I remember that.

5

But my sharpest memory of health issues in my childhood goes back to that bout with pneumonia. It remains clear and distinct in my mind, as though it just happened.

This was when I was four, I am pretty sure. My bedroom was at the top of the stairs, just a little to the left. I slept in an apparatus which at one time had been my baby bed, a white iron contraption that was designed to "grow up" with the youngster until he or she was just too big to fit.

In other words, it was high off the floor like a baby bed and at one time had had a fence all around it high enough to keep the baby inside. You could unlatch the one side of it and swing it down to pick up the infant rather than having to reach down in and lift him (me) out all the way up to what have been shoulder high for my little Mother to get me out. The fence had been taken off, all the way around so that it was by then just like a real bed except for being rather high off the floor and kind of small.

When I was sick that time, my little bed was positioned just to the left of the doorway, with my head and pillow nearest the back wall and my feet toward the doorway and the stairs.

What I remember so clearly was late in the afternoon of one long day when I had been feeling rotten. Headache, fever, sleepiness (probably drugged), and worst of all, subject to sharp, stabbing pains in my chest whenever I moved… at all, even when I tried to talk... or whisper.

I had been asleep, again, late that afternoon, lying on my side with my face toward the window on the side wall and my back toward the center of the room, which was fairly large and open. I heard a familiar sound. It was my Dad. He had just gotten home from work, coming through the kitchen door alongside the house, greeting Mother making supper, trudging across the dining room below mine, ready to start up the stairs.

I knew he was worried about me, and I loved my Dad. He was going to stump, step by step, up the stairs and proceed into my room where it would look like I was sleeping, with my back to him. Dad was the kind of person who might touch your arm when he was talking with you, or would put his hand on the shoulder of his little boy when standing next to him, or even tousle his hair affectionately.

In other words, I knew that he was going to put his big, warm hand on my shoulder or my head as I lay there… to communicate his love and his concern, maybe even without waking me up.

And I knew that when he did, my whole little body would be wracked with an awful, piercing pain.

To be honest, what I remember is not his actually doing this and my agony as a result. What I remember so clearly is being torn between my wish to be loved at that painful time and my fear of the sharp stab of that awful pneumonia pain.

I'm not even sure that, if I had felt sure I could speak without sparking the pains, I would have told Dad not to touch me. I wanted him to touch my back and the back of my head... And I also wanted to be free of pain.

It's funny what you remember and what you don't, isn't it?

***