~ Chicago, Illinois - December 2000 ~
For the past year, I have enjoyed living in my human home in Chicago. For the better part of a century, my home was kept almost frozen in time. Except for a few modern conveniences that subsequent fire and health codes required, the house would not have been foreign to someone living during the turn of the century.
However, times and tastes change. Over the past year, I had gone room-by-room and renovated and modernized the inside of the house. Updated mechanicals, such as a modern heating and cooling system, plumbing, and safe electrical, were installed. With frequent visits from my family, specifically Esme and Alice, we opened up several of the downstairs rooms. We also added on to the back of the house to include a large state-of-the-art kitchen and master suite upstairs. Some of the furniture that was still usable was kept; the rest was donated or discarded. My plan was to prepare the house for new tenants after I moved on from Chicago. It didn't take more than a few days in the house to realize it needed a family in it. I decided the next set of caretakers would be a young family that could live and grow old in this house.
I still retained the services of the Alexanders as part-time caretakers, even though I was a full-time resident. With contractors coming into the house, I needed to be extra cautious of sunny days, worksite injuries, and my hunting frequency. Given this, I would often be forced to leave for several days at time. When I did, Josie and William managed any construction issues.
During the three days of my change, Carlisle had manage to enter the house and save most of my mother and father's personal effects and correspondence, as well as hurriedly packed away other family treasures. Shortly after I moved in, Esme and Carlisle delivered these to me. As each room was tackled, I meticulously went through any remaining family heirlooms. Some I re-crated to keep, others I discarded. Some triggered memories, most did not.
They only room I would not allow Esme, Alice, or the contractors to touch was my father's library. After my change, most of my few human memories featured my mother. But now that I had spent time in my childhood home, the memory of my father had become much richer. He was a serious and reticent man. Over this past year, Esme often commented that the apple did not fall far from the tree. However he was also very affectionate and generous. He always took time to show my mother and I how much we mattered to him.
In the library, I went through every page of every legal volume my father owned, as I surveyed the notes and comments he had made in the margins. Between these tomes and the crates of old papers I found in the attic, I was able to piece together some of my father's legal cases. His deductions and reasoning skills were amazing. He was also fair and just. This insight into my father brought about a new appreciation of him as a man. However, it was the discovery of a parcel of love letters in my mother's belongings and my father's personal journals that changed how I truly viewed him.
Through the journals, I learned that my grandfather and grandmother had high expectations for my father with regard to his profession and his marriage. It was my grandfather's hope that my father would rise through the social ranks and enter into politics. At first my father accepted and welcomed this fate. For her part, my grandmother worked hard to introduce my father to the debutants and society-fairing daughters of the most influential families in the state. However, all of that changed the day my father met Elizabeth Anderson. She was not from Chicago's first circle of daughter's. She was the youngest child of local merchant. They met during a neighborhood street fair. My father's own writing called it love at first sight.
Between the journal and the love letters, I followed their courtship. I learned that my father was a very passionate man, at least when it came to my mother. She seemed to breathe life into him. The journal and the letters chronicled conflicting viewpoints. In the letters, my father vigorously wooed my mother. Everything in those letters was about her beauty, her smile, and his deep devotion for her. During the same period in his journal, he raged that his parents would not yield and give my mother a chance. As the rift grew between my father and his parents, his love for my mother filled the void. Perhaps the most shocking admission in my father's writings was that my parents had anticipated their wedding vows. In one intimate letter to my mother, my father wrote poetically that it was the most special moment of his life. One specific portion of that letter sparked a lot of internal reflection on my part.
Thank you, my Lizzy, for the gift of your love. I now see that something so beautiful and natural could never be a sin. I do not need the blessings of the church or our families to know that the passion we have shared is right and true. In my heart we are now husband and wife, and I am looking forward to privately celebrating our love again. Until we can touch and love one another, I will be thinking constantly of you. And very soon, my dearest, we will stand before God and tell the world what we already know to be true in our hearts.
A month later, they were married in small service, which my father's parents did not attend. I was born three years after they were married.
His journal entries were somewhat sporadic after their marriage, but when my father did write, he never failed to mention how much he loved my mother. An entry a week after my human birth was the last one in the journals. Since initially reading them, I have reflected on many of his journal entries and love letters, but his last entry…his last lesson to me...has meant the most.
Down the hall my lovely Lizzy is finally sleeping. Next to her in the bassinet is my greatest joy, my son, Edward. I can already tell he will have Lizzy's eyes and hair, and from his loud and persistent cries, unfortunately my temperament. I am humbled that the good Lord has blessed me with such a life. I shudder to think what would have happened if I had turned the wrong way or bent to tie my laces and missed meeting my sweet Lizzy on that day of the street fair. Would I have ever found her? Would the fates have brought us together? I almost didn't go that day. Father and Mother had wanted me to stay at home, but Jonathan, like the good friend he was, insisted I come with him to partake in the festivities. I will never again underestimate the power of small decisions to alter one's life. The slightest of changes that day would have robbed me of the happiness I now have.
Parts of me now understand my Father's compulsion and drive to become successful. I want to give my wife and my son the best this world has to offer. I want my son to have a lifetime of opportunities…no, make that a many lifetimes of opportunities...with each surpassing anything I could ever imagine! However, I vow never to push him down a path he does not want to follow. My father lost his son over that mistake. I refuse to follow in those footsteps. For having the best of the world is meaningless without loved ones to share it with. My Lizzy has taught me that. And now, my son has taught me that.
I hope one day I feel worthy of God's many blessings. I feel like I have not done enough to deserve my life, but as my Lizzy reminds me, that is why I should cherish it even more…and I do. I have no way of knowing what lessons I will be able to impart on my son, but I hope one of them is to find his own happiness and cherish it until God decides to call him home.