New Manse,
Glen St. Mary,
January, 1934
Jo,
A proposition for you. Are you amenable to taking over my Knox church for – say a year?
It's not the bolt from the blue it sounds. Iris is a year old today. Una says she's walking, and babbles in several languages, including Simian. She rides the buffalo the way other children ride horses, romps with Akela, and climbs trees with , she tries.
I want to meet her. Li, too. Properly, in person, not confined to the limits of a photograph. The Presbytery owe me that sabbatical, and they know it, but they won't do it unless they can secure a minister they like to take my place. It's a tremendous ask, but they like you. Say you'll come.
You know the people, and I'd trust you with the parish. You would have Naomi on your doorstep. You can keep me abreast of adventures at the paper. I'm surprisingly invested in it between your daughter and Di. She's still not back at work, and may never be, but that doesn't stop her knowing all the newsroom gossip.
It might help you sort out what's next. If you can't do it, you can't. I know what your Bundle Kirk people are to you, whatever the status of the parish. And, of course, Phil's health must come foremost. Think on it. I'll put in for the sabbatical whatever happens. But I wanted to run the idea by you.
Love and blessings,
J.M.
Martyrs' Manse,
Kingsport,
January, 1934
John,
Phil makes this your best idea to date. She stole the letter from me at the first mention of sabbaticals, and I had a job getting it back and nutting out brass tacks. If your Presbytery and Secretariat can agree –here's hoping – you can tell them I'd be honoured to have care of the Glen church for the duration. Better warn them I can't deliver your calibre of sermon, though. They never were my forte. Tell them I'll do my best by them if you let me try.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch – wherever you find yourself.
Jo
P.S. Phil instructs me to pass on that she is 'grievously offended' at your insinuations against her health. The cough has quite cleared up. She says. (It hasn't. Her appetite's missing in action, too.) Better go before I start my hen-clucking, hm?
Martyrs' Manse,
Kingsport,
February, 1934
Gil,
We are drowning in parcels for Patterson St, postmarked your Glen. John says it is all Naomi's idea, because she insisted the paper cover the Cape Breton Fisheries supply shortage. It snowballed from there. The way Naomi tells it, the news coverage was collaborative. Either way, everyone's grateful for the bounty. I distributed supplies around the fisheries community – a process complicated by the lack of a base church. This is why your last letter languished on my desk for weeks.
Also, I believe this was exacerbated by my granddaughter, Emma trying to tidy the desk for me. Was it beautifully tidy when she finished? Absolutely. Could Phil or I find tuppence ha'penny in it? Could we never. This is plainly the combined influence of your Helen and Emma's mother. How her sister Evie has dodged both their influences is one of the universe's great, unanswerable questions.
Ages back you asked about the hospital work. I'm still coming up with an answer. I don't dislike it, and I do find it to satisfying. It also makes for variety from the prison visits. But it's not my work, Gil. I don't know how else to put it.
Odd, isn't it? I ministered for the years to the living. I even performed my share of sickbed visits, and never gave it a thought. They were even easy. But there's something about a hospital, the transitory nature of patients, maybe, that I can't get to grips with. Perhaps it is only that many of my former parishioners couldn't afford hospitals and doctors. I don't know. But it's oddly anonymous in a way my work never was before. I like to know my people, I suppose. I can't if it's always rotating through sick beds.
Forgive me. It is good work. I know this. I'm grieving Martyrs'. That's what it is. Ask me again in a couple of months and see what I say then.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.
Jo
Martyrs' Manse,
Kingsport,
April, 1934
Gil,
We'll be in the Glen for Christmas. It's all decided. Naomi's delighted. All these years, and we've never spent Christmas in the Glen. Can you believe it?
You'll be able to diagnose Phil to your heart's content, though if she asks, I never wrote that and you never read it. She won't go near the hospital. Sometimes, she almost convinces me I'm overreacting. But her appetite is all wrong. That's what sticks. Phil never met a meal she couldn't enjoy until this last year. Lately, I've met more appetitious sparrows.
Faith drops in after a late surgery, and that's the closest we get to a compromise. Phil makes tea, and Faith drinks it. Phil mimes drinking it, and Faith tells her that hospitals are friendly places, full of good works. She says that every visit, and it always makes us laugh.
It's not that I distrust Faith's expertise. It's that once, you were Phil's match for single-mindedness and interfering when necessary. Some of your debating hall exchanges are legendary. I have every confidence you'll be able to do what the others haven't and persuade her into an examination, simply by virtue of not brooking any argument.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.
Jo
Ingleside,
Glen St Mary,
July, 1934
Jo,
I crawled out of my haphazard turtle shell retirement to tackle – you guessed it! – yet more polio. It was a serious error of judgement. Suddenly all the little old ladies stop me on corners to double-check poor Bruce's diagnoses. He needs every pair of hands he can get against polio. I can't afford to stop in the library and re-diagnose Mrs. Gabriella Alexandrina Drew just because she isn't absolutely certain young Bruce Meredith got it right about her knees. He did. I told her years ago to give up gardening. They are now badly arthritic and I narrowly avoided saying that was what happened of letting Darks and Penhallows marry only one another for years and years until no one knew where Penhallow began and Dark ended. As she is a Penhallow that became a Drew, I refrained.
Even if I did have time – a generous if – I have an ailing Susan and a polio-stricken child who deserve my attention. Di does well, considering, but she can't do all the things she used to. She keeps forgetting, and falling on the stairs or becoming breathless.
Isn't it strange to think that in a few months, it will be you and I keeping him in news?
Love ever,
Gil