A Long Way To Say Three Words Redux

He was a dirt poor seminary student who worked various jobs, none of which paid a lot. She was a farmer's daughter with her bachelor's degree in education. She had planned to teach, of course, but their newlywed enthusiasm was a bit more fruitful than they reckoned. Instead of having a classroom full of kids she had a strange, quiet and serious little girl. The three of them had little more than each other, as they shuffled from crowded apartments in the second stories of old homes along the borders of coal mining country. He had an internship at a small Baptist church in the mountains. Their views meshed nicely with his and he was comfortable preaching that hard line of iron doctrine. People in hard country sometimes crave a hard God. They yearn for a sovreign who can conquer their demons of rock and ore. Since he found the Lord at 16 he was the convert who is, as they say, outpacing the zealots. He gave them absolute Jesus and worked nights at the Charmin plant to support his timid wife and earnest daughter. He joked that it was a "crappy" job. Not much of a joke, because it actually was.

Then comes a hot August night. I imagine they are cramped and bored. There is nothing to do and no money to go anywhere. He comes home half exhausted from making toilet paper, tense from nursing their rattletrap car across the mountain. It is all he can do to climb up the rickety outside steps to their tiny home. Once inside he peels the sweat-soaked layers from his body. Not yet 28 he is already giving out. His skin is pasty, and the hastily grabbed meals of starch and grease are thickening his middle. He thinks to himself that if this is the "life more abundantly" promised to him then he might just be missing the point of it all. But he does have a wife, and he goes to her in the darkness. Careful not to wake their embarrassingly tangible proof of lovemaking he reaches for the one pure amusement left to him. For a few minutes they forget the overdue light bill, the almost bare cupboards and the world at war outside.

It is August, 1967.



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She comes to him with fear in her eyes, eyes sunken into her pallid face. She has had a bad case of fall allergies, rapidly followed by a case of flu. She doesn't know how to tell him that her flu won't be going away until spring. He says nothing to her at first. He knows he should be happy but there is a part of him that is absolutely scared to death. Their heads are barely above water and now it seems they might drown. Together they tell her mother. She berates them for careless fools and curses her daughter's ignorant stupidity.

It is November, 1967.



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The roads are icy and there are mountains everywhere. But they make it to the hospital in time. She is in labour for a day and a half. He spends that time wondering which way the lottery will spin. He has one girl already. He doesn't need another one, but he knows a girl would be easier than a boy. He's not quite sure that being a man is a good thing. He knows it's not an easy thing. And he doesn't know how he will pay for the birth of this child no matter what its gender. She spends the time in a haze of pain, hoping for a boy. Boys are not common in her family. Her mother had one who died, and since then they have seemed to be the elusive brass ring. Perhaps if she has a boy she will be redeemed. Perhaps that hard mountain God will smile on her at last.

It is March 2, 1968


The baby is born, and he is a boy. God is good in many ways. The boy grows up. He learns good lessons and bad ones. He learns how to be a good man and he learns how to laugh. Along the way he meets his own girl, the one God planned for him, the one who drives him nuts and keeps him sane. The one who writes strange rambling blog posts 38 years later to say


Happy Birthday, Honey