Dawn felt her hurt, but saw no reason for it. “I doubt she meant you and Papa didn’t matter, Granny.”
“Well, what else could she mean?”
Mom glanced at her. “Oma liked meeting people.”
“There are people here.”
“She liked exploring in her car.”
“She had to give it up soon after that.”
“And she wasn’t happy about it. She started taking walks around the neighborhood, then started riding the city bus. She said it took a while to feel comfortable riding around town with strangers, but she got to know the drivers and some of the regular passengers. She rode the bus to the community college and took classes there. She was enrolled in another American history course when she passed away.”
Granny leaned back, taking in that news. “I didn’t know that.” She sat quietly, contemplating what Mom had told her. “Oma always valued education. College for Bernie, trade school for Chloe, art classes for Rikka. She was disappointed when I chose nurses’ training.”
“Why?” Dawn curled her legs into the chair and pulled Papa’s sweatshirt over her knees.
“She thought I was training to be a servant. Oma wanted me to go to the University of California.”
Mom glanced up. “Her father made her quit school. Oma told me she would have loved to have gone to a university and I should take advantage of the opportunity.”
Granny gave a soft laugh. “She said she’d pay my way if I’d go to the school she had picked out for me. I enrolled in nurses’ training anyway. It was the first time I bucked her about anything.” Her smile turned sardonic. “It makes sense she set up that fund for girls wanting to go to college. And it never occurred to me that might be the reason Mama didn’t want to live up here.”
“Did Oma ever earn a degree?”
Granny shrugged. “I don’t know. She would’ve told you, Carolyn.”
Mom smiled. “Dawn gave her the only diploma she ever received. I think Oma just liked learning new things. She took art history once so she and Aunt Rikki would have things to talk about.”
“Did she ever take biology?” Granny asked.
“She took anatomy, physiology, and biology by correspondence course while living at the cottage. When she moved to Merced, she took chemistry. She said she could’ve used your help with that one.”
Granny frowned. “Why didn’t she ever tell me?”
“She tried. She invited you over for tea every day. You always had other things to do.”
Granny sat with her lips parted, a deep frown furrowing her brow. Dawn remembered that when Oma died, Granny had grieved deeply. Was it because things had been left unsettled between them?
Granny crossed her arms, hugging herself. “I’ve been reading her journal. I’d hoped it might share some of her feelings. But it’s just recipes, housekeeping information, boardinghouse rules, farm schedules-”
“You haven’t read all of it yet, Granny.”
“I’m sure it’s unrealistic to think she’d have written anything about me, when she could never be bothered to talk to me. Or to say she loved me. She never said that to me, not once in my entire life.”
Mom turned to her. “Maybe we have something in common.”
“Don’t you dare sit there and say Oma never told you she loved you. I heard her say it to you all the time! Every day when I was sick in bed, I’d hear her say it. ‘I love you, Carolyn. I love you. I love you.’” Granny’s voice broke.
“I didn’t mean Oma.” Mom turned her face toward the warmth of the fire.
Granny looked as though Mom had slapped her. Her eyes shone with tears as she stared at Mom.
Dawn wanted to weep for both of them. “Oma loved you, Granny.”
Granny hadn’t taken her eyes off Mom. “I’d like to believe she did, but she never said it. Not to me.”
“Not everyone knows how to say it, Granny. They show it. Did Oma tell anyone she loved them? Uncle Bernie? Aunt Chloe?”
“She never said it to anyone, not even my father.”
Mom frowned. “She loved him, didn’t she?”
“So much so, I worried she’d grieve herself to death after he died. She’d go out into the orchard and scream and pound the earth…” Her eyes filled. “I never understood her.”
“Oma wrote about love in her journal, Granny.” Dawn got up and retrieved the worn leather book from the side table. She turned pages. “Here. From 1 Corinthians 13. ‘Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant…’”
She turned more pages until she found what she was looking for near the end. “‘We try to do a little better than the previous generation and find out in the end we’ve made the same mistakes without intending. Instead of striving to love as God first loved us, we let past hurts and grievances rule. Ignorance is no excuse.’” She looked up. “It’s right here in her handwriting.”
Dawn sat down. “Oma told me she only wrote important thoughts in her journal, things that helped her in life.” She turned more pages. “Here’s more about love. ‘I know how Abraham felt when he placed Isaac on the altar. I know that pain. But what did Isaac feel lying there, bound, his father holding the knife? afraid? abandoned? expendable? Or did he, too, understand God would rescue him? God tested Abraham, and He showed Isaac what it meant to trust God. Will my Isaac ever understand that what I do, I do for love?’”
Dawn looked pointedly at Granny. “Who do you suppose Oma’s Isaac was?”
“Bernie or Papa. Perhaps. How would I know?”
Mom’s face filled with compassion. She met Dawn’s eyes, but spoke to Granny. “I think it was you, Mom.”
Granny closed her eyes and shook her head, as though the idea was too painful to consider. “We’ll never really know, will we?”
56
Carolyn lay awake on the couch after Mom and Dawn went to bed. She imagined them curled up together, sharing warmth under the covers. Why couldn’t she get warm? She got up and dragged the blankets with her as she sat closer to the fire. She kept thinking about what Oma had written about Abraham and Isaac. That kind of love seemed a mystery. She understood Jacob better. Like Jacob, she had worked to earn the one she loved-May Flower Dawn-and felt cheated in the end. She also identified with Leah, the least loved, always second best.
God caused all things to work together for the good for those who love Him, and she did. Would she have learned to center her life on Jesus if she’d gotten everything she wanted? She might have poured all of her love and hope onto her daughter. God had seen that that wouldn’t happen. Even Mitch, the love of her life, came in second to Jesus.
Why this sudden, deep, inexplicable desire to understand her mother, and have her understand as well? After all these years… Carolyn had learned, slowly, to let other people in. She opened the door of her heart to Mitch first, then allowed him free access to all her rooms. Christopher had never had to struggle with that.
She wondered if her mother had been knocking all these years, and she’d been too afraid to look through the peephole, let alone open the door. Oma once told her not to waste time on regrets, but to grasp opportunities. She remembered something else Oma had said, something that had made no sense to her at the time. “Your mother will take good care of May Flower Dawn. She never really had the chance to take care of you.”
Carolyn looked up when she saw a movement in the shadows. Mom came out in her thick bathrobe and fuzzy pink slippers. “Are you cold?”
Carolyn forced a smile. “I shouldn’t be. You should go back to bed. Keep warm.”
“Maybe you caught cold working out in the garage. I can get you another blanket out of the closet.”
“I’m fine, Mom. Really.”
Her mother eased herself into the yellow swivel chair. “I’ve been thinking…” She folded her hands in her lap. “It’s easier to talk about lesser sorrows, but we’re silent about the ones that break our hearts and change everything.”