THE GIRL WITH THE SILVER EYES: Willo Davis Roberts (via Eve)

[Started re-reading a favorite kids' book, and ran across this powerful passage. This always happens: these issues, of marriage, family, kinship, are so fundamental to our lives and identities that just about everything I read in my off-hours has some relation to the stuff I post here. But this segment just leaped out at me, because I didn't remember it from my (many, many) readings of the book. ...Katie, here, is nine, which is probably about how old I was when I read this for the first time. --Eve]

There were lots of other snapshots of people who didn't look familiar, and then one that did. Katie didn't need the handwritten caption beneath the picture of the dark-haired, laughing young man.

Joe. That was her father. She wondered where he was, and if he even knew yet that Grandma Welker had died. He wasn't much of a one for writing letters, although he usually sent a card for his mother's birthday, and one for Katie's. They were usually late, as if Joe didn't remember until the actual day. And at Christmas he sent a box for them both; Katie still had the teddy bear he'd given her when she was seven. She'd slept with it for almost two years. Last Christmas, though, he'd only sent a card and a check, and told Grandma to buy Katie something.

The "something" had been a new winter coat and a pair of boots, and while she loved the cherry red coat with its matching hood, Katie wished he'd picked out something especially for her, himself, like the teddy bear.

Of course, she was way too old for teddy bears now. She wished she could let him know how much she'd like to have books, but he didn't stay in one place long enough for her to write to him very much. And when she did write, he didn't write back, although sometimes he'd call on the phone. Katie always felt excited when he called, and shy, too; ahead of time, she'd think of what she wanted to say the next time she got the chance, and then when he was talking long distance from Texas or Montana or wherever he was, her mind would go blank. Last time, he'd said to her, "Remember, I love you, baby," and after she'd hung up Katie went out in the back yard with the chickens and avoided everybody for a while. She wasn't sure what that had made her sad, to be told that her father loved her, but it had.
posted by Eve at 4:02 PM VOTE

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