Mrs. Earlora Holden is 101.
I have been staying with her at night to keep her company and give her a sense of safety. She is amazing, even at 101 she has a better mind than i do. She reminds me to set the alarm before we go to bed, to plug in her cell phone for her (yes, she uses a cell phone) and she remembers everything clear back to the early part of the last century.
She told me that she was fourteen when she first saw Mr. Dobie, her husband of fifty plus years who passed away some thirty years ago. she remembered that she had a bow in her hair that was bigger than she had ever worn before and though she was a little self conscious, it caught his eye and he spoke to her.
"Hello."
that's all he said. maybe a quick nod. but it was the first time that a boy had ever spoken to her and she told me that it frightened her. so she ran home to tell her mother. her father had passed away at a young age and so Ms. Holden's mother was raising three kids on her own. Commonplace today, but a quite a feat one hundred years ago. Ms. Holden smiled as she told me what her mother told her.
"Well, next time speak back to him!" and Ms. Holden said she did.
years later they found the two teenage love bird's school report cards that someone had tucked away and from ninth grade on Mr. Dobie took every class that she did. even the typing classes that were primarily made up of girls. how cute is that? i love that he put himself where she was every second of everyday in order to get her to notice him, like he noticed her.
after he graduated from lsu the two were married and he began his coaching career at a high school in south mississippi, before ending up at pearl river community college. and she never left his side.
it was his lungs that gave out on him in the end she told me. back then they didn't know what the young people know today about smoking she said. but she loved him til the end. loves him still.
i love stories like that.
simple.
but what makes them beautiful is that no matter how many times throughout history the love story has been repeated, each one is unique and universal at the time.
its this common personal joy that we all share.
i was reminded recently by a dear old friend about the letters that we wrote to each other as girls. we were pen pals of sorts, after she moved away to texas. i have a box full of letters that she sent me back in the late eighties and early nineties. im sure if i were to look at what i was writing to her back then i would get quite a laugh. the love life of a fifth grader written down on pink paper in purple gel pen, bragging to her best friend miles away.
maybe its because i grew up in this generation of girls who were spoon fed love stories and fairy tales. maybe its because i had such precious love stories lived out in front of me through my parents and grand parents. but it seems i have been trying to create this great love story my whole life.
in my novel, that AT is still waiting on me to type up so he can tear it apart, the protagonist struggles with this too. (i guess because secretly he is me.) how to write your own love story?
what used to flow so freely from the purple gel pen of a wide eyed, freckled faced girl, is now hard for the woman who found her first age spot above her eye the other day to get out. i guess years of heartache make the story teller more cautious of the tales she spins.
but truth be told, the Lord is creating one for me whether i am ready or not.
i guess the same was true for Ms. Holden. at fourteen she never would have said she was ready for the Lord to bring the man she would spend the rest of her life with into the picture. she didn't even know how to talk to him! but the Lord's timing is perfect.
and at almost thirty-one, and trust me when i tell you that i am just about the last thirty-one year old in the south who is not married with three kids, the Lord's timing is perfect still.
and still i hesitate to pen the words i feel.
i guess all i can say is
story developing...
