1829, From the Journal of Jeremaih McAllister

California, July, in the Year Of Our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Twenty-Nine Gracious Lord, I am ever mindful that Your ways are mysterious and not prone to understanding by mortal men. What other explanation for the events of these weeks past? That You saw fit to deliver me from the duress of the […]

Northern Mexico, 1829 CE

I lay half-dozing in my little room, dreaming again, a disturbing recollection of the sea. I remembered the first time I crossed the Atlantic on a contract bound for the Virginia colony as an indentured maidservant, where so many had died in that stinking hold. I also dreamt of the much more recent, second long […]

Annoyance And Triumph, Of Sorts

God placed the gift upon those who create and build. There is something viscerally satisfying about the act of creation, be it a work of art, a cord of neatly stacked firewood, or replacing the wiring in my Victorian-era farmhouse. The wiring was decrepit when the house was finally sealed up, and had declined to […]

Betrayed

Jeremy betrayed me. He told me he had done it in a letter he wrote some few days before his death, but in that letter he made it clear he expected I would not learn of his act for some time: “I know you, my love. I know this missive shall remain unread for decades, […]

Love, Hope and Mankind

Regarding Love, Hope and the nature of Man. What follows is a synthesis of two letters which are my end of an on-going correspondence with another blogger, whom I quote here only briefly as I never requested his permission to post his letters entire.

Jeremy

Who was Jeremy? Why did I love him? Why is he such a powerful presence in my life? Why am I so inadequate to the task of describing him? Jeremy was the eldest son and expected to take on his father’s law practice. There were his younger brother Reginald, and Catherine, the youngest of the […]

Love

Why would I allow myself to love? For me love is both a selfish indulgence and an invitation to despair. It is destructive to the object of my affections, for if they return my love they make themselves a part of a relationship that will can only leave them childless and in their grave. One […]

Awakening

Awakening. Imagine you have slept with your arm under your body, squeezing off the circulation so that the limb is completely insensate. You roll off your arm and it flops free- you can feel the circulation returning, fresh blood rushing in as your arm returns to life in a tingling rush, sometimes quite painfully, stinging […]

The Truth

We were riding together. It was the spring of our second year and the house was rebuilt, the children were as settled and adjusted as anyone could expect and we finally had some time to devote to ourselves. No genteel traveling for us, instead we packed up what we needed and struck out on our […]

Interlude

“I have been wondering, is there anything you cannot do?” I lifted my eyes from my book and smiled at my husband, “Whatever are you talking about?” “Mrs. Trembley. A woman who could not bring herself to offer a civil hello to the new Pastor for three years invites you to join her for Sunday […]