Category: faith

NOT One-Size-Fits-All, or What Would You Tell a Pregnant 10-year-old?

On By AnnIn Activism, faith, Family, social justice2 Comments

I turned in my primary election ballot this morning. Folks can still request an advance ballot until tomorrow, or they can vote early at the courthouse for another week. Election day is August 2. For those who might be confused about the amendment issue on the ballot, I think it boils down to whether you trust the legislature to protect the health and future of everyone, or just the unborn? In other words, what would you want for a pregnant 10-year-old rape victim? As I think about my own innocent grandchildren, ages from 1 to 12, the answer is clear to me. A child at that age should not be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.

Nobody I know is “pro-abortion”. We are, however, pro-choice. Abortion is an option that is tragic, but it is not a simple, right-or-wrong, black-or-white issue. We must keep legal abortion available as an option for women–and girls–in crisis pregnancies.

Before you write me off as a “Baby Killer,” let me assure you I am not. I hate to see anyone or anything hurting. All my life I have befriended the friendless, rescued turtles crossing highways, and taken steps to avoid hurting most other living things for as long as I can remember. (Exceptions: mosquitoes, ticks, and flies.) It is preposterous to think I could choose to end the life of my own unborn child. It’s simply not within the realm of possibilities.

But this is not a simple thing. It’s not a “one-size-fits-all” issue. It is not “one solution for every situation.”

There is not a person on earth who can anticipate all the different factors facing a mother who is considering abortion. Each situation is unique and must be considered individually by those involved—the distressed mother, her family, and the medical team. The rest of us have no right to interfere or to judge.

I come to this realization through a sequence of events unique to my own life. And I wonder, how many of those so quick to condemn other women facing dismal choices know what it’s like to lose a baby?

I do. I lost two. Not through abortion, but through natural deaths. They were both stillborn. The babes would both be 39 and 40 now and not a day goes by that I don’t miss them. They were very much loved and wanted, but it was not to be. I do believe God loves them too and I find comfort thinking they entered his benevolent care the moment of their deaths. We can’t forget what lies beyond.

How many women quick to condemn others for a difficult decision have ever been offered the option of ending a problem pregnancy through abortion? I have. Twice.

After the first baby’s death, the best my medical team had to offer was frequent sonograms during two subsequent pregnancies. They would then recommend an abortion should things start to go wrong.

I declined. Note again: I DECLINED. I couldn’t have opted for an abortion on either one. Instead, I chose not to have any sonograms at all. If something was to happen, I didn’t want to know it.

I am grateful to this day, however, that I was offered the choice. The decision was ultimately mine to make, and nobody else’s. My choice was to cherish every moment I had with my children, for as much time as we had together.

I lost the second baby too. But the third pregnancy, six years later, left me with a precious girl who now has two healthy girls of her own.

I wonder other things about those outspoken critics of pro-choice folks. How many of them have felt the knife-twist of agony to hear that an un-named teenage girl has chosen an abortion for her child rather than allow you to adopt the infant? I have. And I grieved anew for another baby lost. (But I still support her right to choose.)

How many critics have opened their homes to raise a child brought into the world by others? I have. The adoption and the parenting of my daughter proved to be one of the most challenging decisions of my life.

How many have opened their homes, offering shelter to young women wrestling with an unwanted pregnancy? Instead of condemning the unknown young woman who chose abortion over adoption, I became an advocate for girls in crisis situations, offering my home to house them until delivery. I hoped that my actions helped reassure those women that their unborn child would be treasured in an adoptive family.

How many have experienced conversations with a woman who, after hearing my story of loss and adoption, tearfully confessed to ending an unexpected pregnancy years previously. She agonized over her decision and felt a need to apologize to me, an adoptive mom. I offered her my shoulder to cry on and my compassion.

There is nothing simple about this issue.  I’ve never encountered a child as young as age 10 who had to confront the question. I have heard, though, that there were recently three 11-year-olds in my state whose parents sought to end their pregnancies. It should be an individual choice, not something politicians can dictate.

I’m glad I was offered a choice. I chose life for my children. It was God who had other plans for some of them.

With the temperature of our planet climbing beyond the point of no return, there is much more to be concerned with now. I choose life again—life for all of us, born and unborn, children, youth, adults and the aging, people on every continent and island nation, the threatened species on our beautiful and diverse planet.

Preserve individual choice with compassionate support for distressed mothers and let’s move forward. We have a lot of work to do. I am not a baby-killer. I don’t want to be a planet-killer either.

Stop. Just Stop.

On By AnnIn faith, Family, History, Loss and Grief, social justiceLeave a comment

This is getting complicated.

So the word is out. There have been millions of babies killed through abortions since the procedure was legalized. I wonder about that. How many of those were fetuses that would never have lived, had they been born? How many procedures were done to save the mother’s life? I have grave reservations about the truth of that statement. Twenty-five million giggly babies just snuffed out? That’s trying to simplify a very complex statistic. After all, in recent years, the objections to terminating a pregnancy have yielded strict limitations on just what kind of pregnancy is eligible.

I am old enough to have come of age during the original fight to legalize abortion. When I was an adolescent, the procedure was illegal. But that didn’t mean abortions didn’t happen. And consequences were severe for desperate women seeking help. Too often, illegal abortions ended up killing or maiming the mother anyway. The legalization of abortion was a life-saving step. Just making it illegal will not stop desperate women from seeking to end a desperate pregnancy.

This all alludes to a sort of class warfare. Did you know, for instance, that 75% of abortions in recent years were for women at or below the federal poverty line? 60% of the women already had children at home that they couldn’t afford to feed. 55% of women who received abortions were single. They had precious little financial help to reach the $196,984 cost of raising a child to age 18. (Yes! Magazine Spring 2022)

It might have been in the early years that the procedure was sought too lightly. But no more. Today, almost all the people I know, pro-choice as well as pro-life, agree that abortion should never be used as a simple form of birth control. We must keep other contraceptives available and affordable and eliminate unwanted pregnancies. Is that a point we all can agree on?

You might find it surprising how many pro-choicers abhor the fact that some women have used abortion as a contraceptive. You might also be surprised how many of us pro-choicers, if offered the choice due to abnormal fetus development, would choose to continue our own pregnancies. After all, if faced with some dire news, you would do that. I would too. But it would be our own choice.

None of us have the right, though, to tell others what they can or can’t do. We simply don’t know all the details.

So has abortion been misused? Sadly, yes, by some. Therefore, you say, we should outlaw all abortions again. It’s just like:

A few people who misuse alcohol and drive drunk. Innocent people have been killed by drunk drivers. Obviously, we’ve banned all alcohol and all cars, right?

Or—A few people misuse guns, and go on shooting rampages, killing children in their school classrooms, and people in shopping centers or theaters or at parades. So of course, we have instituted a national ban on guns, haven’t we?

Oh. . . Wait. . . .

I get it. This is different.

Or is it?

Does mis-use of abortion by a few mean we have to remove that option for all? And if that’s what we gotta do, how about those guns anyway?  Surely the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for school age children is more important than the right to bear arms.

The intrusion into a person’s medical history and privacy is an unconscionable overstep by our government into our private lives and personal rights. None of us has the right to judge another on this extremely personal matter, nor to tell them what to do. We can offer love, compassion, and assistance, but we can’t make difficult choices impossible by removing options. There is nothing simple about pregnancy. Since every case is different, there is no single solution. All options need to be available. And nobody outside the triumvirate of parents and physician should even have a say in tough personal, medical decisions. No two pregnancies are alike. We can’t possibly know the inside stories of other families.

Vote No August 2. Keep abortion legal.

Holiday Cooking with Grandma Georgia

On By AnnIn books, Comfort food, faith, FamilyLeave a comment

As I prepare for our Thanksgiving dinner today, I am drawn into memories of Grandma’s kitchen. That were her habitat. Queen of her kitchen, she was in command of all the fixins. I recall helping to roll up the butterhorn rolls, a favorite task for granddaughters. Nobody went hungry at Grandma’s house. After the clean up, folks stretched out for a nap before we all drove the seven-mile journey to the family farm for a walk through the bare winter trees. It’s amazing how just cooking something from the past makes me feel close to family that is gone.

Today I will feature the latest publication that will be offered at the Christmasland event with Writers of the Wheat on December 3, 4:00 pm until 9:00, at the Sunflower Plaza in Wichita. Writers of the Wheat is a loosely organized group of Kansas authors who support each other in writing, as well as marketing, their work. Join us at the Sunflower Plaza, 417 East Gilbert in Wichita,  December 3. There will be something for every reader’s taste. It seems appropriate on Thanksgiving to share a cookbook.

Foreword

Georgia’s Recipe for a good life:

Work hard.

Love deeply.

Laugh often.

Georgia Wells Harris was born in southern Missouri October 3, 1891, the third child in a family of 5 children born to George Calvin and Edith Malinda Wells. By 1900, the family had moved to Kansas, utilizing covered wagon and train transportation. They settled in Skiddy, and later Dunlap. Georgia married Charley Harris on November 20, 1912. They raised four children, Frances (born 1914), Lester (1918), Wallace (1925), and Paul (1935).

No stranger to hardship and heartache, Georgia struggled to keep her family fed during the 1930s. Her farm kitchen remained stocked mostly with things produced in her garden or on the family farm.

Her oldest son Lester, an engineer on the USS Gherardi in WWII, was killed December 2, 1942 in a violent storm off the coast of Rhode Island. Charley died ten years later, and cancer took daughter Frances in 1959. Through it all, Georgia opened her heart and her home to family and became a role model in resilience, generosity, and compassion for others. I have precious memories of her hearty laughter, which was easy to trigger and very contagious.

She was an excellent cook, and queen of her kitchen. Many holidays the entire family gathered at her round dining table to feast on exquisite cuisine.

She died June 25, 1990, well on her way to her 99th birthday.

Her meager possessions passed to various family members. After her son, my father Wallace, died in 2010, her worn pink recipe file came into my possession. The lid had long since disappeared and it was stuffed full. Many tabs of the various sections were almost torn off, but I felt a connection to my grandmother, reading those recipes—most written in her own familiar handwriting.

I suspect the file is far from complete as a collection of the dishes she served, but it’s a nice collection. Some I have specific memories of. Most I do not. Some must have been given by friends, as the handwriting was not her own. Perhaps she gained several in recipe exchanges at her women’s “72 Club.”

I long intended to divide up the cards and share them with my sisters and cousins, but time got away from me. In 2020, the year that COVID stalled many usual activities, as October rolled around I pulled out the file and started studying the recipes. Who should get which ones? It was impossible to decide. That’s when the idea of constructing a book was born. We each will have access to every single recipe in her recipe file. Each of her living grandchildren will still get a selection of her hand-written cards, but with this book, we’ll all be able to use and enjoy her recipe collection.

Several recipes were incomplete, listing only ingredients, or confusing instructions. I imagined she was standing behind me saying, “Well, you ought to know what to do with those.” After all, she knew. Where I tried to add suggestions, my words are in italics.

In places, I have transferred her exact notes, regardless of punctuation and spelling, just like they are on the cards. I find them endearing. In other places, I did a search to clear up some uncertainties. I didn’t always find answers, but where I did, I shared them.

Some ingredients are unfamiliar to me, and may be pretty hard to find. Thus there may be recipes that are not practical or useful in today’s kitchen. But they are interesting.

In many ways, recipes are heirlooms. The people she credited with some of the recipes are different than those I think of when I make the same concoction. Names in ( ) are her referrals to the sources of the recipes, but they don’t always match the credits in my own recipe file.  The cookies I think of as Grandma Georgia’s brown sugar raisin cookies, she credited to her younger sister, Ola. I wonder who Ola thought of when she baked them?

The evolution of our table food is an unending process. Special dishes remind us of gatherings, good times, and laughter. Others help us remember people we love who are no longer living. Those we favor tend to get passed around.

During the COVID seasons, I was drawn to the family favorites and felt comforted by memories of loved ones long gone as I shared their culinary delights with my loved ones today.

Mixed into the section headings is a sprinkling of wisdom as Georgia viewed life. It seems appropriate to include some thoughts she left in letters and recorded conversations, as seasonings for the book, just as her principles seasoned her life. Let your mind roam back over the decades, and just try to imagine the earlier days. She would be thrilled if we applied some of her shared thoughts to life in this century.

For more holiday food ideas, be sure to stop by the Sunflower Plaza in Wichita December 3. Visit with talented local authors. Browse the book selections. Find something special for everyone on your Christmas list.

 

What is a Windshadow?

On By AnnIn faith, Family, Healing, In the Shadow of the Wind, Loss and Grief, memoir, WritingLeave a comment

Over the next few days, I will post information about each of the four books I have available. All of them will be part of the Christmasland Event with Writers of the Wheat December 3, 4:00 pm until 9:00, at the Sunflower Plaza in Wichita. Writers of the Wheat is a loosely organized group of Kansas authors who support each other in writing, as well as marketing, their work. Join us at the Sunflower Plaza, 417 East Gilbert in Wichita,  December 3. There will be something for every reader’s taste.

Today, I feature my first published book, a memoir titled In the Shadow of the Wind. Though I have aspired to write books as long as I can remember, it was this one that had to come first. It uncorked the bottle of my creativity, so to speak. Released in 2014, I continue to be amazed at the response of new readers. It seems to connect with new folks scattered from coast to coast, and I am humbly grateful to the Winds of the Spirit for making the story known to those who struggle with their own personal grief and need encouragement.

What is it about?

Following a series of tragic losses, at age thirty I found myself in a strange world, anticipating a lonely future.  Widowed, and grieving the loss of two infants, I retreated to the wilderness for comfort and healing. Planning to stay forty days, I set up a solitary camp on the Neosho River bank of my family’s abandoned farm homestead. Marooned by rising flood water after only a few days, I had to face my own mortality.

I discovered that there is life after loss. Through a sequence of extraordinary events, In the Shadow of the Wind tells my story: how an ordinary woman learned to dance on the threshold of fear, to cherish every moment of life, and to believe in my inner resources to conquer adversity.

Prologue from the Book

“It’s okay, Daisy Pup,” I said. The small spaniel whined. I drew her to my chest and we cuddled together. Thunder exploded in the air above our little tent. The after-rumbles faded. Seconds later rain pelted the nylon roof of my fair-weather shelter. Daisy shivered in my arms. “It’ll be okay.” I tried to convince myself.

I felt foolish. How could I have thought this was a good idea? How could I have dreamed that I would be able to withstand forty days in the wilderness? The rain turned my plan into a futile effort that bordered on the edge of insanity.

A drop of water stabbed my forehead. In the gray afternoon light, I saw hundreds of droplets hang heavily from the inside of the tent roof. The threat of a cold shower hovered  inches away.

“Good Lord, Daisy—it’s going to rain inside the tent.”

There was no escape from the chill in the air. No escape from the fingers of cold that crept up from below. No escape from—“Oh, my God, the sleeping bag is wet.”

I shifted sideways in the orange tent and discovered we huddled in a growing pool of water, now about an inch deep. “Oh, God, this is crazy.”

My canine companion stood and shook.

“You need to go out?”

She wagged her stubby tail and shook again. I unzipped the door and she jumped into the deluge. I grabbed my boots and began to pull one over a damp sock. On second thought, I tied the laces together, removed my socks, and backed out of the low-slung tent. I pulled my backpack into the soggy afternoon, zipped the tent door shut, and stood barefoot in black ooze.

Daisy splashed through standing water. She located a slight rise, squatted, and relieved herself. I glanced at the sodden landscape. Water stood everywhere, and I was already soaked in the downpour. What were we to do? I turned in a circle and searched for shelter. An old wooden railroad boxcar, the only structure that remained on the abandoned farm, stood right behind the tent.

I stooped to look under the boxcar. We could wiggle under it. I quickly discarded that idea. The prospect of lying in muck was no better than sitting in a wet tent. Padlocks secured the sliding doors of the boxcar. Even if I had a key, I doubted I could budge them enough to allow entrance. The aged wooden sides looked weathered and soft. One ragged gap at the leading edge of the north door panel appeared almost large enough for me to wiggle inside.

I slogged to the side of the boxcar and grasped the lower edge of one ragged slat. I tugged on the worn end. With my entire weight behind my efforts, I ripped off inches at a time until the opening had grown twice as large.

“Come here, Daisy. Let’s check this out.” She was instantly at my mud-covered heels. I patted the dark floor of the boxcar, standing forty inches off the ground. Daisy leaped. With an assist from me, she scrambled into the dark interior. I stuffed my backpack behind her, slogged to the tent and pulled my boots and the bedding into the storm. I struggled to maintain balance as I slipped back to the hole in the door and crammed the bundle of blankets inside. Then I leaned into the darkness of the abandoned car and jumped. On my stomach, legs dangling out the opening, I snaked forward a few inches. With flailing arms, I reached into the darkness in search of something to grab.

There. Something metallic. Perhaps an old piece of farm equipment. I didn’t know. I could see very little. But it didn’t budge, so I was able to pull myself into the relatively dry interior of the old boxcar. Across the car, Daisy snuffled and sneezed a couple times. I stood and felt my way around the area. After locating a pile of old shingles along the south wall, I propped the backpack on the floor beside them. I shook the damp bedding. My clothing was soaked through, so I wrapped the blankets and sleeping bag around my shoulders. I sat on the shingles and leaned against the wall of the boxcar.

Daisy bounded onto my lap. We shared each other’s warmth as the deluge continued outside. Moments after we both settled down, I heard scratching noises inside the boxcar. Light-footed creatures scampered about the interior. I hugged Daisy a little tighter. I could see pinpoints of light here and there, small eyes that reflected the afternoon light filtering in through holes in the wall. Oh, my God.

Rats. Lots of them.

 I screamed. “I am such a fool, Daisy. Why do you put up with me?”

She licked my chin.

I spoke to my late husband Craig. “What am I going to do? I don’t think I can do this. I can’t live without you.”

He, of course, didn’t answer. I was on my own.

Daisy whined softly and licked my chin as if she understood. The storm mirrored the anguish in my heart. The entire universe wept with me. “What are we going to do, girl? I don’t know where we’re heading. I only know where we’ve been.”

When I met Craig, we thought we had all the time in the world. A decade was hard to visualize. Had we known that all our joys, our plans, and dreams, would have to be packed into one decade, would we have spent our days differently? Would our choices have been laced with more love and wisdom, or with desperate lunacy? Based on the law of averages, we had every reason to expect several decades together.

Yet there was barely one.

“It’s not fair! It’s not fair!” I railed against the universe.

 

 

From Alpha . . . to Omega Part 2

On By AnnIn Earth care, faith, Family, Loss and Grief, Nature1 Comment

Since I was young, I found peace and unconditional acceptance in the natural world, even in difficult times. Especially in difficult times. During a traumatic adolescence, I surrounded myself with nature in my hideaway room at home. There was a fifty-gallon aquarium, and shelves in the windows filled with houseplants. Some even vined across the ceiling. My own private forest.

In Nature, I found evidence of a supreme being beyond what our senses show. Through countless moments filled with awe and wonder at the mystery of life, of connections with other beings, I grew to love the Earth, its life, and its mysteries. As we approach a precipice of no-return in the global crisis brought on by our industrial and consumer-oriented lifestyle, I feel great sadness, along with deep gratitude for the gift of life itself, and for all the moments when I sense the Beyond through simple contacts with other living things. Climate grief is a true thing.

I wonder what awe-filled moments do you recall that you wish your grandchildren—and theirs—could experience?

Have you ever . . .

Watched an eagle soar and listened to its distant call?

Sat on a trailside boulder and watched an aspen seed float to the ground?

Had a hummingbird check your red bandanna for nectar?

Watched a glacier calve an iceberg?

Heard a rush of wings in the stillness of a heavy mist?

Watched a loggerheaded shrike hang a field mouse on a locust thorn?

Risen before dawn to visit booming grounds of lesser prairie chickens?

 

Watched a lone prairie dog scamper away from its village into the sunset?

Surprised a family of deer on a winter walk?

Watched a flock of robins sip melting snow from your house gutters?

Walked with a flashlight after dark in September to watch orb spiders at work?

Witnessed a black bear check out the milo fields on the high plains of Kansas?

Heard the scream of a cougar outside your tent in the middle of the night?

Watched autumn leaves dance with hundreds of migrating monarch butterflies at dusk?

Held a newly metamorphosed moth in your hand and watched its virgin flight?

Heard barking sea lions as they congregated on the shore below the seaside cliff where you stood?

Through six decades, travels from Oregon and California to Maryland and Florida, Minnesota to Arizona, as well as journeys to Japan, India, Hawaii, Canada, Alaska, Cuba, and Mexico—not to mention my own backyard—the wonderments of Earth have held me spellbound in every little nook. With deep gratitude for all I have been fortunate to witness, and with fervent hope that we can stop our catapult into disaster at COP26, I offer Part 2 of the slide show from my younger days. Let humanity not be responsible for the Omega curtain on our gem of a planet.

Music: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, “Chorale Symphony.”

 

From Alpha . . . to Omega

On By AnnIn Earth care, faith, Family, NatureLeave a comment

A week from today in Glasgow, Scotland, COP26 is set to begin. The 26th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the 1994 United Nations treaty on Climate Change has been called the planet’s last best chance to establish commitments around the globe that will mitigate the worst consequences of human blundering and greed. Glasgow, a Global Green City with plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, is an appropriate location for the conference. Like Greta Thunberg, I have grave doubts that anything pertinent will come from the proceedings.

But, it’s crucial that we take drastic steps to reverse the damage humanity has done to this gem of a planet. Every culture and faith tradition that I know of dictates great honor and respect for the forces that created the living biosphere we call home and rely on for our very existence. My background is the Christian tradition, where in earliest stories, God the divine, the Creator, brought into being the systems on Earth—and saw that it was very good.

Grand Canyon, Arizona

The greatest crime against the universe is human arrogance and greed that ignores the rest of our brother and sister species to bring about catastrophic change and ultimately destruction of the Earth systems that support all life forms.

I fell in love with nature in my childhood. My parents took us traveling to wonderful places every year and we camped in the wilderness before RV-ing became a “thing.” The church were I learned “God is Love” used beautiful scenic photos on the weekly bulletins, and I wanted to take photos like them.

In college, my best friend (who later became my husband) and I bonded over escapades in natural settings. We reveled in outings where we traipsed joyfully through hills and meadows with our 35mm SLR cameras slung over our shoulders.

The first church we attended as newlyweds was a country Mennonite church in southwestern Kansas. Though neither of us had a Mennonite background, the love, the service, and the music of this congregation provided a perfect support for beginning our married life. For these people, we put together a slide show of our own scenic shots, accompanied by scripture from the Bible. The original show was held in 1978 in a local auditorium, using a Kodak carousel projector and reading scripture at a microphone as we advanced the slides. At the time we thought how nice it would have been to include musical background, but lacked technological skills to accomplish that.

I lost my first soul mate to cancer. A lifetime later, with advancing digital products and home computers, I was able to convert the original 35mm slides to digital format, set it all to music with the help of a tech-savvy stepson, and post to a YouTube video channel.

I offer the show here, for love of the Earth, of Creation, of our gem of a planet which unquestionably deserves better than we’ve allotted to it. As COP26 approaches, can we all agree that Earth is unique in the universe? Can we, out of respect for its Creator and Creation itself, and for love of generations to come—generations of all species that make up our Earth family—commit to protecting and preserving this unique planet which holds mystery and miracles and wondrous splendor?

See Part 1 of the slide show we called “In the Beginning” here, set to Beethoven’s Egmont Overture in F minor op. 84:

Part 2 to come.

High Courage: The Great Kansas Blizzard of 1882 – IV

On By AnnIn faith, Family, History, Loss and Grief, Nature, Prairie tales1 Comment

Bushong, Kansas 100 years after Mabel’s story

A pioneer story of Kansas by Mabel Chandler Harris.

Part IV

George Chandler, his son Gene, and the horse Ned went doggedly forward and when the man felt sleepy in spite of himself, he knew he must act. He stopped the horse and slid out of the saddle. He could hardly support himself and clung to the stirrup. The horse dropped his head to the snow and snorted furry icicles from his nostrils. The man pulled the chilled boy into the saddle and carefully wrapped the blanket about his cold feet and legs. He removed the long wool scarf from his own neck and wound it round and round the head and shoulders of his son. He slapped his hands against his chest and stomped up and down until he felt renewed circulation of blood in his veins and his feet did not feel so much like frozen lumps.

When he felt somewhat restored, he gave Ned a slap on the rump and grasped the stirrup firmly. They proceeded on their way. The wind remained bitter and fierce. The cold grew more intense. George thought it must be after midnight. He was sure they were still several miles from home.

He gave himself up to thought. He believed in prayer and he had to have some help right now. He asked God for strength and endurance. He prayed for the son in the saddle and for the precious daughter who had been so faithful during these months when he had been forced to be away from home. As he prayed, he was strengthened. He felt reassured that they would reach home.

Gene seemed to be sleep on the horse. George’s thoughts drifted. He remembered himself as a mere lad in the Army of the Republic. He recalled the joyful day he married Hannah Priscilla Crabtree. He remembered the home life in Missouri and the glowing reports of cheap land in Kansas. These reports had fired both his and his wife’s imagination, so he had purchased their present home from a local land agent whom he had trusted implicitly. They had loaded their belongings in the two big wagons. With the crated chickens fastened underneath the wagon beds, and the boys driving the cows and extra horses, they came west from Kansas City on the great trail.

The Chandlers reached their destination in northern Lyon County, Kansas a week later. No one would ever know his bitter disappointment when he had first seen the treeless, poor upland farm that he had bargained for. He had not known there was so much pasture in all the world. He had dreamed of a farm in the bend of a creek, but the creek turned out to be a gully that passed through his land as a raging torrent after a big rain, a dry slough the remainder of the time.

The horse dragged on. George staggered as he clung to Ned. His arms ached. With thoughts of the family that waited for him, he poured his last ounce of determination into his efforts. He resolutely lifted one foot after the other, glad that Gene was quiet.

The night was clearing enough that he recognized the little cemetery in the whiteness. Ned must have come this far west to avoid some very deep snow drifts. The horse was doing fine to know so much even it if did make the way a mile longer.

Thoughts continued like a rushing stream that would not be stopped. The Chandlers had worked at making a home on that upland claim. And then—oh dear God—there had been Delphia, the blue baby. Disconnected scraps of memories filled his laboring mind. “Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes.” Preachers always said those words in burial services.

With cold misgivings he asked himself, “Is there more than that in life?” Hannah was taken when he had needed her so badly. Was she better off than he this terrible night? The harrowing experience of moving little Delphia’s body from the corner to the place at the head of her mother haunted him. It was noon on a warm May day when the little disinterred coffin rested on the green grass. His helpers stood around while he obeyed an impulse to open the lid to peek at his darling child again. In the first instant as they all looked the baby form was there in its original angelic beauty. With the impact of warm air, the little form crumbled into a tiny mound of ashes.

Shuddering, George forced his mind back to his present surroundings. “I must be awfully cold to let myself think in this way,” he thought. “I will not doubt. The word says the spirit shall return to God who gave it. God help me,” he prayed, “to be able to say, even tonight, The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away.” Aloud he said, “Blessed be the name of the Lord. I know that God giveth His children strength.”

At his voice, Gene mumbled “What did you say, Pa?”

The father answered, “We will get home. We are almost there.”

It was about three o’clock in the morning when the horse stopped at the stone house. The man gave a shout and dragged the nearly frozen boy from the saddle. The door flew open and Henry, followed by the tall neighbor boy, rushed out and half carried them into light and warmth. Charlie, the lame boy, limped away with old Ned, and while the people in the house worked over the man and the boy, restoring them with a tub of snow, Charlie fed and rubbed the animal that had brought his father and brother home safely home.

When only partially recovered from his night’s experience, the man whose sandy hair had turned white during the last twelve hours, turned to the bedside of his sick daughter.

As he stroked her hair, she spoke her last words, “I knew you would come, Pa.”

The father, with spasms of pain crossing and re-crossing his fine face, held the hand that so confidently had been placed in his. He realized his efforts to save this beloved daughter had been in vain.

As dawn broke over the windswept hillside, Etta Viola Chandler died. George gathered as many of his children as he could clasp into his arms. They clung to him or to each other as he bowed his head in submission and whispered so all could hear, “Thy will be done.”

That was the morning of January 19, 1882. The place was a quarter of a mile south of the original Santa Fe Trail that wended its way across northern Lyon County, Kansas. The Old Santa Fe Trail was the way thousands of people followed west in the 1800s. With their heads, hearts, and hands they literally created a democracy the likes of which is not found anywhere else on our earth.

Because of the bitter cold, Etta Viola Chandler, seventeen-and-a-half years of age, could not be buried in the little Bushong Cemetery beside her mother until January 24, 1882.

The End

Notes about Mabel Chandler Harris, the author of this historical narrative, and the setting of the story.

Mabel was born to George Chandler and his second wife, Carrie, in 1890. She was one of eight children of this second marriage. The children in her “High Courage” story were mostly grown when Mabel was a child, but she must have heard this family story and her heart went out to their struggles.

Mabel married Loren Scott Harris, the older brother of my grandfather Charley Harris, on June 7, 1915. They had one child, Florence Ethel, born December 22, 1927, who was a favorite cousin of my father, Wallace. He called Florence by the nickname Pete.

Pete moved to Wichita during her adult years and shared this “High Courage” story with her dear friend and tax accountant. When Wallace moved to Cowley County from Lyon County, he also hired Pete’s accountant friend to handle his taxes, and I followed suit. During one of my annual tax meetings, she presented me with a copy of Mabel’s story about the blizzard of 1882.

Loren and Mabel lived in Dunlap, Kansas, just up the road from the Harris family homestead on the Neosho River where my grandfather and father lived. Mabel had the distinguished honor to become the first woman to be ordained as a minister of the Methodist Church in the entire state of Kansas. She performed wedding ceremonies, and funerals, for many rural folks, including the Harris family.

The settler’s town named in the story, Bushong, Kansas, is today little more than a few neighborly homes on the paved county road due north of Americus, Kansas. To put more perspective on the horseback journey of Gene and his father on Ned the trusty horse, Bushong is a good 20 miles from the heart of Emporia. The stone cabin where Etta waited would have been even further. Gene and Ned traveled more than 40 miles in that storm, 20 of them on the return trip with George, in the dark, facing into the wind. That blows my mind. Teenage Gene indeed showed great courage, as well as a deep love for his sister and the rest of the family.