Then I saw the scene that followed—the broken explanations of the joyous father—questions, answers, hurriedly uttered, and the growing eagerness of both men as they supplemented for each other the missing information about the lost-and-found Eunice.
Enraged at the Gears, on his return home Otis told Grandma the story of her abduction, and gave her the messages from her father and sisters.
After that, one hope dominated Grandma’s life—to save enough money to go to her father. Loving the Gears, her heart yet yearned for the father and sisters she had never known. But her children came near together; money was scarce; means of travel were difficult and uncertain; two children sickened and died; and the years went by with her hope unfulfilled, an infrequent and laboured correspondence being the only link between them.
After many years of careful saving, the little hoard was thought sufficient for the trip. The children were old enough to be left with Otis’s sister, and Grandma set out on her long journey.
There were no railroads then. She went on the canal “packet.” This scene was very real to me. I could see her starting, loth to leave her little family, yet eager to go; timid at the thought of the enterprise, but impatient at the slow-moving boat. I’m sure she often walked on the towpath to relieve excitement and suspense. I wonder how long it took that snail boat to make the trip. Parts of the journey were made by stagecoach.
On reaching her old home she found her sisters, but her father had moved to Warren County. More than that, he had had one or two strokes of apoplexy and could no longer converse; he would, as the sisters said, “say one word when he meant another.” Her money was not sufficient to meet the additional expenses; the extra time it would take was a serious drawback to the anxious mother; then there was her father’s inability to talk with her; so, torn between conflicting interests, hampered, anxious, and sore beset, she abandoned the quest, renounced her long-cherished hope of reunion with her father, and turned her face toward home and family, drawn by a half-defined fear lest they get scattered, too.
During Grandma’s last years her sister Thankful came and lived with her—two feeble old women, united in infancy, separated throughout their long lives, reunited just before the end! We children called her Aunt Unthankful: her presence added much to Grandma’s burdens, but no murmur passed the patient lips; nor would she suffer criticism of the poor soul who had found refuge in her home and heart.
As a girl I was keenly alive to the pathos of my great-grandfather’s life, and to the deferred, then all-but-accomplished hope in Grandma’s. My own mother’s cherished hope of one day taking Grandma to her childhood home was also doomed to unfulfilment; and with a curious prescience I used to ask, “Will the dearest hope that sleeps against my own heart meet a like rebuff?” Had the tired, saddened woman found her father at the last, I wonder if his failing mind could have grasped the truth. Perhaps he would have turned away in bitter disappointment when they had tried to make him understand; unable to articulate, but thinking, “That is not my baby Eunice that John Gear stole from me.” Perhaps he died hoping, believing, that his little Eunice would still come back.
As a child I remember being gathered into Grandma’s arms, conscious of an infinite tenderness, inarticulate but encompassing. I used to look up into her pale, weary face and wonder why she had to work so hard. I loved to stroke her soft cheeks; was mystified by the wrinkled flesh that hung beneath her chin; and her poor hands with their enlarged joints and crooked fingers—it seemed as though they must hurt to be so bent; vainly I tried to straighten them. It was such a puzzle, too—the contrast between age and youth as I saw and felt it in Grandma and myself when patting her face with my chubby hand. I looked and marvelled and questioned, then gave up questioning, and rested my head on her breast, content to be folded in her arms.
There was a pink china teapot with a broken spout high on Grandma’s pantry shelf. I never saw inside it, but a delightful jingle came from its capacious depths. In it Grandma kept pennies, nickels, half-dimes and dimes, and those tiny, three-cent coins I haven’t seen since childhood; yes, and there were the large three-cent pieces and the two-cent coppers that one sees no more. Grandma had a way of urging us children: “Now take a nickel for all your trouble,” just as she had of urging us to help her empty the old brown cookie jar. Although there were no injunctions concerning a reasonable amount of cookies, we were taught at home that we must not accept Grandma’s nickels (her milk and yeast money) for the errands we did; and to our credit, be it said, we refused them as a rule, even when we had to summon all our strength to refuse. I can see now three pairs of red-mittened hands quickly drawn away as Grandma would press the tempting coins, first on one, then the other, of her little helpers. Sometimes the nickel would fall into the pail, and we would fumble to get it out, while Grandma’s siren tones would urge: “There, run along home like good children and mind Grandma, just this once.” Ah, Grandma! many an enticing temptation of yours did our childish strength withstand! Would that the forbidden sweets and glittering coins Life has proffered had oftener met a like renunciation! And yet, can one ever really say that he would change anything that has become a part of him, of his experience—that, if he could, he would blot it out, make it as though it had never been?