Tarsus, March fifteenth,
Nineteen-Nine.
Dearest Mother:
Do you remember the day I was talking to you about the mother-in-law problem and I said I was put to it to know what to call her? You said, "Don't worry, it won't be long before you have somebody to whom she will be grandma, and you can get out of it gracefully by calling her grandma, too." Isn't it queer to think that I through my motherhood shall place you in the grandmother generation? As I look back to Cloverton days and my grandmother, I envy this baby of mine. There is something about a grandmother that is pretty fine. They thought I was a great kid at grandma's house—partly because of my unshakable belief that my grandmother was beautiful. How I used to stand beside her chair stroking her cheek, telling her, "You are beautiful." She used to smile with her eyes while her lips protested, saying, "How can I be beautiful with all my wrinkles?" I suppose it was the Irish coming out in me: for I remember distinctly telling her that she had no wrinkles, except pretty laugh wrinkles on both sides of her eyes.
Don't hug secret reflections about growing old. When you and I and the grandbaby meet IT will be Helen's responsibility. You will be free to play with the baby. That has not happened to you since you were a little girl and had dolls. I shall say: "Oh, Mother is there, so baby is safe." The meeting of the three generations will eliminate worry. Nature means young fathers and mothers and babies to have grandmother near. You must come to Paris next winter.
You have made a jolly start in grandmotherhood. It was better than Christmas, when Daddy Christie and Herbert opened your box. I have my small steamer trunk right beside our wardrobe, and am playing it is the baby hamper. The trunk is nearly brand new, and will do very well when we leave here in June, for it will hold all the baby things.
* * * * * * *
A perfume can whisk your mind five thousand miles from your body. I am sitting beside our white iron bed, sniffing. There is the faint unfamiliar odor given out by my cedar woodwork, the smell of fresh whitewash on new walls, the warm breath of a log fire. Dominating it all is the clean clover sachet you sprinkled among the baby clothes. The sachet carried my memory straight back to home, for it smells like your upper bureau drawer.
The baby things came this morning, and I have arranged them on the bed, so that when Herbert comes back from teaching his Greek class, he will get the full benefit. Dresses and petticoats, silk-and-wool shirts and bands, didies—all six months size. Do you fear that I will not be able to nurse your grandbaby, that you sent all the condensed and malted milk?
Next time you have to go to Doctor Smith's office, give him my thanks for his kind message. I can hear him gravely telling you to advise me "by all means to go to the nearest hospital." Take with you my old geography, and put your pretty forefinger on the right-hand upper corner of the Mediterranean. Show him that we are where the map begins to turn around that right-hand upper corner down towards the Holy Land. Then tell him the nearest hospital is a two days' sea voyage away. Do you suppose Herbert's salary could send me to Beirut? And could I take the journey alone?
You are quite justified, however, in your wish that I make plans now for baby's coming. The only trained nurse in Cilicia is Miss Hallie Wallis. She is forty miles away. She receives at her house at least one hundred natives a day and has more work than her limited strength can accomplish. Moreover, she has such a mixed crowd that it might not be wise for her to handle a baby case.