I’ve always envied men who could watch their wives grow old. Boughton lost his wife five years ago, and he married before I did. His oldest boy has snow-white hair. His grandchildren are mostly married. And as for me, it is still true that I will never see a child of mine grow up and I will never see a wife of mine grow old. I’ve shepherded a good many people through their lives, I’ve baptized babies by the hundred, and all that time I have felt as though a great part of life was closed to me. Your mother says I was like Abraham. But I had no old wife and no promise of a child. I was just getting by on books and baseball and fried-egg sandwiches.
You and the cat have joined me in my study. Soapy is on my lap and you are on your belly on the floor in a square of sunlight, drawing airplanes. Half an hour ago you were on my lap and Soapy was on her belly in the square of sunlight. And while you were on my lap you drew — so you told me — a Messerschmitt 109. That is it in the corner of the page. You know all the names from a book Leon Fitch gave you about a month ago, when my back was turned, as it seems to me, since he could not, surely, have imagined I’d approve. All your drawings look about like that one in the corner, but you give them different names — Spad and Fokker and Zero. You’re always trying to get me to read the fine print about how many guns they have and how many bombs they carry. If my father were here, if I were my father, I’d find a way to make you think that the noble and manly thing would be to give the book back to old Fitch. I really should do that. But he means well. Maybe I’ll just hide the thing in the pantry. When did you figure out about the pantry? That’s where we always put anything we don’t want you getting into. Now that I think about it, half the things in that pantry were always there so one or another of us wouldn’t get into them.
I could have married again while I was still young. A congregation likes to have a married minister, and I was introduced to every niece and sister-in-law in a hundred miles. In retrospect, I’m very grateful for whatever reluctance it was that kept me alone until your mother came. Now that I look back, it seems to me that in all that deep darkness a miracle was preparing. So I am right to remember it as a blessed time, and myself as waiting in confidence, even if I had no idea what I was waiting for.
Then when your mother did come, when I still hardly knew her, she gave me that look of hers — no twinkle in that eye — and said, very softly and very seriously, “You ought to marry me.” That was the first time in my life I ever knew what it was to love another human being. Not that I hadn’t loved people before. But I hadn’t realized what it meant to love them before. Not even my parents. Not even Louisa. I was so startled when she said that to me that for a minute I couldn’t find any words to reply. So she walked away, and I had to follow her along the street. I still didn’t have the courage to touch her sleeve, but I said, “You’re right, I will.” And she said, “Then I’ll see you tomorrow,” and kept on walking. That was the most thrilling thing that ever happened to me in my life. I could wish you such a moment as that one was, though when I think of everything that came before it, for me and for your dear mother, too, I’m not sure I should.
Here I am trying to be wise, the way a father should be, the way an old pastor certainly should be. I don’t know what to say except that the worst misfortune isn’t only misfortune-and even as I write those words, I have that infant Rebecca in my mind, the way she looked while I held her, which I seem to remember, because every single time I have christened a baby I have thought of her again. That feeling of a baby’s brow against the palm of your hand — how I have loved this life. Boughton had christened her, as I said, but I laid my hand on her just to bless her, and I could feel her pulse, her warmth, the damp of her hair. The Lord said, “Their angels in Heaven always see the face of my Father in Heaven” (Matthew 18:10).
That’s why Boughton named her Angeline. Many, many people have found comfort in that verse.
***
I have been thinking about existence lately. In fact, I have been so full of admiration for existence that I have hardly been able to enjoy it properly. As I was walking up to the church this morning, I passed
