On the Stile (nga.gov)
On the Stile – Winslow Homer
4th Granddaughter – 10/25/21
…and it was such a nice day, with the breeze, a gentle breeze that was friendly and good, and her mother said it was a blessing, a benediction…a new word to her…that the Lord provided for her cousin Elsie’s wedding and for all the family gathering together on her grandparents’ property, once filled with more orchards and larger than now, but that is the way life is, her mother said, but she seemed sad and even alone when she said it, even when she took her mother’s hand, to remind her that she was there, touching her wedding ring, of gold it was said, as she always did when she touched and took her mother’s hand, for she knew her father gave her the ring when they had married and it seemed that she touched her father also…like the way her mother touched her father’s face when he came home from the factory…
And Ruthie, her friend in school, had whispered some words about weddings and things that sounded strange…and she had looked at Elsie at breakfast and at Edwin, a nice man, when he arrived later, but… And now with two hours before the wedding, when her mother and grandmother and aunts and older cousins were all running around and talking loud and carrying dishes and food and tablecloths and everything else, her mother asked her to take her brother outside to walk around before the wedding but do not let him get dirty, and she did, taking secretly a warm fresh roll of bread for him because sometimes he would get hungry and this would be…a little blessing for him. And she was twelve and he was ten, and yet now he many times took her hand to lead her, and for a boy he was nice and kind…oh, like father.
And as they walked across the fields, he led the way…her mother sometimes called him her big little man…and he was talking about the sky and the birds and the breeze moving through the leaves and the little branches and he helped her over the steps of the stile and she…wondered…and thought that…maybe a man, an older boy at least, may someday take her hand…and was that how Elsie fell in love with Edwin?…that he took her hand one day and…Elsie kept her hand in his… For she heard them say, he asked her father for her hand in marriage…and had Edwin been his mother’s big little man? And her brother’s hand was so easy to take, and he just chatted on…but when she was older…how would she know which hand to take and hold…
0 Comments