The Letter

The Letter

Welcome to Christianity Oasis. This is The Letter from our Sojourn With Luz Leigh Collection. We hope you enjoy this enlightening reading and it helps you on your own be-YOU-tiful Christian walk.

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Sojourn With Luz Leigh

The Letter

Written by Luz Leigh - 09 September 2009

The beautiful young girl sits on the front porch steps of the old farmhouse. It is time for the rural mail carrier to be making his rounds. Ahhh, she hears the sound of his car in the distance. As the carrier rounds the curve just west of her home, she can tell he is slowing down. He stops at the mailbox beside the road, places a letter inside and drives off, waving to her as he does when she is in sight.

With a racing heart she runs to the mailbox. Sure enough, there is an envelope with the very familiar handwriting. She sits down under the elm tree near the mailbox, carefully opening the envelope and begins to read. But the words are not what she wanted to hear. Dear Pal (the pet name he has for her) I will try to write you a few lines this evening to let you know I can't come home Saturday as Mr. Key will be gone I will have to stay at the Camp Saturday and Sunday ... I hope it might be so I can come to see you Friday night. I will if I can get off from work in time." There were a few more lines, and then he signed it "as ever, F."

She tries not to cry, but her heart is broken. This man is the one steadying thing in her life. She knows in her heart that the Lord sent him to give her a haven away from the one in which she has been stuck for the first 21 years of her life. At the very early age of sixteen, she left home to marry a young man who lived in another community. There was not much love between them, but it was an escape from the abusive situation in which she found herself. That marriage ended not long after it began when her young husband died.

With no where else to go, she returned to her parents' home. She was still young, very beautiful with her long dark, almost black hair, and eyes to match. About the time she turned nineteen, Felix began to take an interest in the girl with the sparkling eyes and infectious smile. It did not take long for her to have deep feelings for this man ... a man old enough to be her daddy, but with young ideas. He worked in another county over an hour's drive away. In the early 1930s when this courtship was taking place, most roads were still unpaved, gravel roads and the vehicles were not known for their speed.

Their weekly letters were the only means of communication. Although there was a telephone at the CCC camp where he worked it was only for business purposes. Besides, there was no phone in her parents' home.

The short time they spent together on the weekends when he could leave the camp seemed to simply fly by, but she looked forward to those hours together. After a couple of years, her dreams were fulfilled. She became his bride, moved to the "big house" in town and felt loved and secure for the first time in her life.

Not everyone was as happy as she and her beloved Felix were. His son by his first wife, who had been deceased many years, totally disapproved of the marriage. Not only was Leigh years younger than Felix, but she came from the family of a sharecropper. I suppose one could say she was from the "wrong side of the tracks." Few of the other family members approved of the May to December match up. But she and Felix were happy and that was all that mattered.

On this day when she sat reading the letter, weeping over the words that told her they would not be spending time together that weekend, she did not know what the future held for them. She only knew that her sweet Felix missed her and loved her. She tucked the letter into her apron pocket, returned to the house and set about helping her mother prepare lunch for the farm hands. One day ... one day ... she kept repeating to herself, the Lord will free me from this drudgery and I will live in happiness in a house provided by the love of my life. His written words echoed in her head as she took the cornbread from the old iron cook stove: "Be sweet until I come and I will kiss you about 3 times." No one understood what brought the smile to her lips and caused her eyes to twinkle.

Somewhere, miles away, Felix was supervising a work crew, but his thoughts were on that pretty girl back in Walker County. A smile crept across his face.

This story is based on truth. Leigh was my mother; Felix was my daddy. I read the letter she had kept for decades prior to her death.

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