Priscilla Biddle

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Excerpt:

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Introduction

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“Act your age!” my mother would admonish me throughout my childhood. After all, I was the oldest, the big sister, and was supposed to set the example. I’ve never really figured out exactly what one does to act one’s age. What age would that be exactly?

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When I was a child, I thought it meant to act more grown up. But, since I was usually just acting childish when Momma would say that, it didn’t make sense that the statement was supposed to elicit in me a knowledge how I was supposed to act older than I was.  Once I became an adult with chronological and life-event measures of maturity, I remained confused as to the question of what acting one’s age meant.

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Part of the problem was living in the same town until I was forty. Anywhere I went, I would see someone I knew, but knowing when I knew them became harder and harder to place.  He could be someone who knew Granny and Papa or Momma and Daddy, or someone I went to school with, or someone who taught me or whom I taught. All those identities, all with lives of their own, coexist, layers of time continuing simultaneously, sometimes independently, sometimes integrated. Living in the same little yellow house in which my mother was born and in which my parents lived when I was born, I could, in any given minute, be a grand-daughter and a mother, a student and a teacher, a child and a grown-up.

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I can still see my Papa – aged and ailing, his old man’s skin pale, his formerly blue sky eyes cloudy, his white hair yellowed and tired, his once broad shoulders stooped – holding my baby Edward, a dimpled cherub, his large dark eyes and ruddy cheeks radiant, creating a contrast of youth and age at their extremes.

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They were in love with each other, those two. Papa loved to recount just exactly how and when they had fallen for each other. It was at a big family holiday get-together shortly after Edward’s birth. As usual, I arrived with too many things to carry – baby, diaper bag, casseroles for the festivities. Without thinking, I plopped my newborn down in Papa’s lap, since he was the first person I stopped to greet. Quickly on my way to the kitchen, I left Edward in his great-grandfather’s care.

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Papa later would confide to us all that he wondered what in the world he was supposed to do with an infant. Babies were Granny’s domain, but, with no one nearby to hand Edward off to, he was stuck. He shifted the squirming baby in his arms, bringing him up to face him, supporting Edward’s back and head with his long forearms and big hands in front of him in a posture as though he were tossing a bale of hay or, given the circumstances, imploring the Almighty.

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Not knowing what else to do, he started talking to Edward. According to the legend, at the sound of Papa’s voice, Edward’s eyes, fuzzy and unfocused in that newborn’s way, suddenly cleared and his gaze sharpened, focusing on Papa, looking him right in the eye. The next thing Papa knew, he and Edward were having a “conversation” that only they understood.

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I think each one instinctively saw a missing part of himself in the other – Papa, a young man hostage in an old body, and Edward, an old soul renewed in an infant. Papa was always full of mischief. Every morning, he would take a walk, touring the yard and garden. He would stop and talk baby talk to the morning glory blossoms that grew up the downspouts and kiss each blossom good morning. Anyone else and you would have thought he was out of his mind -- like poor Mrs. Devine, the once proud and commanding voice of the third grade at Pinewood Memorial Elementary School, who ran around her neighborhood in her slip and stole people’s newspapers from their driveways until her family had to put her in a home. Since it was Papa, no one thought anything at all.

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