Jessie & Polly, A Love Story

 I did not expect to write again before the year ended. I did not expect to be stuck at home yet again. Our uninvited houseguest has returned.

We had planned to leave for Virginia on Tuesday to spend a few days with Will, Darice, and their family. Monday afternoon Nate called me from upstairs, "Dad, I can't smell anything." Ugh!

So, we sent Nate to the doctor for a COVID test. The results came back positive the next morning. Disappointed as we are, I am so glad I didn't hear him announce this from the back of the van hours into our drive to Virginia. We are also glad that his case is even milder than Ben's. Nate has only lost his sense of smell and felt a little more tired than normal after playing tennis with Ben both Saturday and Sunday, which he may have attributed to being fairly inactive after the cross country season ended.

While there's no way to know for sure, we have a pretty good guess as to where Nate picked this up. Still, I am scratching my head as to why he caught the virus now and not when he had the most ideal opportunity to do so when Ben had it over Thanksgiving.

It is actually a bit easier this time around. Ben has the magic 90 day immunity from his round with COVID so he can keep Nate company with little fear of reinfection and since the quarantine rules don't apply to him he can run errands for us. We didn't have that before. Nate should be able to return to school on the 6th (the student's first day back is the 5th), and if I test negative over the weekend I can go back to work on the 5th. In all this I can't help feeling like I have a 50 ton weight hanging over my head ready to drop at any moment.

To tie up a loose end from the last time I wrote, our phone and internet service came back up that day but it was spotty and unreliable. Sunday afternoon it was all back down again for several hours. Everything has been running fine since Monday, but placing phone calls was hit or miss most of the day. Sort of like when the lights go out, it is amazing, and maybe a bit scary, to see how much we have come to rely on network connectivity in so many areas of life.

Shifting to more pleasant news, we were able to enjoy with the Jones family, if virtually, a final Christmas gift that was most special. Here's the story on that...

From the time Vicki was a teenager she was aware of the existence of love letters exchanged between her parents before they married. Vicki's dad, Jessie, was a native of Camden, Tennessee, but had moved away seeking work in the San Diego area. He served in the Navy in World War II, returned to California, and eventually moved to the Chicago area where he worked for General Motors. In 1963 Jessie was 45 and still a bachelor. On a trip home to visit family a really cute and tall girl caught his eye.

In 1963 Pauline was 30, single, and still living at home with her parents near Camden. She worked as a seamstress at the HIS garment factory in Bruceton. That June her father, a farmer, was laid up with a broken leg. One afternoon Jessie and his brother came to visit Pauline's dad. Of course, Jessie just might have known that Mr. Phifer had a cute daughter.

Jessie and Polly started dating. Jessie came back to Tennessee as often as he could, but since he lived and worked near Chicago most of their dating was done via letters. They had phones, but long distance calls were so expensive the letters practically flew back and forth. Their courtship was fairly quick. They married in November of that year.

So Vicki knew about the letters. She had stumbled across them one day after the family had moved back to Camden. Pauline would never let Vicki read them, but always promised, "When I’m gone, y’all can read them." Ten years ago when we were cleaning out Pauline's house Vicki found the letters, in one of the last corners of the house we cleaned, I might add. Will and Vicki decided it would be best that Vicki keep the originals but that one day when the kids were all old enough we should make copies for all of them. Looking forward to that time Will and I scanned all the letters.

This year the youngest grandchild, Emily, is 16. Back in the fall Vicki and I discussed it and with two of Pauline's grandkids about to marry we felt the time was right. So we went secretly to work making sure the letters, all 106 of them, are in chronological order. We then imported all the scanned letters from 11 years ago into page layout software, wrote a short introduction, added Jessie and Pauline's wedding pictures and made a book. What was very helpful for the introduction is that we found a cassette tape where Jessie and Pauline both tell the story of how they met. The transcript of that recording very neatly sets the stage for all the letters.

In the end we wound up with a 470 page book. We used a print-on-demand service to have hard cover copies made for everyone in the family and they were delivered a couple of weeks before Christmas. Vicki and I opened the boxes when the kids weren't home and we were so pleased with the result. I haven't read all the letters, being more concerned with book layout, but from the ones I have skimmed they are a beautiful picture of the love that grew between the two of them and I think a fine example to set before their grandchildren since they never got to meet Jessie and lost Pauline 11 years ago.

It was our intention to all open the books when we were together in Virginia, but I had this nagging doubt in my mind about that trip. I had to sell the idea to Vicki but we wound up gift wrapping the books for the Joneses and shipping them to Virginia as a precaution. So glad we did.

Last night the six of us (including Nolan) and the six of them (including Cameron's fiancée Jessica) gathered in our respective living rooms (well, Nate sat in the foyer where he could see us) connected by FaceTime and opened the books.

I think everyone was touched by their copy of the book. They all seemed to be when we opened them together. If there was anything that might backfire about this gift it is that most of the kids cannot read cursive handwriting. At least Jessie and Pauline both had very legible hands, but I can understand how this would be a challenge for them. Still, I hope they will take the time to try to read those letters.

So, this is how 2020 wraps up for us. We celebrated the first day of this year with a visit to Universal Studios in Orlando. We certainly had no idea what all we were in for, so it is only natural to wonder what 2021 has in store. One of the most common phrases in Scripture is  some varient of "and it came to pass," so here's to looking forward to better days for all if us.

Joe