WE GATHER TOGETHER by Edward L. Woodyard

We Gather Together Chapter Sixty-Eight

Julia McCulloch turned off the lights in the kitchen as Sam laid the decorated place cards on the serving table in the dining room. Julia would finish setting the dining table in the morning.

"Did Annie mention anything to you about her and Jack? She said nothing to me."

"I didn't pursue it."

"I wonder what she's not telling us. I want to know if we can help them in any way. . ."

"They will figure it out, Julia. Parents shouldn't necessarily know everything about their children."

She stared at Sam. She knew he was right. She changed the subject as she headed toward the foyer, "First thing I have to do tomorrow is snap some beans. And you could start setting up the bar. We may have to get more sodas and fruit juices for the grandkids."

"I think we're okay there, but I'll check. There should be a couple of cases in the cellar."

"And we have the ecumenical Thanksgiving service tomorrow night at seven at church."

"I didn't forget. They have me doing one of the readings this year. It's a poem."

"You didn't tell me."

"There goes the surprise."

"There goes your memory is more like it," Julia responded. She turned off a brass pole lamp behind the couch as Sam locked and bolted the front door.

Julia switched on the overhead light in the upstairs hallway and started up the stairs. "I am very seriously thinking about calling Emma's next-door neighbor in Columbus to see if she has heard anything from her. They've been feeding her cat. This irresponsibility is so unlike Emma not to let us know her plans."

"That may not be a bad idea. With the strike still on, who knows?" Sam remarked, following Julia up the stairs. Emma had told them that after she disembarked in Miami from her cruise to the Bahamas, she had originally planned to fly north to Westchester County on Wednesday morning.  

When Sam got to the top of the stairs, he turned off the overhead light in the foyer downstairs. Julia said of Emma, "I know that she was hoping to be here in time to go to the ecumenical service with us. She had planned around that."

"Who was it who said that if you want to make God laugh, make plans?"

"Your grandfather J.J., no doubt," Julia retorted, going into the bathroom off their bedroom to brush her teeth, apply some night cream to her face and put on a nightshirt. Sam lingered in the upstairs hallway, unbuttoning his shirt and pulling his belt from the loops on his lined khaki pants. He peered over at a framed picture on the wall of Tom and him as young boys standing with their father Peter and grandfather J.J. in front of the then-new McCulloch Printing annex building. Next to it was a framed snapshot of Julia and Emma with their mother and Julia's father, Benjamin Lemasters, standing on the boardwalk in Atlantic City.

Sam switched off the upstairs hallway light, went into the bedroom and draped his shirt and pants over a wooden chair with a needlepoint seat to the right of the window. Above it on the wall was a formal sepia portrait of Old Jake McCulloch and Sarah Harris McCulloch, sitting sternly in upholstered Victorian chairs at an angle next to each other, staring beyond each other and the camera lens; she wore a paisley shawl over her shoulders that had come with her from England, along with the silver candlesticks. She had worn the shawl as she disembarked from a transatlantic steamer in New York early in Chester Arthur's presidency. Sam thought to remind himself to take the picture off the wall in two days when he would tell the story again of their first Thanksgiving in America shortly after their marriage in 1888.

Julia took off her gold wristwatch, a Lady Elgin which had been an early Christmas present from her father to her mother, and laid it on a lace runner on top of her dresser. She dutifully wound it every morning and put it on as a reminder that her parents were always with her. It was almost as old as Julia, and like Julia at this age, it too sometimes ran slow.

Julia leaned forward at her vanity briefly to brush her hair as Sam, dressed only in his tee shirt and boxers, walked barefoot into the bathroom. She used to be able to hear him when he stood in front of the toilet for his "one last relief" that would get him through the night; however, ever since his prostate surgery, Sam's once-vigorous stream had been silent. What had once been accomplished with assurance and confidence had retreated to a twice-nightly occurrence of spurts, drips and splatters. He didn't complain, attributing it to a necessity of the aging process.

Julia rose from the vanity bench and stared at the wall opposite the foot of their bed; on it were years of pictures that highlighted their life together, starting with Julia and Sam standing in front of Sam's red Pontiac Firebird Trans Am and their formal wedding portrait to the children's high school graduation portraits and a picture from last winter of Drew next to Cara in her hospital bed as she held newborn Lindsay. Her favorite picture could be of all four kids together at the Hudsonville Ice Rink, posed in front of a goal in their hockey uniforms and with their sticks prominent; it was taken at Ben's first game as a Mini-Mite when Scott, Drew and Annie were all still in their teens and playing youth hockey.

Julia slid under the covers and clicked off a bedside lamp. She heard Sam shut off the faucet, tap his toothbrush against the sink's porcelain edge and drop it into a glass next to the soap dish. She turned her head to face the closet as Sam wiped his mouth on a bath towel hanging from a hook on the back of the bathroom door and reached for a light switch by the hallway door.

He gazed at the rainbow painting above the headboard and knew that Julia would always be his pot of gold at the end of it. Julia had a classic, ageless beauty that over time, like patina or pentimento from youth, had only enhanced her elegance, especially now that it was accented by her silver hair. She would always be young and beautiful. The soul endures. It never wrinkles.

Sam turned off the overhead light, placed his eyeglasses on his bedside table, and crawled into bed beside Julia. He slipped his hand between the bottom sheet and her waist – and then waited for the heel of her foot to touch the top of his toes. They had done this routine practically every night for almost forty years. Neither of them wanted to even consider what it would be like when it was only one of them in the bed, alone under their rainbow, when their memories would replace their dreams.

But that would be many years ahead of them. They had too many aspirations before then.

They both fidgeted in bed and fell asleep, his hand under her waist and her heel on his toes. They knew their love was like an ocean: vast, sometimes turbulent, always calmed by the fair skies of wisdom and understanding, ever evolving in its force and purpose as its waves ceaselessly lapped the shore. Most important for them both, their love was as timeless as the ocean: always had been, always will be.