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Becky is my friend now, and I know a little bit more about her She’s alikeIt’s Ver the war, then ca the typhoid epidemic of 1918 The Presbyterian Women’s Mission asked her to stay, and now she’s employed by the state Department of Health in Charleston

It hadn’t been easy, she toldout on the porch Local doctors had objected to her presence at first, thinking she was practicing medicine If you ask me, she probably knew more than they did, but she’d never say it "You have to understand hoithin the system," she warned "Don’t overstep your bounds"

Becky’s the one who toldService in Hyden, Kentucky, and encouraged me to keep records of my births in this diary Before that, I just wrote the date and baby’s name in the family’s Bible like Mrs Kelly did

Mrs Myers asked why I didn’t go to the nursing service in Kentucky for ree froe up north, Yale, I think, and that’s where she heard about the school for ets that I’m not a nurse and have no money for travel or tuition Anyould take care of es twenty-five dollars if he coo to his hospital Twenty-five dollars would buy shoes for the whole Cabrini fa chair over to the frontto adht It’s a beautiful book and quite too expensive When I saw the bouquet of tulips embossed on the brown leather cover, I had to have it

Inside, in the top corner of each lined page is a small colored print of a poppy or rose, a toad or snail, so There’s a lock and a key that I keep on the cord with Mrs Kelly’s gold watch My life has been difficult, and the delicacy of the ees is what charentle, sensible wo pharave the journal tocare of his seventy-three-year-old ar severalher, cleansing the open sores, using oldenseal poultices and some of the , I cooked, did her household chores, and kept her foot elevated so it could heal

That was before I inheritedWhen the bank foreclosed on their farm at the bottom of Wild Rose Road, they couldn’t take the coith the Besides, I’d delivered their son and they wanted to repay me

I inherited this house and land too, from Mrs Kelly, after she passed Turned out she’d made an appointment to prepare her ith Mr Linkous, the lawyer in Delmont, just three weeks before her demise I found that out later from Mr Johnson, who’d driven her into town in his truck Itbut she never let on Dr Blum explained that so work, that women weren’t meant for it, but I knew better Her heart broke when her lover, Nora, left us After that it was just a slow bleed

I throw another log into the woodstove Outside, a feflakes float down, gentle re Somehow I must find money to buy wood Coal would be nice, but it’s far too expensive The bare trees shiver in the gray light and only a few groves of pines splash green higher up on the mountains You can see the Hope River clearly now, but not the rocks and the rapids

Treasured Child

Soet confused Most ofNow and then I wake up, sometimes for months, sometimes for minutes I’ it up or if a great puppeteer isme dance

I’ve played too many roles in too short a time; had too o back to the beginning

I was born Elizabeth Snyder on October 19, 1893, in Deerfield, a so and a few an My hter of a prominent farrandmother in a two-story white Victorian on Third Street

My father was a seafaringwood and iron from Wisconsin to Ohio His parents died in the yellow fever epidemic of 1878 in New Orleans, so I never knew theational Church, where Ma in the choir when his ship was in port I was an avid reader and devoured every book I could find, as well as the Chicago Tribune that Papa brought fro and dance, and fished with my pa in a canoe on the Des Plaines River, a treasured only child, but that didn’t last

In the winter of 1902,condition and we buried her in the hard, cold ground Not three years later, edy followed My father’s ship, the Appomattox, on its last run frohter, the longest wooden ship on the Great Lakes, carrying a load of iron ore frorounded on a sandbar in the mist Papa was the only crew member who died, swept overboard by a ten-foot wave

When the representative froht the news, Mae Re can stop and everything can be different"

Later I wondered, in my childish mind, if in actuality Papa had just ju his death to escape his debts His body was never recovered

In our first s went from bad to worse Mama was shocked to learn, frorandh-stakes card gahter Because of his debts, the Trust Company of Illinois foreclosed on our ho house in Deerfield Those were hard times It was Christmas, and I elve

Fortunately, Mother was able to retain her teaching position, but our quarters were cramped and her pay wasbut our clothes, the family Bible, her hys, Ma men I was taken out of school and sent to ith Mrs Gross, the seaate