Lucretia Laing Ensworth
I will call you Lucy, my grandmother, mother of my father. Your blood runs in mine, but you are entirely a cypher to me.
You died three years before I was born. I do not know the color of your eyes or the color of your favorite dress. I do not know the things that bring you joy or the things that cause you pain. I do not know timbre of your voice or the cadence of your laugh. I do not know if you do laugh, but surely hope that you do, that the landscape of your life does bring you some delight.
You knew your grandmother. You were married seven months before she died. You know that she made sugar cookies, that she bore great grief with resilience and grace, that her grey hair was once raven black, that she danced a fine Highland fling. I know these things, too, because your cousin wrote of her and told her stories. I have met her in my imagination and she has become a part of my remembered family.
But no one has told me your stories. No one has told me if you bake or sew or paint or dance. No one has told me of the hardships you have endured or of the graces you have offered. Oh, Lucy! What kind of mother were you? Was my father a surprise when he came out from you when you were beginning your fifth decade? A good surprise? Did he try you? Did he exhaust you? Did he make you laugh? Did he make you proud?
Are you quiet like me, a person of few words, of words carefully chosen and always meant? Do you love, as I do, a bracing morning and ice on the pond, a tumbling brook or a faint trail through deep woods, the magic of poetry or the enchantment of music? Do you love God? Do you understand that all you are and all you have is an extraordinary gift to be treasured, to be received with gratitude and shared with joy?
I call you Lucy now, of my own whim, because I do not know you. But when I do know you, when you too become part of my remembered family, when your body and your spirit take shape in my imagination and in my heart, I will know what to call you.