How the Soul Sings

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

            Not long after Daniel's engagement, came the time for the families to meet. The whole thing was a big-to-do. Momma and Aunt Loraine had all hands on deck, cleaning and scrubbing, moving furniture around to clean behind things that hadn't seen the light of day since probably before I was born. Daisy and I were given the tasks of polishing all of the furniture and stair bannister, vacuuming all the curtains and drapes, and then taking the oriental rugs outside to hang on the clothes line so we could beat the living daylights out of them until every speck of dust was gone. Jesse Sr. and Jr. switched mattresses around; my brother's old twin and Daniel's twin went into my aunt's room and my aunt's queen went into my brother's room. Later, I was given a box to empty my brother's dresser drawers. Laura's family was going to be spending an entire weekend here on the farm and my brother's and mother's rooms were being turned into guest rooms. Daniel's room was being turned back into the study. Both the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms were outfitted with my mother's famous soaps, of course.

There was also silver polishing and fine china dipping to be had, and pressing of the good dinner linens with rose water. Aunt Loraine would have had all the floors refinished in the house if she could have convinced someone to do it. She wanted to do away with anything that might have given off the impression that we could possibly be some country bumpkin, unrefined back roads hicks. That even meant that Momma was going to have to wear a couple of dresses over the course of the weekend and put her hair up at least once. No tending to the goats and sheep for her this weekend; that's what Jesse Sr. and Jr. were for. And Grandma Evee? She was just going to stay on home. We couldn't risk something rolling off her tongue and ruffling anyone's feathers. The only thing my aunt couldn't get, that my mother put a stop to, was asking Willa Jane and Daisy to help with the cooking and serving. Momma put her foot down and said that it would be insulting because they are not our 'hired help', but our friends and neighbors, practically family. There wasn't a butt in this house that Evee hadn't changed a diaper on. No, the Hutchins' ladies would enjoy a weekend at home, away from all this mess. I would have given my right arm to be right there with them. 

Just before the engagement, Momma and my Aunt had started paying for Daniel to go to college to study to be an architect. Daniel hoped to be able to create building designs that were more accommodating to those in wheelchairs and other handicaps. He more or less ended up contributing to the movement to make public places more accessible to people with disabilities that would come about toward the end of the decade. But otherwise, Laura was the only one working to support them and this concerned her parents. And their concern concerned me and actually made me a little protective of my dear cousin. Didn't those people realize how far he'd come?  I thought.  

You would have thought that I would have used Laura's parent's slight objection to my cousin marrying her as ammunition to hurl more anti-well-wishes his way, but instead, the whole thing gave me a change of heart, in a way. I never thought that Daniel wasn't good enough for marrying and I didn't want anyone else to think that, too.  And besides, weren't we in the modern age, now; woman's liberation and all that? So, maybe their roles were reversed at the moment, but once Daniel becomes a big, famous architect, Laura will be able to quit her job then, if she wanted to.  

In the meanwhile, Momma had been writing my brother down in Mexico, ever since she and Willa Jane got those letters. He didn't write her as often as she did, but none the less, there was some sort of communication carrying on. When Daniel got engaged, Momma wrote to Aaron about the news, of course. Thank God the engagement wasn't any shorter than it already was, because it took my brother practically until those two were standing at the alter before we heard back from him. Momma sent him an invitation anyway, even though we all knew that the odds were pretty slim that he'd show up.