Love Is Where You Find It

Part 26

Loretta is writing a song, feeling as if she is in her own little corner of existence where no one dares to enter. She expresses her thought and feeling on the pad. Ink dribbles on the paper like rich oil flowing through a desert that takes the form of words. It's so amazing, this gift of writing.

They set a wedding date now- July 11th 1958. A week from the 4th and with the kids having enough summer vacation left to spend eight or ten days in Kentucky with Doolittle's mothers. Truth be told, Loretta is a little nervous. Doolittle's mother knows that they are divorced, that he left her high and dry and it seems as though she doesn't approve. But what would she do if her son showed up and wanted the kids?

She's been up most of the night and now the sun is setting. There would be no use in laying down in bed again.

The door to her bedroom flies open and in races Cissie, wearing a wide grin as she lifts a foot and proclaims. "I done it, Mommy. I tied 'em up."

Loretta drops her pen. "You tied your shoes?"

"Yes, I did." She tears the laces open just to do it again, to show her mother that she has in fact done it and it's not a one off. Cissie's little fingers move rather clumsily, and it does take her a while but tie her shoes she does.

Loretta grabs her and wraps her in a hug. "Look at you! All that time I try to teach you and then you go and figure it out all by yourself. You really are a big girl now, Cissie."

Her daughter beams.

For Loretta, it's all a little bitter sweet. Cissie is her very last baby and now she is almost ready for the First Grade. Loretta shakes her head to clear her mind. There is no need to worry about all of that now. They still have a whole summer to look forward to, and what a summer that will be.

"I wanna tell Mr. Henry," Cissie declares.

"I think that he's in bed, honey," Loretta tells her gently, adding to her statement a smile that is meant to soften the blow.

"Why would he be?" questions Cissie, who cannot seem to fathom the concept of someone not getting up at the crack of dawn by their own choice. She always gets up with the sun, this one. It drives Betty, who prefers to sleep longer on the weekends, crazy.

Soon enough, Loretta has to wake the rest of them for school and get herself to work on the overcrowded bus.

Loretta is sitting in the break room when Henry enters and slaps a hundred dollar note on the table. "Today after work, you get yourself a white dress and nice clothes for the kids."

Loretta's eyes nearly bulge out of her skull. "The kids don't need no new clothes. They got church clothes."

"But you need a wedding dress."

"I didn't wear no wedding dress when I got married the last time."

"But did you get married or eloped?"

Loretta chews on her lip but doesn't respond. The truth of the matter is that she has no idea what the difference is, all she does know is that she and Doo were in fact married. She settles on saying, "We got married at the court house, not at the church."

"At church you gotta wear a white dress. I'll take you to the store if you want, but you can't let me see what you're getting."

She's heard of all those things, all those wedding traditions but they never were for people like her. The preacher man didn't even marry people at the church, which was also the school. As much as Loretta loves their current church, with all the youth groups and the relief society and the prayer circles, there was something about that little mountain church that can't be recaptured in another environment. Sometimes she wishes that her children could have that, even though what they are having is its own kind of special and they'd never know what it is they are missing.