How much did being a woman depend on such things? Would I be complete without them? Could a woman be complete and yet remain alone?
I don’t know if it was wrong to think it, but I couldn’t help wondering right then what it was like to be intimate with a man. What did it feel like in your heart to be that deeply bonded with another human being? What was it like to love someone that much?
I began to think of Emily and what it would be like for her. What was childbirth like? Was it as painful and yet as joyous as women said? How could it be both excruciating and exhilarating at the same time? What was it like to hold in your arms a newborn son or daughter, the child of your own womb?
I couldn’t imagine how wondrous a thing it must be! And I couldn’t keep my tears from starting up all over again.
What was it like to be a parent, to watch that son or daughter grow and learn to walk and talk and begin becoming a person with individuality and character all its own? What were the emotions that a mother’s heart would feel?
I had been so close to Ma, and now felt so close to Almeda. And yet for the first time I realized what a huge gulf there had always been between us . . . and always would be. Emily had bridged that gap already in many ways, and in another six months or so she would share womanhood with Ma and Almeda in a complete way—a completeness I would never be able to enter into.
The realization was too painful for me to think of further. I turned and walked briskly back to Mrs. Richards’ boardinghouse, still crying but determined not to sink any further into the despondency that was threatening to overwhelm me altogether.
Chapter 36
Forgetfulness and Remembrance
I didn’t do very well at keeping the tears and self-pity away. Both remained with me the rest of the day.
I couldn’t go down to dinner looking the way I did. As soon as the other guests were served, Mrs. Richards came to my room and knocked on the door to see if I was coming.
“No, I don’t think I’ll be down tonight,” I said through the door. I’d never missed supper the whole time I’d been there.
“Corrie . . . are you all right?” she said.
“Yes . . . I’m fine,” I answered, knowing I wasn’t being truthful. “I’m just not feeling too well.”
“What can I do for you, child?”
“I’ll—please, I’ll . . . I’ll be fine in the morning. It’s just a headache, and . . . I’m not hungry.”
“You’ll tell me if there’s something I can do?”
“Yes . . . yes, I will. Thank you, Mrs. Richards.”
She went downstairs to the dining room, and I lay back on the bed and started crying all over again. Oh, I would have given anything to have Almeda at my side right then! I was miserable!
But I just couldn’t stand to be such a victim of my moods. One minute I was happy and excited about life, and everything looked so bright. Then the next I would find myself knocked off my feet and knee-deep in a slough of despair and hopelessness. Pa had said to me more than once, “All that thinking’s bound to tie your brain in knots now and then, Corrie. Just take life as it comes, and don’t cogitate so much on it.”
But I couldn’t help thinking about everything. Besides, I didn’t want to just take life as it came. I wanted to have a hand in the process. I figured I knew better than anyone else—anyone except the Lord, that is—what I did and didn’t want to be doing.
But if thinking was part of looking your life in the face and getting on with it, and if up-and-down feelings went along with thinking about things, then I suppose I was stuck with it.
Uncle Nick always said, “Aw, that’s just the way women are. Men are the doers, but women are always gettin’ all emotional about everything. If there weren’t no men, why you women’d make one fine pickle of it, and you’d never get nothin’ done!”
Even while Alkali Jones’s cackle was sounding through the room, I could see Aunt Katie biting her lip to keep quiet!
Almeda had a different explanation, and she and I had talked about it plenty of times. “Yes, Corrie, we women do have a more sensitive emotional nature. And we’re prone to violent fits of unpredictability now and then—usually about once a month!”
We both laughed.
“Men think they’re so smart, but they don’t know anything about how a woman’s body and mind and emotions all work in a delicate balance. And neither do they know how much a mess of things they’d make if we weren’t quietly holding everything in their lives together. Though don’t ever expect a man to realize that . . . or to say it, if he did!”
I smiled through my tears as I recalled the conversation. Yet I wasn’t willing to accept that answer for my moods either, that I was just a victim of how women happened to be made and I couldn’t help it.
I wanted to help it! Whatever explanation there might be to account for it, I didn’t like it. I wanted to be more consistent and steady, and yet here I was again, suffering through a terrible case of the doldrums!
The following morning an open-air meeting had been scheduled on the lawn surrounding the Washington Monument. I was going to talk for about five minutes on the importance of people volunteering to help with the recent fighting down in Tennessee, even if they knew absolutely nothing about doctoring or nursing, telling how I was able to be of some use to the sisters at Gettysburg, although I’d had not a minute of preparation ahead of time.
I awoke early and decided to go out before breakfast to try to clear my brain of yesterday’s cobwebs and depression. Maybe I wouldn’t ever marry or know real intimacy or experience childbirth or know what motherhood was like, but now was not the time to worry about it. I had responsibilities, and I couldn’t neglect them by wallowing around in the hole I’d dug for myself as a result of Emily’s letter.
The air was crisp and chilly. Fall was definitely in the wind. There would probably be rain by evening.
I walked and walked, trying to be stoic and strong and brave and not give in to those womanly “emotions” that had knocked me to the ground yesterday. I would fight them, whatever their source. If it was my destiny, my fate, my lot in life to remain single and alone, then I would be brave about it. I would endure it like . . . well, not exactly “like a man,” but like a strong woman, anyway! Nobody ever promised that life would be everything we might want. People faced lots of hardships many times worse than I ever had. Hundreds of thousands of boys were dying in this terrible war. And hadn’t I just realized two days ago how blessed I was? What business did I have thinking otherwise?
I was walking along, breathing in deeply, keeping a stiff upper lip about all my troubles of the day before, and I never thought of God once. I didn’t pray, I didn’t talk to him about any of it, I didn’t ask him what I ought to do or think. Worst of all, I didn’t even realize it. I hadn’t thought of him once since reading Emily’s letter! I was just determining within myself, with no help from him, to be strong. I never realized that when you’re trying to summon up strength only from within yourself, there’s no strength there. There is no weaker position for a man or a woman—for anybody—than standing alone. Yet that’s what I was trying to do, deceiving myself that I was being strong.
All of a sudden I remembered God. I remembered that he was there, that Jesus was walking right beside me, that he had never left me. I remembered that he had been there all through yesterday too, that he was beside me in the room as I’d read Emily’s letter, and had been with me all night as I slept, and even through the hour I’d been walking this morning, even though I hadn’t been aware of his presence for so much as a second.
A new wave of heartbreak swept over me. This time it was not the despair of self-pity but rather the mortification of what I’d done, that I had forgotten him so completely.
All the strength I’d been trying to summon up only a moment before evaporated in less than a second. I felt so small, so weak, as if I’d betrayed him, even though he had been good to me and had never left me.
Tears filled my eyes—
tears not of self-motivated sadness but of remorse and grief.
“Oh, Lord . . . I am so sorry!” I whispered.
There was nothing else to pray, no more to say. I felt so low. How could I have doubted that he would take care of me, that he knew what was best, and that he would do the very best for me in every way? How could I forget? Yet I had.
My heart heaved with wave upon wave of unspoken and faulted attempts to convey my sorrow over forgetting to trust him and doubting that my life was utterly in his hands. But no words escaped my lips.
Then, just as suddenly as I had remembered the Lord’s presence with me, I remembered something else—my own words, words I had prayed while at the convent:
. . . Whatever future you have for me, whether married or not, I will be happy just to know I am with you. Let me just know that I am only yours. I want to be your bride. . . . Oh, God, use me and fill me with yourself. I want to be yours completely.
How could I have forgotten so quickly?
I had given myself in marriage to Jesus. I had given him my heart and my future. I had meant every word of those earlier prayers . . . and I knew that I still did.
“I do want to be yours, Lord,” I said softly through my tears. “I am sorry I am so weak. Help me . . . help me to be strong—strong as you would make me strong, not trying to be strong by myself without you. Please, Lord, help me! I don’t have that kind of strength alone.”
Asking for his help calmed me some, and gradually I was able to breathe in deeply and stop crying.
By now I was walking back toward Mrs. Richards’. I felt drained, both emotionally and physically. I was aware of the Lord’s presence with me, but was too spent to be able to articulate the prayers my heart was feeling. Then a new realization came upon me. And I know he put it into my mind in answer to the pain and questions that had engulfed me from Emily’s words.
Corrie, I will make of you a complete woman. You need have no fear of anything missing from your life from being married or being a mother or not. Complete womanhood comes from joining yourself to me, and in no other way. There are many wives and mothers who are incomplete, broken, lonely women. They will never know the completeness of their womanhood until they join their hearts to mine and allow me to make them complete. I alone can raise up my daughters into the fullness of their being, their personhood, their womanhood. None but my daughters will become true women, and they must become my daughters before all else.
“But why, Lord,” I found myself saying, “why can’t I remember? Why is this so hard for me when my heart truly does yearn to be only yours?”
I have allowed you to suffer these things, Corrie, I felt I heard him saying, so that you will know the cost, and know the worth of womanhood as my daughter—full womanhood as you yourself long for—so that you will be able to speak of these truths to others of my daughters.
My thoughts were silent. My heart was still at last, and at peace.
Chapter 37
Another Presidential Invitation
Late in October, one evening when I arrived back at the boardinghouse—which by now I had begun calling “home”—there was an envelope awaiting me. It had no stamp, however. It had been hand delivered, Mrs. Richards said, by John Hay himself. It bore the insignia of the presidential seal.
I opened it hurriedly.
Dear Miss Hollister,
President Lincoln would like to see you again. Please come by the White House tomorrow. Ask for me, and we will set up a time as soon as possible. Thank you.
I remain,
Sincerely yours,
JOHN HAY,
Secretary to the President
I went the next morning, and Mr. Hay asked me to come back that afternoon at 1:45. Shortly before two, I was shown into the presence of Mr. Lincoln.
He was just as kind as the first time, and I think I was no less awestruck.
“Miss Hollister . . . Corrie,” he said, shaking my hand warmly. “Thank you for coming to see me again.”
“Of course, sir,” I answered.
“Mr. Hay has kept me apprised of your work here in Washington, and I have read some of your articles. Again, as I attempted to express before, I am most appreciative.”
“Thank you.”
“I have another request to make of you,” he went on, “although this one is in a slightly different vein.”
“Anything,” I said.
“I am planning a visit to Gettysburg in about three weeks, to dedicate a new Union cemetery there. I am hoping to be able to talk you into accompanying me, along with the rest of the ever-present presidential retinue.”
He hoped to “talk me into it”! As if I were so busy I’d have to think twice and consult my schedule to see if I had room to squeeze Abraham Lincoln in! I was speechless!
Somehow I heard the words coming out of my mouth, “I’d be honored, Mr. President.”
“Good, I am delighted to hear it. We will travel by train, of course. Mr. Hay will fill you in on the details. The day’s schedule is not finalized yet, as I understand it, but I hope there will be an opportunity for you to say a few words. I trust you would have no objection?”
“Not if that is what you would like, sir,” I said.
“I knew I could count on you.”
The President looked tired and dejected. At my last interview with him in July, despite his irritation over how things had gone at Gettysburg, he had been full of life, and his eyes had glowed, even with anger at times, as he’d spoken of the possibility of ending the war.
Indeed, a quick end to the war now seemed as remote as ever. Robert E. Lee was rebuilding his strength, and Mr. Lincoln continued to have trouble with his generals being timid about dealing the death-blow to the Confederate army. It seemed the North had the most courageous president, while the South had the shrewdest general. Lee’s hands were tied by an ineffectual President Jefferson Davis, while Lincoln’s decisive military strength was blunted by hesitant generals who did not share the scope of his vision. The two greatest military minds in the country—Lincoln and Lee—were fighting on opposite sides of the conflict, and their mutual skill and determination only extended the killing in a prolonged stalemate. Time, of course, favored Mr. Lincoln because of sheer numbers of men and quantities of supplies. But in the meantime, the South fought bravely and determinedly on, with the result of a huge loss of lives.
The hoped-for end of the war following Gettysburg and Vicksburg faded through that fall of 1863. The Confederacy was not dead yet! In September they routed Union forces in the small Georgia town of Chickamauga in one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Lincoln was not only frustrated with his commanders, but sorrowful personally as well. His wife’s brother-in-law, Confederate Brigadier General Ben Hardin Helm, was killed in the battle. Mrs. Lincoln wept but was overheard to say to a friend that she wished all her Confederate relatives would be killed. “Any one of them would kill my husband in an instant if given half the chance,” she said, “and completely destroy our government.”
I’m sure the war was on his mind a great deal when I saw him in October. Oppression seemed to hang about his countenance. I also learned that just a few days earlier he had taken the bold step of naming General Grant commander of all Union forces between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. Here was a general who would follow his President’s orders, who was brave and a shrewd tactician of nearly Robert E. Lee’s caliber, and who could hopefully unite the Federal effort.
And I was a little more than fond of him for the simple reason that he had once been to Miracle Springs! That was a long time ago, of course, and how could he possibly remember? Yet in my secret heart I hoped that someday maybe I’d have a chance to meet him again.
I was glad when I heard the President and Mrs. Lincoln had gone to the theater a week before we were scheduled to go to Gettysburg. I hoped it might be a sign he was feeling better and that the stress I’d seen on his face was perhaps lessening. He had gone to see a play called The Marble Heart.
> “It’s got to be young Booth playing in it,” remarked Mrs. Richards.
“I don’t know anything about it,” I replied. “And who’s Booth?”
“Oh, a young actor, John Booth. Not as good as his father, Junius Brutus Booth, or even his brother Edwin for that matter. But he’s young and ambitious and on the rise. Who knows, the world may hear of young John Wilkes yet.”
Chapter 38
Gettysburg . . . Again
The train ride to Gettysburg was certainly nothing like coming across the country alone. There were newspaper people and reporters and politicians and military men. Gettysburg was a town of only about two thousand people, but they expected a crowd of some six thousand. And a lot of them were on the train with us!
I sat next to a man who was a correspondent for the London Times, living in the United States to cover the war. We had a lively talk, although I’m not sure what he thought of a young woman calling herself a reporter as if I were on his level. Neither did he seem to think very highly of Mr. Lincoln, which annoyed me. I told him I happened to think Abraham Lincoln the greatest man on the continent and that I was going to Gettysburg to speak along with him, at the President’s personal invitation. I don’t suppose it was altogether humble of me, but I just couldn’t tolerate people criticizing the President after all he’d stood for, and being the great man he was. I suppose he wasn’t impressed with the backward colonies that still had slavery, after it had been banned in the British Empire for over twenty years. I don’t think the fellow believed a word I’d said about being invited there to speak.
Mr. Lincoln sat in the back of the same coach I was in. Mr. Hay was beside him, and every so often they would exchange a word or two, but mostly the President kept to himself. He seemed distracted, thoughtful. He spent a lot of time looking out the window, after which he’d scribble down notes on the back of an envelope. Later I found out that he was actually writing down his speech as we bounced and clattered along!
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