by Dean Hughes
It was May now, over a year since Jeff had lost his job in California. It was strange to think that only one year had passed. He wasn’t the same person who had come home with the news that he had been laid off. He knew he wouldn’t want to pass through another year like this last one, and yet, he was thankful for the experience. He had always been taught that mortality was mainly an opportunity to learn and grow—and to pass the tests each person had to face—but all that had been made real now, and he felt grateful for what he had learned.
Jeff’s great-aunt had sent him another little segment of his great-grandfather’s life history. It told about the first year that Grandma and Grandpa Lewis had lived in Nauvoo. “I thought you would want to see this,” his aunt had said. “Great-Grandpa Lewis mentions his house near Rich Street. Your father tells me that you live on the same street. I think you might also recognize some of the other landmarks he mentions.”
Jeff certainly did recognize the landmarks: the riverboat landing close to Joseph and Emma’s log house, now usually called the Homestead; the hillside west of the temple where meetings had been held; Joseph’s store, now called the Red Brick Store. What interested Jeff most, however, was the hard struggle William and Elizabeth had faced. They had lived in a broken-down shack at first, and then they had had to settle for a two-room log cabin that some other men had helped Grandpa build while he was sick with cholera. Grandpa had promised his wife something better, but the two of them had been happy at least to have a house that was warm and cozy that first winter. As Grandpa Lewis described the house, the sheds and corrals, the animals he had raised, Jeff tried to picture it all. He wondered how his grandpa had dealt with his new life. He had dreamed of escaping poverty in England, dreamed of owning land, of prospering, but he had traded one kind of poverty for another—and he had worked from sunup until sundown every day, just as he had done in England.
Jeff had imagined Grandpa Lewis as stoic and single-minded, but he had written in his life history: “I had promised Liz’s father that I would build her a fine house, and I suppose I thought that would be a simple matter once I landed in America, but we soon learned we had to make the best of things, just as all the other Saints were doing. Liz liked to tell me that our cabin was her castle, but it weighed heavily on my mind that I wasn’t providing something better for her.”
Somehow, Jeff had always assumed that once his grandpa had joined the Church he had marched forward, never looking back. It was good to know that the man had had his dreams and his disappointments, and that he had had to deal with his own inner struggles. Jeff had known that Grandma and Grandpa Lewis had lost their first little daughter, Mary Ann, after only a couple of weeks of life. He had seen that on the family group sheet. What he hadn’t known was how devastated they had been. What didn’t show up on the records was the little boy they had adopted and raised. Jacob. Grandpa said in his account that he always thought of Jacob as his natural son and loved him as much as any of their children.
Jeff, of course, thought of his little Will. Modern science had kept him alive, and he and Abby hadn’t had to give up the baby they loved. He was thankful for that, but he felt connected to old William and Elizabeth Lewis all the same, knowing that they had shared some of the same fears and worries.
One Saturday morning when the blue jays were screeching, Jeff walked back to his grandfather’s lot. It seemed a different place now as he stood and thought about this little plot of land where Grandma had given birth to her first child—only to lose her—and then, where she started a family all the same, with little adopted Jacob. Jeff knew from the family records that another son had come the next year, and his name had been Daniel. It was through Daniel that Jeff’s line of ancestry had come.
Jeff stood in the woods and tried to picture those two little boys learning to walk and then to run, and surely, even as toddlers, making first explorations into these woods. Little Daniel couldn’t have imagined as a boy that generations would follow, and each one would look back to him for what he passed down to them.
“Daniel, thanks,” Jeff said out loud. “This is where you started. I hope you know that I’ve come back to this spot.”
Jeff thought of cycles. His own little William was one more life beginning, one more link in the chain. He had always known about generations, about genetic traits being passed along—even mannerisms and attitudes—but now he saw circle after circle, and he finally thought he was glimpsing the understanding that Joseph Smith had gained here. Joseph saw heaven, saw the connectedness of families, received the doctrines and the ordinances that could tie everything together. Christianity had lost this understanding, but Joseph Smith had heard the voice of God in Nauvoo, and he’d begun the process of sealing the generations one to another. Jeff loved the temple that Joseph had envisioned on the crest of the bluffs, and he understood why Joseph had worked so hard to see it finished—and why the Saints had kept building it even when they knew they would have to leave. This was holy land. Here William and Elizabeth Lewis had struggled just as he and Abby had struggled this last year, and life had rolled forward for the better part of two centuries, all joined in circles.
Jeff had read that sometimes Grandpa walked down a trail through the woods to get to the flat area by the river. So Jeff decided to make his own way through the trees in the same direction. He wanted to feel what the place might have been like back in those days. He was glad that the woods were still there, now part of Nauvoo State Park, with a lake in the center, and tall white oaks, some of them perhaps the “offspring” of the ones that existed back at the time that his grandpa had passed through. So Jeff avoided the nature trail and cut through a thicket of trees, and he tried to imagine those days when the Saints had lived in Nauvoo. At times he felt as though his great-grandfather William Lewis was actually walking with him.
• • •
Abby was glad that Jeff had taken a walk. He hadn’t had much time to relax lately, and she worried about him. He did seem happy, as she had told him before, but she wondered all the same whether he weren’t shaping his life to her needs and giving up on the things he’d always wanted.
Abby had been getting more sleep lately, as William sometimes slept most of the night. But he was staying awake much more in the daytime, and she knew she was much too indulgent about holding him, which he clearly loved. She told herself she was going to have to learn a little more “tough love” and not spoil him, but she also knew he had come into the world the hard way, with an intrusion into his body in his earliest days. She wanted his little spirit to forget all that and remember only a wonderful sense of being loved and cared for. She hated to think of him ever falling down and skinning his knee, or falling out of a tree—or any of the things that kids did to themselves. Jeff kept telling her not to think of him that way—that he was an ordinary boy now and had a right to experience the little knocks and bruises that came with that.
Maybe. But not yet. So she held him too much—and she knew within herself that she did it for herself as much as for him.
Abby did use William’s nap times to study for her Sunday School class, putting in many more hours a week preparing than she probably needed to. The young people she taught didn’t ask nearly so many questions as she had feared they might. But she couldn’t help posing questions for them. She knew all the things she had been trying to grasp since joining the Church, and she wanted them to comprehend what they had inherited, not just wander through life the way some people did, “active” members, but not very committed. She loved the young men and women in her class, and she was glad that she had them to herself most of the time now. Jeff hadn’t meant to dominate, but he sometimes had, and what she liked now was not so much “teaching” but building a spiritual connection with her students. They seemed to like her, and they even sought her out at times outside class, not necessarily to ask her questions, but to continue their friendship.
One young woman, Kristen Beaucamp, liked
to talk about college. The girl was clearly very bright. She told Abby one day after church, “I’ve always been a good student. I’ve just wondered whether I could afford to go to college. My parents probably can’t send me away to school, but I’m thinking I can manage if I can get a decent scholarship.” And then she said something that Abby hadn’t expected. “I want to be like you, Sister Lewis.”
It was a simple statement, but it had changed Abby. She knew that she was doing more than preparing lessons for these kids—she was someone they looked to for direction in life.
But Kristen had also said something that didn’t surprise Abby. “Part of why I want to be like you is so I can find someone like Brother Lewis.” She laughed and turned red, but Abby understood—completely.
Abby was in the middle of changing a very nasty diaper when Jeff returned from his walk. “Hey, come with me. There’s something I need to show you,” he said.
“Just tell me where it is and I’ll go look—while you clean up this son of yours.”
“Oh, wow. That’s a bad one. Isn’t it time we toilet train that kid?
“Yeah, right. At four months.”
“I will change his diaper, though. I don’t take my turn very often.”
But the face he was making made it obvious he was hoping she would turn him down. And she did. “I’ll take care of him, if you get rid of this thing.” She handed him the diaper, which he took with two fingers and carried outside to the garbage.
And then, once little William was wearing a new diaper, Abby pulled his Onesie into place and snapped it between his legs. “Okay. What is it you want me to see?” she asked Jeff.
“Wrap him up, and I’ll carry him. It’s in the woods.”
Abby had to change her shoes and get a hoodie to wear, and the truth was, she didn’t really want to wander into the woods, where the ground was probably still muddy, but she didn’t say any of that. She was glad to have Jeff around this morning, and she did need to get outside more than she had lately.
So they walked into the woods, passed through the little clearing that Jeff liked to assume was his grandfather’s lot, and then worked their way through some rather dense growth. Jeff was carrying William with both arms, protecting him from the limbs he bent back by turning sideways and pushing his shoulder through.
“Jeff, do we have to go through all this—”
“It’s not very far.” He kept making his way on through until they broke into another clearing. “Look up there,” he said. “Do you know what that is?”
Abby looked up into a clump of tall trees. Toward the top was a cluster of large sticks, all interlaced and stacked like a bird’s nest—but much too big for that. “I have no idea,” Abby said. “It looks like a basket—big enough for a bear to sleep in.”
“That’s a pretty good guess—except that it’s entirely wrong. That, my New Jersey city-girl wife, is an eagles’ nest. I’ll have to admit, I’ve never seen one before either, but I’ve seen pictures and I know that’s what it is.”
Abby had learned in the last few years that this was a time to pretend that she was fascinated. Jeff lived in a world where a discovery of this kind was exhilarating, and he had never really comprehended that most people weren’t quite so amazed. “Wow,” Abby said. “Why do they build such huge nests?”
“Well, they’re big birds, for one thing. But eagles get married. They stick together in pairs. When chicks hatch out, they need a pretty big place. It’s exactly the same reason Mormons build big houses.”
Liz laughed, but she said, “The nest doesn’t look very comfy.”
“Yeah, I don’t know if they line their nests with something soft or not. I can’t tell from here.”
“Don’t climb up. Okay?”
Jeff laughed. “What makes you think I’d ever try a stunt like that?”
“I know you.”
“Well, I did think about it.”
He was smiling at her now, and little William was squirming in his blanket, trying to see out. Abby was struck in an instant by how much she loved these two. “Please don’t teach William to be quite so curious as you are, okay?”
Jeff looked down at the baby. “Come on, Will, let’s climb that tree right now. It’s about time you learned how.”
Abby shook her head, but she was smiling, too. Life with these boys would always be an adventure, she suspected. She looked back up at the eagles’ nest. It was impressive, and she was glad that Jeff knew what it was—knew so many things. She decided she was even glad that so many things excited him. “So where are the eagles?” she asked.
“I don’t know. The ones that come down here in the winter—from up in Wisconsin and northern Illinois—don’t nest here. They go back home to have their babies. But the ones in this nest must live here year-round. Or they’ve moved out. I watched for a while, and no eagles were around.”
The woods were full of sounds this morning: songbirds and creatures moving in the brush, even a bit of a breeze. Everything had come back to life these last couple of months. Abby liked to see it all, smell it. She was glad now that Jeff had dragged her down here.
“I’m thinking we should make like a pair of eagles and get our own nest,” Jeff said.
“But what about the down payment?” They had actually looked at some houses in the last month, but prices were fairly high, and getting a loan sounded impossible.
Jeff stepped closer to Liz. He turned William so he was upright, sitting on Jeff’s forearm. “I heard about a possibility this week—something that might work out for us.”
“What kind of possibility?”
“The Poulsens have had their house up for sale for a year, but everyone is in the same shape we are these days. Prospective buyers like the house, but they can’t get a loan. So Brother Poulsen was telling me he could rent it to us, with an option to buy, and part of our payment would go toward a down payment—you know, until we could save enough to qualify for our own loan.”
“I’m not even sure what house you’re talking about.”
“It’s an old house—nineteenth century—that they’ve done a lot of work on. But I guess it still needs a new kitchen.” Jeff laughed. “That’s what got Brother Poulsen thinking I might want to take it on. He said the work I would do could pay our rent at first. That would help us save, but also, if we decided not to stay, he would have a better property to sell.”
“What about the Robertsons’ place?”
“I still need to finish the windows, but I’ve done most of what he wanted. I talked to him the other day, and he said that anything I wanted to do was fine, but he was too busy to think about it. We can have free rent as long as we want. But I don’t know. I feel kind of funny about that.”
Abby was a lot more interested in the Poulsen proposal than she wanted to admit. But it was the idea of buying that she had liked—as a way of saying, “We’re here. We’re going to stay.” Jeff had been hedging a little on that. Still, she decided not to have that conversation again. She only asked, “Have you seen the Poulsen place inside?”
“No. But Malcolm said it’s not bad. It’s not a dream house, but it’s pretty nice, and it’s right on Knight Street, close enough to walk to church.”
Abby didn’t feel excitement coming from Jeff—not that same pleasure he had taken in showing her the eagles’ nest.
“Do you really want to stay here, Jeff? Or are you still thinking you want to go back to school?”
“I love Nauvoo. You know that. And I like what’s happened to us here. Mostly, though, it just seems like it’s time to build a nest and to hatch out some more chicks.”
“Right away?”
“What? The house or—”
“No. The chicks.”
“Your mother would come after me with an axe if you had another baby right away!”
“But you told her she’s not going to
make that decision for us.”
“I know. But she had a point about—”
“I want another baby quite soon, Jeff.”
“Really?”
“Don’t you think we should have our kids close together and not spread them out over too many years?”
“Well ... yeah. Whatever you want, I’d be glad to help.”
“I’m serious. It’s not what I think is best. It’s what I’ve been feeling lately—and I don’t exactly know why.”
“Well, okay. It doesn’t feel wrong to me.”
“But, Jeff, you’ve got to be honest with me. Do you want to stay here?”
“Well ... a daddy eagle picks a spot, builds a nest, and then he goes out and gathers up fish—and roadkill—and he brings the meat back and stuffs it in the mouths of his babies. That’s probably what I ought to be doing. Unless you’d prefer bread and milk and Hamburger Helper—stuff like that.”
She ignored his facetiousness and said, “But what about going back for your doctorate?”
“I don’t know, Abby. Maybe a chance will come along, and we’ll make a decision then. But it seems like we ought to move forward as a family—not always feel like we’re waiting to get started.”
She liked hearing that, but she still felt a certain hesitancy in Jeff, and she wondered how much of a compromise he was making in his own mind. “Last winter,” she said, “when we’d drive along the river, we’d see all those eagles out soaring, hunting for something to snatch up and take home. But I always noticed, they would ride the wind, lean this way and that way, almost like they were skiing on the air. I’d always get the impression that it may be the eagle’s job—you know, to fish and to ‘feed the family’—but that he was also enjoying every minute of it.”
