by Holly Jacobs
I looked at Sam Corner, a man who had his own baggage and was learning to deal with it. “Sam taught me that your dad was more than just one thing. He was more than what he did or didn’t do in those last moments. He was a compilation of many things. Many moments.
“He was brilliant, funny, driven, and sometimes . . .”
“Very sad,” Conner supplied.
I nodded. “Those sad moments, his last moment . . . he was more than that. I made this tapestry to show the moments in my life. The important moments.”
I pointed to the squares. “Mom, showing me you knew how to laugh, and how much you loved me. You kids, graduating. Your sister’s love of horses. All these represent something or someone—they represent one thing that has made me who I am. But I’m more than any of these big moments. I think I’m more the smaller ones. I am peanut butter sandwiches with you kids on a rainy Saturday afternoon. I am Scrabble games in a storm. I’m the mom who read you Belinda Mae, or scolded you for climbing on the garage roof. I am Sunday mornings at church—”
Connie caught on. “You are the one who held me when Brian Miller broke my heart.”
Conner nodded. “You are the one who taught me to drive because Dad wasn’t as good at it as he thought he’d be.”
My mother reached out and took my hand. “You are my daughter and you taught me how to express my feelings,” she grinned, “well, at least to express them better than I used to.”
Sam looked at me and smiled. He leaned in and whispered in my ear, “You are the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.”
I’d crossed another line. A big line. A good line.
Surrounded by my family, we shared dinner and a holiday. We played Christmas Scrabble, a family version that allows only words that are in some Christmas carol, or can be used in a sentence about Christmas. I still maintain that threnody—a song of lamentation—was a cheat. I mean, Sam’s sentence was, “The Christmas carol was the antithesis of the threnody I sang last month.” That’s not a very Christmasy word, but then I realized that my whole last year had been a threnody of sorts and that Joy to the World was definitely the antithesis of it, because there, arguing about a Scrabble word with Sam in front of the Christmas tree, with my mother and kids nearby . . . it was definitely joy.
I hate it when stories end without really sharing the rest. This is a memoir of sorts, but there’s so much more to my life. So many more one-things I’ve added to my tapestry of my life since this story ended.
We’re building a life, Sam, Angus, and me. I’m teaching again. Not at the school, but lessons at my workshop. Basket weaving. Pottery. Basic drawing lessons. I don’t teach weaving because I don’t know enough. I don’t know that I’ll ever weave another thing, but I’ve kept the loom. I hope that Lee knows what a gift it had been. That one piece—my tapestry—was as important to my healing as Sam and our one-things.
I still go to the bar on Mondays, and Sam, he comes home to me each night when it closes.
Chris, Sam’s new bartender, has been working more, which means on Saturdays, Sam has time to run a free clinic. He spent time jumping through the licensing hoops and more to pay for his insurance. He’s not ready to practice medicine again full-time, but he realizes his knowledge is a gift that shouldn’t be squandered because of old memories. One thing can’t stop the doctor in him. I work as his receptionist and assistant on those Saturday clinic days. Angus comes and sleeps on the floor. He seems to comfort the patients as much as he comforted me.
On Sundays, we both go to church down the street. Sometimes the kids or Mom come along. I sing hymns and listen to Reverend Bob. We’ve become part of the church community there and it has become an important part of our lives. Reverend Bob asked if I’d consider working with the youth group, supervising them as they paint a mural in the church basement, which serves as our gathering center. I said yes, so I am once again surrounded by kids and teens. It’s loud, and don’t even get me started about when Brian Langard spilled the paint down Eric Roberts’s pants. And last week, I caught a small cluster of kids discussing climbing the rope for the church bell. My thoughts immediately turned to the kids on the garage roof.
That made me wonder about the house in Erie. I went to Conner’s for dinner one night and drove by it. The lights were on in the living room. I’ll confess, I parked a bit up the road, then walked back and stood on the sidewalk, looking in at a family. Two adults and two children.
They seemed happy.
The house was now filling with their story, their memories, one thing at a time.
I walked away and haven’t driven up the street again since.
My life is good and getting better.
I know I will suffer other losses, but I can trust that I will mourn and recover. I know there will be other lines and tipping points. That things will happen. But I’m sure I’ll be fine because I realize now that I am always evolving—always becoming more. And I know that we’re all more than just one thing.
That I’m more than one thing.
That Sam’s more than one thing.
And maybe the one true thing is that together we are so much more than we are apart.
Sometimes the journey to forgiving yourself—to finding yourself—starts with one person, one step . . . with just one thing.
And I think now you have the real end of my story.
A happily-most-of-the-time sort of ending.
~Lexie Corner
When I was in school, my English teacher Ms. Mac always asked, “So what was the author trying to say?” I maintained that sometimes the author wasn’t trying to “say” anything, but was simply trying to tell a good story. As a writer, sometimes I simply tell a story and then, much to my chagrin, I find I was indeed trying to say something. And then I discover, what I was trying to say wasn’t always what I thought I was trying to say.
For instance, in Just One Thing, when I realized I was saying something, I thought it was you can recover after something bad happens. It’s a simple message. I thought I was trying to say that life is like weaving, it’s up and it’s down. You just need to ride the weft until you come back out on top.
As I finished Sam and Lexie’s story, I discovered that what I really said was, a person’s life can’t be defined by one incident. We are the whole of our experiences. We are the warp, and life is the weft, going up and down around us, transforming us in its wake. Each new line adds to the whole . . . adds to our strength. I think Ms. Mac would have liked the “message.”
But really, as a writer, I started to tell a story about pain, about healing, about love . . . and hey, even about Guinness. Yes, I do love the stuff! I hope you enjoyed Lexie and Sam’s story.
Photo courtesy of the author (2012)
Award-winning author Holly Jacobs has sold over two million books worldwide. The first novel in her Everything But . . . series, Everything But a Groom, was named one of 2008’s Best Romances by Booklist, and her books have been honored with many other accolades.
Holly has a wide range of interests, from her love for writing to gardening and even basket weaving. She has delivered more than sixty author workshops and keynote speeches across the country. She lives in Erie, Pennsylvania, with her family and her dogs. She frequently sets stories in and around her hometown.
