Saving Graces - Elizabeth Edwards [17]
Helen and April stayed with us that first night, and then April stayed on with us for the next week while Helen went home to pack. Mother stayed with her each day until Helen slept and tried to arrive in the morning before she awoke. When some other wife would spell her, Mother would rush home to check on April and on us. She was so tired she could hardly move, but she never thought of stopping.
Oblivious to the pain in her own home, April was happy with the new adventure with our family. She slept with my sister and me in our small bedroom. She went to the pool with us in the day. She ate dinner with our family. Each night one of us would bang an antique Japanese gong to call the family to our happy dinner. April shared the side of the table my brother usually had to himself. When everyone was at the table, one of us children would say grace. It was all a delightful mystery to a young only child.
One night, April said, “I want to say it.”
“What?” my mother asked.
“Grace.”
“That’s fine, hon,” then, turning to us, “April is saying grace tonight.”
The table got quiet. Everyone folded their hands. April, with a resoluteness she would need in life, took over. She had never said grace before. It was quiet a bit too long, and my brother squirmed. Finally it came. One word.
“Grace.”
April unfolded her hands and picked up her fork.
We all opened our eyes over our folded hands and looked to my mother for guidance. Mother gave the unmistakable signal that we were to treat April’s version as a real blessing. Because, of course, it was.
It was impossible at nine to understand the reach of April’s blessing. The terrible, heartbreaking circumstance that brought her to us was in impossible juxtaposition with the completely open happy way in which she accepted our embrace, as if we were her closest cousins.
We knew, she didn’t. Every spoken word—even for seven-, eight-, and nine-year-old children—was burdened with double meaning. But we each played our parts. The natural way that my mother had of taking this child and, for as long as we were needed, pulling her into our family was probably learned from her mother, also the wife of a Navy pilot. Wherever she learned it, Mother taught it to each of us the way all real lessons are taught, by simply doing it: when you are needed, you step up, and you don’t step up reluctantly or self-importantly. I was blessed to learn this lesson at nine. I have needed it over the last forty-eight years, for in this life I have been my mother, and sadly I have been April.
Maybe the examples were there all the time, but I was too young to absorb the lessons until they had a name—April’s name. From that day on, I knew that I too had a community around me that would be there for me if I fell from my bike, or if my father’s plane fell from the sky.
As far as bases in Japan went, the Marine Corps Air Station at Iwakuni was remote. And it was small. The high school graduating class of 1959 had three seniors. My class that year, the fourth grade, was one of the classes that didn’t share a room with another grade, but then we had the school library at the back of the room. Fortunately, we had Edna Defenderfer at the front of the room. Teachers in the overseas schools run by the Department of Defense come from all over the country. Mrs. Defenderfer came from Green Bay, Wisconsin, a hometown she loved and shared with us in details we found fascinating, as when she told us about contests they had when she was young to guess when the winter ice would melt. A class of nine-year-old nomads, we were warmed by her tales of a hometown, even such an icy hometown. In the Democratic primary race in 2004, I visited Green Bay for the first time, campaigning for my