Christmas Visitor by Linda Byler Page B

it around well, and let the girls play in the tub.
    She scrubbed the hallway walls with Comet and Soft Scrub, but a faint gray line remained. Well, it would have to stay that way. There was no money for paint. She could ask Mam, she supposed, but she was always asking her for things like mantles for the propane lamp or batteries or rubber bands, things she never quite had enough money to buy.
    But it’s my life, she thought, as she sat rocking little Benjamin after she had rubbed his gums with teething lotion and given him a good hot bath and some Tylenol. Poor baby, she thought. He couldn’t help it if those hard, little teeth pushed against his soft, tender gums and made them ache.
    She wrapped him in a warm blanket and inhaled the smell of him, that sweet baby lotion smell that never failed to bring her joy.
    When he was asleep, she laid him in his crib with a soft, white cloth diaper spread over the crib sheet, just in case he threw up during the night. She covered him to his ears and then folded the comforter back so she could kiss him one more time before tiptoeing out.
    Lillian was lying on the couch, her pacifier in her mouth, her eyes wide and anxious as they always were when she felt sleep trying to overtake her, though she desperately tried to avoid it.
    â€œKomm, Lillian.”
    Gratefully, Ruth gathered her three year old in her arms, savoring the comforting routine of smoothing the flannel nightgown, taut and neat, over the rounded little form. She did love her mighty Lillian, so pliant and adorable now.
    â€œBisht meet (Are you tired), Lillian?”
    She nodded, her eyes wide.
    â€œShall I sing?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œI don’t want you to. I want my Dat.”
    â€œBut Lillian, your Dat is in Heaven.”
    â€œNo, he isn’t.”
    â€œYes. His part that is alive went to Heaven — his soul.”
    Softly, Lillian began to cry, but Ruth remained strong, showing no emotion of her own. Soon, Lillian stopped crying and went to sleep. Tomorrow was another day, and she’d forget. Till the next time.
    Ruth held the warm, sleeping form. Outside she heard the wind rattling the downspout at the corner of the house and playing with the loose shutter by the front door. She hoped the boys had remembered to close the barn door after they’d fed Pete.
    She stroked Lillian’s schtruvvels (stray hairs) away from her face and prayed for strength to carry on.

The Thanksgiving hymn singing was to be held in Ephraim’s shop, and Mamie was a complete wreck for an entire week beforehand. She waved her arms and almost yodeled with apprehension. Daily life overwhelmed her, let alone cleaning that shop and getting all that coffee ­going.
    â€œI know just how this will go. Everyone says, oh they’ll bring bars and cookies and potato chips and cheese and all the dips and pretzels and stuff, but what do they bring? I’m going to bake my Christmas cookies now. All of ’em, just in case it goes the same way it did last year. Why in the world that husband of mine offered, I’ll never know. He knows I don’t get around the way some women do.”
    But she was pleased to be an important member of the community, hosting this hymn singing for the youth and their parents, or some of them, as it usually turned out.
    Ruth walked home with a promise to return to help bake cookies, something she genuinely anticipated. She enjoyed being in Mamie’s company. The cookies, too, would be phenomenal, she knew.
    Mamie mostly did what she liked, and baking was at the top of her list. Her specialty was raisin-filled sugar cookies. She used an old, old recipe that had been handed down for generations. She also used fillings other than just raisin — raspberry, blueberry, cherry, even lemon — and they melted away in one bite.
    So the week flew by with Ruth helping Mamie and joking with her friend’s good-natured husband. As he sat dipping