Mid-day and a break from chores, though chores of a Saturday were hardly worth considering. She was sitting by the fire in her rocker, her knitting in the basket alongside, Mrs. Stowe’s book on the table at her elbow. Something about the day didn’t feel right, though she couldn’t put her finger on it. From the moment she woke, she was uneasy. It wasn’t a dream, not that she could remember.
What was that dream? Hopeless, an old woman chasing after dreams, who ever heard of such a thing? Dilly-dallying when she had yet to clean the ashes out from the stove. And there it was, plain as day. The trick is to give up the chase. She was taking a cherry pie over to Prudence Twilley and half-way along realizing she’d forgot the sugar—nothing worse that a sour cherry pie. Could they sprinkle sugar on top and make up for the lack of sugar inside? Like having your coffee with cream once the coffee is drunk. And she’d lost one of her shoes, not that she minded walking barefoot—it’s easier to wash clean a foot that a shoe any day. So there she was hobbling along one-shoed with her sour cherry pie covered by a tea-towel and the next thing you know she’s tripped on a root and is down on one knee, working her way back onto her feet, and the tea-towel here, the pie over there—face-down. She brushes off her skirt best she could, picks up the pie tin, the pie no worse for wear—that’s the magic of a dream for you. She took a pinch just for a quick taste. Sweet as honey? How could that be? Now she has both shoes. Things are picking up. But which is the way to Prudence’s? She lost her bearings. Good thing it’s a dream or she’d say she’s lost her marbles. The road stretched out in either direction, each direction about the same as the other. Tears were running down her cheeks. And that’s when she woke up, the dream now as fresh as a daisy. And the tears still running. It wasn’t the first time a dream had been forgot and then came back like a water buffalo.
She had been a widow for close to half a dozen years. She didn’t think about Thomas much these days, a hard-driving man, though a good enough man considering. Witnessing the murder of his father—another Abraham—when he was but a boy, shot dead by an Indian. A terrible memory to carry forward. To his dying day that was the dream that would startle him awake, crying What? A severe man at home. There was no comfort for the loss of his daughter Sarah, the apple of his eye, to die that way, so neglectful. Spilt milk. And the day his son come of age, that was that, a kiss on the cheek for his step-mother and a close hug, and he was gone. Never did the father see his son again. It’s the price you pay, the father hard-driving, the son at twelve with the strength of a grown man, his axe ringing in the woods, the two of them doing the work of three men. What the son said after the election and before going off to Washington City, how he loved her as true as any son can love his mother. That apple pie that she had baked that mirning was a real pie with real sugar and cinnamon and nutmeg and piping hot when they sat at table, with good coffee fresh from the grinder. He had seconds and then thirds. True, she loved him as one of her own, always had.
She remembered his sitting at her feet as she read aloud, the Arabian Nights his favorite, unless it was that Crusoe book. Even back then he relished the idea of working for yourself, and no one saying git up you lazy lout. Thomas, if only you knew. The President of these United States, your own son.
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