“So, what was it like living on a mountain around people like Edwina every day, and knowing that they have a mountain to throw folks off of when they broke bad – and yes, we eavesdrop on your conversations with other people because your voice is big and beautiful and it's easy.”
Capt. R.E. Ludlow smiled gently at his newest adopted daughter, little ten-year-old cousin Glendella Ludlow, and then started laughing.
“You've been hanging around Edwina too long already!” he said, and they both laughed along with eight-year-old Edwina.
“Yeah, I put her up to it and, it is what it is,” Edwina said, “because I'm just like you and that is what it is, too, Papa!”
“Yep – no shame in our game, at all!” he said, and they had a good laugh that got all the other Ludlow little ones – five-year-old Lil' Robert, six-year-old Grayson, seven-year-old Amanda, nine-year-old George, ten-year-old Andrew, and eleven-year-old Eleanor – to come see what was going on.
“OK, living on a mountain with people like Edwina – I am a person like Edwina, too, or, really, she's a person like me her grandfather and our shared Virginian ancestors, so it didn't bother me. The Blue Ridge is really a range of mountains, but Grandee Lee my grandmother did have a house on one of them, and we just traveled around in the Blue Ridge visiting relatives and friends and doing business. Most of the time, things were relaxed – life is simple off the grid in a lot of ways. The air was clear, and the water was cold and fresh and coming right from a good well or safe stream – the wood had to be chopped for heat, but there's nothing like a good wood fire. The eating, the music made together, the storytelling and being in the woods where the things happened – wonderful. Arguments were few because working together was truly a necessary way of life. Everyone looked out for all the children, all the time, and if there were children who lost their parents, we all became what they needed. I never forgot that.”
Glendella considered this.
“That's why you are how you are,” she said.
“Yes, and it is even deeper than that. Mrs. Mosette Lee Smith, your Sunday School teacher, was raised by my cousin Mrs. Millie Lee, who found her abandoned in the woods. Sgt. Joe Wainwright, who was raised by friends of my Grandee Lee, has now raised 20 children with his wife. My cousin, Col. H.F. Lee that is now your Cousin Harry by adoption; he was adopted by Grandee Lee's brother, Horace Fitzhugh Lee after his parents died, and they adopted his cousin Faith after – well, it goes on and on.”
“Y'all are really into protecting children!” she said.
“And they need it in this world,” Capt. Ludlow said. “And also, living on a mountain, you gotta watch folks so they don't fall off.”
“Is this why George and Milton can't get an idea together before y'all are all over them?” Glendella said.
“Hey!” George said. “It's true but still: hey!”
“No, we worry about roofs and baking soda over here,” Edwina said.
“Who asked you?” George said.
“And the earthworms in the spaghetti, and –.” Edwina said.
“Let she who has gotten the key back to the glitter cabinet after releasing the Four Balloons of the Glittapocalypse cast the first stone,” Capt. Ludlow said gently.
“Oop,” Glendella said as Edwina turned pink and George grinned.
“I thought it was two balloons,” Amanda said, “or were we just grounded for so long that we were seeing double, Eddie?”
Edwina turned red at this point.
“At about the same age while I was living on the mountain,” Capt. Ludlow said gently, “my great uncle Hopkins taught me, 'If you start a fire with your mouth, better be sure you don't have kindling for a shirt.' This also was echoed by Mahogany Mae Jubilee-of-the-mountain in the way our Jubilee Trent friends say it: 'Don't start none, won't be none.'”
“Oh, OK, I'm sorry, George!” Edwina said.
“OK; I forgive you,” George said.
“And that is how things generally went on the mountain, too; we recognized we loved and needed each other, and so although we had our quarrels, there was always someone to help us, and life and love went on,” Capt. Ludlow said.
“You know, I have read it was said about the prophet Muhammed that if he could not come to the mountain, the mountain would come to him,” Glendella said. “I'm not all that important, but I kinda feel like in coming here, I came to the mountain you grew up in because you met me halfway.”
“You're not wrong,” Capt. Ludlow said, “because I have chosen, in Ludlow Family 2.0, to use all of what I learned while living on the mountain in addition to the best I learned in Big Loft where I was born.”
“OK, so, how did that all work, though?” Eleanor said.
“When I was five, Grandee Lee came and got me and my seven-year-old brother Henry to spend more time with her because bad things had happened in Big Loft involving my uncles,” Capt. Ludlow said, “and a little while became quite a long while, bit by bit.”
“So basically, you were raised by a grandparent, too,” Glendella said.
“Partially,” Capt. Ludlow said, “but not just any grandparent. I was raised by the one who didn't play about children, so, I ended up the same way.”
“And this is why I know coming to you to be adopted was the right decision,” Glendella said. “Thank You, Lord, and thank you, Big Cousin Robert, now my Upgrade Papa!”