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Writer's pictureLinda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
Oct 70 min read

Excerpted Inspirations #148


[Sylvia Marshall is telling her suitor, Austin Page, a story about her childhood, reminded of it by watching autumn leaves falling gently from the trees. Her family members (except for her little brother, who refused), had each given up something they wanted to buy, so they could purchase a little house and lot for Mother’s old Cousin Parnelia. Shortly thereafter, this cousin, who was a spiritualist, became interested in learning from a man who claimed to have discovered a new method for “inducing greater receptivity.”] “And it came out that Cousin Parnelia had mortgaged the house for more than it was worth, and had used the money to take these ‘lessons.’ I couldn’t believe it for a minute. When I really understood what she’d done, I was so angry I felt like smashing both fists down on the piano keys and howling! I thought of my blue corduroy I’d given up – I was only fourteen and just crazy about clothes. Mother was sitting on the floor, scraping away at the table-leg. She got up, laid down her sandpaper, and asked Cousin Parnelia if she’d excuse us for a few minutes. Then she took me by the hand, as though I was a little girl. I felt like one too, I felt almost frightened by Mother’s face, and we both marched out of the house. She didn’t say a word. She took me down to our swimming-hole in the river. There was a big maple-tree leaning over that. It was a perfectly breathless autumn day like this, and the tree was shedding its leaves like that birch, just gently, slowly, steadily down into the still water. We sat down on the bank and watched them. The air was full of them, yet all so quiet, without any hurry. The water was red with them, they floated down on our shoulders, on our heads, in our laps – not a sound – so peaceful – so calm – so perfect. It was like the andante of the Kreutzer. “I knew what Mother wanted, to get over being angry with Cousin Parnelia. And she was. I could see it in her face, like someone in church. I felt it myself – all over, like an E string that’s been pulled too high, slipping down into tune when you turn the peg. But I didn’t want to feel it. I wanted to hate cousin Parnelia! I thought it was awfully hard in Mother not to want us to have even the satisfaction of of hating Cousin Parnelia! I tried to go on doing it. I remember I cried a little. But Mother never said a word – just sat there in that quiet autumn sunshine, watching the leaves falling – falling – and I had to do as she did. And by and by I felt, just as she did, that Cousin Parnelia was only a very small part of something very big. “When we went in, Mother’s face was just as it always was, and we got Cousin Parnelia a cup of tea and gave her part of a boiled ham to take home and a dozen eggs and a loaf of graham bread, just as though nothing had happened.” Sylvia stopped speaking. There was no sound at all but the delicate, forlorn whisper of the leaves. “That is a very fine story!” said Page finally. He spoke with a measured, emphatic, almost solemn accent. “Yes, it’s a very fine story,” murmured Sylvia a little wistfully. “It’s finer as a story than it was as real life. It was years before I could look at blue corduroy without feeling stirred up. I really cared more about my clothes than I did about that stupid, ignorant old woman. If it’s only a cheerful giver the Lord loves, He didn’t feel much affection for me.” They began to retrace their steps. “You gave up the blue corduroy,” he commented as they walked on, “and you didn’t scold your silly old kinswoman.” “That’s only because Mother hypnotized me. She has character.” Dorothy Canfield, The Bent Twig (1915), pp. 373-375

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