What Were Her Dreams Made Of?

Her name was Lydia and I can imagine family and friends called her “Lyddie.” She was my grandmother’s grandmother. Born in 1823, she was a widow who lived by herself on her farm in Georgia. Recently, I read copies of letters she wrote to her daughter,  Tep, and to her granddaughter,  Edna. One letter is dated 1890.

Dear little Edna, Lydia wrote, after so long a time, I take pen in hand to answer your kind letter which was duly received and truly glad to hear from you once more.

Lydia always began her letters in the same formal way. She used phrases like, I’m as well as common and mentioned getting a heap of this or that. I smiled as I read the letters because I remembered my grandmother, “Little Edna” using the same terms. Old-fashioned, Southern terms that stirred memories.

What were Lydia’s dreams, I wondered. From her letters, I judged that she lived alone and really missed her daughter and family after they left Georgia for Indian Territory. She worried about having her fence fixed and if the corn crop would be good. She longed for the time Edna and her parents would come for a visit because “she could tell them so much more than she could write.”

I know that Lydia liked pretty things; I have the pen and ink picture she drew for my grandmother. I know that she had a lot of courage and sometimes she got lonely. She loved the Lord Jesus and that showed in her letters. But what were Lydia’s hopes and dreams? Did she sit on her porch at the end of the day, watching the sun set in the west toward Indian Territory and wonder when her family would come home for a visit? Did she have hopes that soared beyond her farm and comforted her when twilight crept in and the whippoorwills called down in the hollow? Everyone has dreams. They keep us going. What were Lydia’s dreams? Although she lived more than a century ago, I feel as if I know her, if only just a little. I’d like to have known her a whole heap more.