An Unexpected Letter
It was a couple of weeks after Christmas, and I was standing by
my mailbox in the vestibule of the apartment building where I
lived in Lexington, Kentucky, holding a letter I had just
received. The handwriting was not familiar and neither was the
return address, although it was postmarked Seattle, Washington,
the same place where Hannah Paulson used to live.
Many years ago when I was a little girl growing up on our dairy
farm in west central Wisconsin, the Paulsons had lived next door
to us. The two farms were the only residences located on our
mile-long stretch of isolated country road, and during the
summer, I journeyed down the hill a couple of times a week to
visit Hannah. With her hair arranged in waves swept back from
her forehead and kindly blue eyes twinkling from behind
wire-rimmed spectacles, she wore cotton shirtwaist dresses in
the summer and a blue-and-white or pink-and-white checkered
apron.
Going to see Hannah was the highlight of my summer vacations.
There was just something about Mrs. Paulson that drew me to her
like the bees that were drawn to the wild roses growing around
her big, old-fashioned farmhouse. I never considered that it
might be rather unusual for me to enjoy visiting our elderly
neighbor, even though there were no other neighbors with
children for me to play with, and no other children in my family
(my brother is twenty-one years older than me and my sister is
nineteen years older).
During the summer, Hannah and I would cut and arrange flowers
because Mrs. Paulson loved to have flowers in her house. At
other times I would find her working on a project, like cleaning
out the old chicken coop, or painting the barn, or weeding her
garden. No matter what Hannah was doing, she always let me