4 March 2024, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2301: my disability

Image by Milly from Pixabay

“A penny for your thoughts, Harry.”

“Oh, you might want to get some change, Maggie.”

Mrs. Maggie Lee had married a man thought to be always calm but also sad … Col. H.F. Lee's personal history and the historical resemblance he had to his calmest, saddest, and most famous Lee uncle also suggested that.

But still, she was always surprised pleasantly by his humor, and even more so by how humorously he played along with his seven little Ludlow cousins. Mrs. Lee got a free workout every day, laughing at their combined antics compared with the colonel's unbreakable straight face and straightforward manner. All seven of them were convinced that he took them seriously – and he did, because he could. He was just that unflappable – the perfect straight man to their precocious comic genius.

All the little Ludlows were in bed, and for once Col. Lee had finished his assigned tuck-ins before Mrs. Lee did and was lost in thought by the time Mrs. Lee made it into the living room to flop down next to him on the sofa and get that question asked and answered and laughed about.

After she was done laughing, Col. Lee turned on the stereo, and the room was suddenly filled with the sounds of the Blue Ridge where he was from, on a summer night.

“I was remembering that Friday night when you drank two whole pots of coffee to stay up and try to understand what my insomnia is like when I have periods of it,” he said, “and how you came and learned all my deep relaxation techniques that I use to keep that from becoming my disability.”

“I needed those, after all that coffee!” she said, and was off laughing again.

“I know, right?” he said, and joined her in laughing.

“That day for me was when you figured out how to cook Italian-American food such that even my Milano grandparents were impressed,” she said. “Nabucco Milano, from the old country, said, 'He's still too English, but, he loves Magdalena and respects our traditions – like Greg Thornton, we will allow Henry Lee!' ”

“I remember that,” Col. Lee said, “and I needed my straight face because my Italian is still pretty good and my hearing is even better.”

“So you knew,” Mrs. Lee said.

“His body language said it, and also, as nervous as I was, the Spirit of God guided me. I'm too Anglo to really know about the proper use of Northern Italy's spice blends, but guess Who does know?”

“That's Who was guiding me to get those pots of coffee in,” she said. “Someone had given me some really good but weak – I mean by Italian-American standards – coffee, and it wasn't going to be enough to give me too many jitters, but just enough to stay up.”

“Coffee and Italian herbs and spices,” Col. Lee said. “Of such, we people of mountain roots across two continents have made a life together.”

“And I'm so glad about it!” Mrs. Lee said.

“So am I, my love – mi amor. So am I.”

After a few moments of loving quiet, Mrs. Lee had a thought.

“Are you still – I mean, I should know, but without coffee I'm out like a light – are you still going through extended periods of insomnia?”

“Periodically, Maggie. I love listening to you sleep, though … it helps me get deeply relaxed and rested.”

“You know that with what we know about sleep deprivation today, the fact that you are still going through that, and getting older, too, is probably enough of a reason for you never to be recalled to a command situation in the Army, now that you have your official diagnosis?”

Col. Lee considered this, and then smiled.

“This is why my grandfather, Horace Fitzhugh Lee, said about you, 'Marry her, Henry. Like Vanessa, she's super-intelligent, loves the Lord, and will think of everything you have no clue about and save your lives, many times. I know about that. You exist because your grandmother is my wife, and just that kind of wife.'"

“Awwwwwwww,” Mrs. Lee said. “I do my best!”

“No, Maggie. You are that wife, to me. I manage my set of conditions so well I don't think about changing what I can … but you have been pushing me in the most wonderful way … and so, you are right. The worst of the recall nightmare can be over … and the next General Lee, still in the blue, can still be a man of peace.”

“Provided we don't mess up real bad on this election in 2020,” Mrs. Lee said.

“Maggie, if we mess up that bad, all bets are off on everything … but the Spirit of God will guide us there too, so, because this is a night on which I think I can sleep, I'm not losing a wink over that.”

“Me either – good point – so off we go to rest, because Lil' Robert will be up again in less than nine hours!”

“Because boom! – breakfast!” Col. Lee said, gently imitating the baby Ludlow cousin in a way that cracked his wife up.