Episode #70: Letters of Myriam - Chapter 3 - To Daniel

Jan,16 2026

<-#69: Letters of Myriam - Chapter 2 - to Hannah#71: Letters of Myriam - Chapter 4 - Quotes from Christopher ->

November 1963

My dear Daniel,

I write to you as if the paper could reach further than the earth allows. Perhaps it can. I place these words in the drawer afterward, the way I place bread on the table even when no one is hungry.

You would be proud of Ruth. She has your steady walk in her voice, though she walks differently from the path you imagined. She teaches others now, not from a pulpit but from the same benches where the children eat their apples. The teenagers follow her as ducks follow a patient stream. She built a program for them-no banners, only work and listening. I hear you in the way she waits for the shy ones.

Hannah troubles me more than I say aloud. She has begun to live inside her husband's opinions the way a bird lives inside a cage that believes itself a nest. She calls it order. I call it narrow air.

Clara sits at their table and learns those shapes. Yet when she comes to the fields she forgets them. Our granddaughter still laughs with dirt on her knees, still asks questions that poke holes in certainty. The world looks greener when she is near, as if she has borrowed your eyes without knowing it.

I wish you could see her.

At night I sometimes push your chair down the hallway, empty, just to remember the sound of the wheels. I stop before the window where the moon makes a square on the floor. The neighbors would think me foolish if they knew. I think Christopher would understand.

You used to read that line from Ecclesiastes about a time to embrace and a time to refrain. I have learned there is also a time to carry absence like a cup that never spills.

Do you remember when Christopher said grief is a field that must be visited, not fenced? I visit it often. I do not live there.

The Bible says, "We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses." I hope you are part of that weather. If so, keep an eye on Hannah. She walks as if the road were a corridor with no doors. Perhaps you can whisper what I cannot.

Ruth asked me yesterday whether I am lonely. I told her no, which was partly true. I am crowded with memories, and they behave better than people.

If you were here, you would tell me to stop worrying and to finish the mending before winter. You were always practical with sorrow.

I will put this letter beside the others you will never read. It comforts me to imagine a mailbox beyond the fields.

Your Myriam

<-#69: Letters of Myriam - Chapter 2 - to Hannah#71: Letters of Myriam - Chapter 4 - Quotes from Christopher ->