I started writing this book as a memoir of my days spent as Daddy’s primary caregiver. As I sat down at my computer and allowed the cinema of remembrance to roll, so many memories flooded over me. I decided to include happenings from childhood that would give you insight into Daddy’s character and the close father-daughter relationship we shared – a relationship that ingrained into my heart that when the day came, I would be there to take care of Daddy. I have already told you some of my most vivid and meaningful recollections. I am looking forward to telling you about the caregiving days – well, actually years – but before I take you there, here are a few more Little Ruthie StoriesI feel compelled to share. And, then of course, I must grow up. Please indulge me.

• I had seen them before – in the dentist office, outside public restrooms and at bus stations. One Saturday morning as Daddy and I waited for mother to make her purchase in the upstairs fabric department of our town’s nicest department store, I saw them again over the two, side-by-side water fountains. “Daddy, what do those signs – colored and white – mean?”

I think I already sort of understood, because I had noticed that those signs at our dentist office designated the smaller room with tattered furnishings where black people waited, from the larger and more attractive waiting area where we would sit. We watched television and skimmed through magazines until it was our turn to see the dentist. What I really wanted to know was “why”?

Daddy was a Wesleyan and Mother a Quaker – two of the Christian denominations that were most active in the abolitionist movement. I remember hearing that my paternal grandfather, who I never met, was instrumental in founding a Wesleyan church where blacks and whites could worship together. Daddy often had black men help him on the farm. I never heard him express any racist attitudes, unlike many other men in the South during the Jim Crow Era. 

“Well, some people don’t think black people and white people should do things together. But that’s not right. God made us all the same.”

I admit to paraphrasing that answer – because I do not remember Daddy’s exact words. But I do clearly remember the sentiment he expressed that day and the actions of his own life that put that principal into practice.  How blessed I was to grow up in the South in the ‘50s in a family that taught it was wrong to judge people by the color of their skin.

• I knew Daddy loved to read the Bible and pray. He led us in family devotions every night before bedtime. What I didn’t know when I was younger that Daddy also had his own special “prayer closet” where he spent hours in interceding for his family. One evening Mama was cooking supper when Daddy came in from the barn; his face was red, his eyes looked almost swollen. I didn’t think too much about it, but a few nights later it happened again; and again the next night. I began to worry that something was wrong, so I asked Mama.

“Oh, Ruthie, nothing’s wrong with your daddy. After he finishes up his chores, he gets on his knees before God and prays for you and your sisters – that you will always live for Jesus and serve Him.”

Many times after that, as I trekked through the difficult years of adolescence and was tempted to do wrong, a vision of Daddy with a tear-stained face and Mama’s explanation would bring conviction to my soul and I would choose the right path. By no means was I perfect…far from it…I am terribly ashamed and humbly repentant of many words and actions that resulted from those times I gave in to temptation. But thank God for Daddy’s prayers. When I did stray from the narrow path, God answered those prayers and gave me the strength to return to Him from the path that leads to destruction.

• The grandkids have voted this next story their favorite in the “Little Ruthie” series. Not only does it have an action-packed storyline, with monsters (well, sort of) and a knight-in-shining armor rescue, but it perfectly illustrates the love that is willing to give itself for another. 

Eight or nine years old; not sure…a skillful tree climber…a bit naughty at times. It was a Sunday afternoon and I dared to disobey Mama. Daddy sent me outside for a switch, but instead, I ran around the house into the front yard and found a hiding place in the low-hanging branches of the gnarly old hickory tree in the front yard. 

No sooner had I found a comfortable perch, then…zzzzzzz…probably more like ZZZZZZZ!!! No, it was not a sleeping bear. Oh, if only it had been. I had positioned myself right on top of a… (drum roll, please)…hornet’s nest. Screams escaped from my mouth like a tea-kettle boiling over. Flinging my arms in every direction, I tried to scat those orange-red monsters, which although considered to be quite passive creatures by entomologists will become ferociously dangerous (even deadly) when threatened. Why should these giant wasps feel threatened? I had only sat down in the middle of their peaceful community.

“Ouc-h-h-h!” One got me, then another. I scrambled to get out of the tree, and who should be there, but Daddy, lifting his arms up to me and sternly directing, “Get down, get down!”

I jumped into his arms. When he released me, I hit the ground running wildly away from that tree as fast as I could. At what I considered a safe distance from that stinging attack – yes, pun intended – looked back and watched in horror as Daddy swatted the hornets that were attacking from every direction.

That evening, as I sat nursing my three stings, I cried uncontrollably as Mama applied poultices to the stings all over Daddy’s bald head, arms, back and chest. Even though he had on a T-shirt when he rushed to my rescue, the venomous-pests had managed to get inside his clothing. 

No, I didn’t get a switching that day – although I certainly deserved one – but seeing my daddy in so much pain was one of the harshest punishments I ever received. If ever there was truth to those words, “This hurts me more that it hurts you,” spoken by a parent about to apply needed discipline, Daddy won the all-time award that day. Never again did I run away when I was about to get a spanking. Once more, Daddy’s tender compassion and love for me was proven loud and clear. I hoped that someday, I could return the favor.

• The church we attended was Bible-believing and looking for Jesus’ return. Soon. Throughout my childhood, I heard multiple Sunday school lessons and sermons that proclaimed the “blessed hope” – Jesus returning for his Church.  Being a child and mentally and spiritually immature, I considered that I would like to have some time to grow up and have some fun first. Then one day, the thought crossed my mind that since Jesus was coming back for me any day, I really did not need to go to school. From my perspective, it would just be a waste of time of do homework and study for tests. When I proposed this idea to Daddy, he set me straight.

“Now, Ruthie, we know Jesus is coming back for us someday, and it could be today or it could be many years from now. So, you must live every day as if Jesus is coming back that day; but you must study and learn and work as if He’s not coming back in your lifetime.”

Wow! That made perfect sense to me. It was one of the most important life-lessons Daddy ever taught me.

“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6