“Glad to see you’ve got your appetite back, Mr. Post,” said Mrs. Gregory, sitting down at the end of the table with a satisfied expression on her face. “I was starting to take offense that you didn’t want any part of my cooking.” She winked at me, and I returned her smile, helping myself to another serving of pancakes.
* * *
—
A few days later, Papa stunned us by declaring he felt up for walking to his appointment at the San. Mother and I were free to walk beside him rather than behind his lumbering wheelchair. He waved at the folks on the street, and they stared back in mute wonder, unable to believe that his was the same body they’d seen bundled up and close to death on so many days prior.
Whether he told Dr. Kellogg he was doing it or not, I wasn’t sure, but Papa began to join us regularly at Mrs. Gregory’s table for supper. After the evening meals, while Mrs. Gregory’s two oldest daughters washed the dishes, Papa would participate in the readings and prayers with gusto. “You know something, Mrs. Gregory?” he said one night. “I believe that your care is healing me more than any of those meals or treatments that Dr. Kellogg has prescribed.”
“It’s your new faith that is healing you, Mr. Post,” said Mrs. Gregory, a broad smile brightening her features as she sat in her armchair, her well-worn copy of Science and Health making its rounds through the small group gathered in her parlor.
“Five pounds a week, that’s how fast I’m gaining flesh!” Papa declared, his tone as light and peppy as his steps.
Late spring saw Papa, somehow, almost entirely revitalized. He began to skip treatments and lectures at the San, opting instead to take me on long walks through the thawed fields surrounding Battle Creek. Each day it seemed he was spending less time at Kellogg’s campus and more time around town, chatting with others about his recovery. For a man whom the famed doctor had deemed a hopeless case, whom Mother had declared near the end of life, it was nothing short of wondrous, and Papa would say so to anyone who inquired.
But then, just as we felt it was time to celebrate Papa’s extraordinary healing, to heave a long-held sigh of weary but grateful relief, illness returned to the Gregory home. And this time, it wasn’t Papa’s bed around which death lurked. It was mine.
Chapter 4
At the time, I thought it was God hovering over my bedside, but I realize now that it was probably Papa. Scarlet fever and then mumps seized my young body, bringing death close and turning my world into a series of foggy mirages. My mind slipped in and out of fitful sleep; my memories of that time are scant, strung together with long periods black and blank. When I did wake enough to see my surroundings, I noted that Mother and Papa prayed over me at all times. They read aloud from the Bible. They read from Science and Health, too, as Mrs. Gregory attended with the dedication of an expert nursemaid.
They’d waited twelve years for me. Nine lonely years had passed before they’d even conceived, but that baby, a boy, had left them before he’d had a chance to breathe his first. Three years later I’d arrived, impossibly plump and healthy and somehow all theirs. Papa had fallen ill soon after finally becoming my father, only to make a miracle recovery. But now I was going to be taken from them both.
I don’t remember how, but I know that I came through the illnesses after some weeks. “Your faith was so strong, Marjorie. It saved you,” Mother told me, stroking my hand with her own in a rare gesture of affection.
Mrs. Gregory boldly stated it, and Mother and Papa wholeheartedly agreed: Trust in the Lord had been my salvation. Faith and hope and love. Those virtues had conquered the illnesses and would do so all the days of my life. That was what Mother and Papa declared to anyone who would listen. Any remaining doubts as to their new friend’s religious zeal were washed clean with an expunging force more powerful than baptismal waters: their new faith had saved not only Papa, but their only child as well.
* * *
—
“First I was saved. Then my Budgie was saved. There has to be some reason for that,” Papa declared in the garden behind Mrs. Gregory’s home. It was a mild morning filled with sunshine and boisterous birdsong, even the perfume of flowers in the air, all confirmations that the stubborn midwestern winter was finally well and gone. Papa’s mood was as bright as the day; it had been so since my recovery. He was simply convinced that we’d both approached death only to have our lives spared in the final moments—and that there was some large and meaningful purpose at the center of it all. “There has to be a reason,” he said over and over that spring. And he was determined to find out what that reason might be.