They Called Her Mrs. Doc. (27 page)
Christina went off to the city. She didn’t wish to continue her education immediately, she said. She didn’t know if she wished to go on to school at all. What she did want to do was to become a telephone operator—so that is exactly what she did, and loved it.
“At least there is one advantage,” said Samuel. “She can call as often and for as long as she likes, and it won’t cost us anything.”
But the telephone company didn’t see it quite that way, so Christina told them to call her because she “was saving money.” Their telephone bills reflected the fact that they had a daughter in Lethbridge.
Thomas was the next to marry. He seemed so young to Cassandra. Only twenty. But he had completely made up his mind and there seemed to be no dissuading him.
He had chosen a lovely young girl who worked at a Calgary law office while Thomas was finishing his classes to be a pharmacist. They settled in Calgary and Beth quit her job and cheerfully went home to be a housekeeper, wife, and, she added with a twinkle in her eyes, prospective mother.
Christina met her chosen at a church in Lethbridge. He was a young pastor on his first assignment. It didn’t take the young people long to decide that their lives should be joined together. Samuel and Cassandra, along with Joseph, Annie and Peter, made the trip to Lethbridge for the wedding. Thomas and Beth came from Calgary. Vivian sent her regrets. She was expecting their first child in a month’s time and didn’t dare risk the trip. “Just in case,” she explained.
“What’s the matter?” teased Samuel in a telephone conversation. “Don’t you trust your father? I have delivered half of the population here at Jaret—including you.”
But in serious moments, even Samuel agreed that it would not be wise for Vivian to make the long, tiring trip.
The wedding was lovely and Samuel and Cassandra took to their new son instantly.
“Rev. and Mrs. George Dawson,” announced the officiating pastor, and Christina and George turned to the audience with matching smiles. As they walked the aisle together as husband and wife, Christina threw kisses to Cassandra and Samuel.
Vivian gave birth to a baby boy. It was all Cassandra could do to keep from boarding the first train back to Montreal. Samuel had promised her that they would make the trip together in June. That was months away. The baby would be four months old before she even got to hold him.
But Cassandra held herself in check. If she went immediately, there was the chance that Samuel would cancel his plans to make the trip. She knew Vivian was just as anxious to show off her new son to her father as she was to her mother. Cassandra decided she would make herself wait until June.
They named the baby Samuel Henry, and Cassandra couldn’t hold back the tears that slipped out from under her lashes.
Peter seemed reluctant to leave home. When asked his plans for the future, he replied with a shrug, “I dunno yet. I’m still thinking about it—and praying too.”
“I hope you are prepared to have that boy underfoot when he’s fifty,” Samuel smiled one day as he and Cassandra breakfasted together.
Cassandra sipped slowly from her steaming cup of coffee.
“He doesn’t seem in a hurry, does he?” she responded.
“I’m glad he at least has work,” Samuel commented.
Peter was working with Joseph, building a new business block in downtown Jaret.
But when Peter did finally make up his mind, he surprised them both.
“I want to be a doctor,” he informed them one night. “I have prayed about it for a long time and I feel sure that God is urging me in that direction.”
Samuel and Cassandra exchanged smiles.
“And then I am applying to the mission board,” went on Peter. “I feel God is calling me to medical work in Africa, possibly Nigeria.”
The smiles disappeared. Concern first flashed across two faces, and then pride and joy brought tears to their eyes. Samuel reached out his hand and took the strong, already calloused hand of his son, while Cassandra fought to keep the tears from falling.
“We’ll do all we can to support you,” said Samuel, his voice a bit husky.
“I know you will, Pa,” replied the young man. “You always have.”
Cassandra felt that she had prepared herself for the leaving of her youngest. After all, he was no longer a child. He was a man. But deep down in her heart she knew he would always be her little boy—her baby. She choked back sobs and held him for a long time. She didn’t say, “I’ll miss you,” but she knew he got her message. Besides, she couldn’t get the words past the lump in her throat.
They were proud of him as they watched him climb aboard the outgoing train. But he would be such a long, long way from them. And she was going to feel so alone with the last one gone from home.
She and Samuel drove the many miles home from Calgary alone. The trip went faster now. The Model T shortened the hours on the roads. Cassandra still watched the skies for thunderstorms. She knew what could happen to the roads if the rain fell too heavily.
“It’s going to seem different,” she mused to Samuel.
He kept his eyes on the road. Cassandra guessed that he was fighting his emotions just as much as she.
He nodded his head, his jaw set.
When he did finally speak, his words surprised her—though they shouldn’t have. “They’re all good kids,” he said with deep feeling. “Every one of them.”
The house seemed too big. Cassandra didn’t know what to do with all the spare room—or the spare time. Neighborhood children helped fill in the time factor to some degree. They still came with their skinned knees, their slivers, and their small cuts and asked her to care for them.
They also brought their little animals. Cats with torn ears, dogs with porcupine quills, rabbits with scratched noses. Cassandra doctored them all as best she could. She made sure she had simple medicines and plenty of bandages on hand and even took to discussing her animal cases with Samuel to ensure she wasn’t doing something wrong or missing something.
“I’m not a veterinarian,” he would tell her, “but it sounds about right. Don’t know of anyone around who could do any more.”
Word traveled. Eventually local farmers stopped her on the street to ask about a horse with a lame leg or a cow with a split udder. Cassandra felt uncomfortable at times, but she advised as best she could.
But even with her “doctoring,” her days seemed to hang heavily on her hands. One day as she sat on the back porch shelling fresh peas from her garden, Samuel came up the walk. He had just returned from a house call in the country and knew that his office would be full of patients waiting for his attention.
Already he looks tired,
thought Cassandra, and she hurried to fix him a cup of tea.
As he sipped it slowly, he seemed to be in deep thought.
“What would you think of helping out in the office again?” he asked her at last.
Her head came up quickly. Had she been missing something?
“Aren’t you feeling well?” she asked.
“Oh, I’m fine. Fine. But I don’t have the drive I used to. Thought that with the two of us working together, I might not have to put in such long days.”
Cassandra popped another peapod, her eyes on the bowl in her lap. Relieved that Samuel was all right, she nodded slowly.
“Don’t see why not,” she answered Samuel. “My household chores sure don’t take all my time anymore.”
Samuel grinned. He knew it was hard for her to be without children in the house and that time hung heavy for her.
The arrangement was made. She went to the office for two hours each morning and again in the afternoon for as long as Samuel needed her. It seemed to work out just fine.
Cassandra decided that the grandchildren came in bunches. Vivian added a girl at about the same time that Joseph and Ann had their first, also a girl. Then in another two years, Christina and George had a boy and Thomas and Beth had a girl. Two years following, Vivian gave birth to another girl, Christina and Joseph both had boys. And in another three years it was a boy for Joseph, and a girl for Christina and for Thomas. In a matter of a dozen years, they were grandparents to ten grandchildren. And yet, except for Joseph’s three, all of them were many miles away. Cassandra wished they all could be near.