“So, I go from leaving all the family I know real well and getting to a new branch of my family, and then having the best folks from the old branch of my family added back to me – God is good and that's my story and I'm sticking to it forever!”
Ten-year-old Glendella Ludlow was over the moon talking to her Sunday School teacher, Mrs. Mosette Smith, and setting up the Zoom introduction of the century for her.
“You already know my Uncle Vanderbilt and Aunt Susanna, but now meet their uncle and aunt, Uncle Tarquin and Aunt Agatha!”
“What a dear and darling Christian woman Mrs. Smith is!” Aunt Agatha said at the end.
“Agreed – we see why you love her, Glendella, and I think we are going to just love her and invest in her church's ministry to children, too, like your Uncle Vanderbilt and Aunt Susanna do,” Uncle Tarquin said.
“This is the greatest day ever!” Glendella said.
“And to think,” Capt. R.E. Ludlow, Glendella's adoptive father, said to Mrs. Thalia Ludlow, Glendella's adoptive mother, “that we are here to see and be part of all this blessing and poor Astor and Big Glendella are not.”
“By their own choice of life,” Capt. Ludlow said. “There are no tragedies greater than the ones we choose for ourselves. Sometimes, and I am a witness, God comes to our rescue. Sometimes He does not.”
Capt. Ludlow sighed and closed his eyes, coming to terms with something deep inside his heart.
“I think of my first wife, Alexandra, and realize now: the only real difference between us was God's choice. We knew we had no business getting married, each for our own reasons, but each thought we could fit the other to our plans, and I did not even know she had a plan and would be working it far better than I was working mine! There are details that I could use to make myself feel like the more righteous of us two, but I was the one that asked for marriage, knowing better.”
“Alexandra has such lovely grandchildren that I'm sure she would have been proud of,” the second Mrs. Ludlow said.
“I think of that, too, but I also realize how much of how well they are turning out has to do with their grandmother who stepped up, as Eleanor likes to call you,” Capt. Ludlow said. “God's choice, again.”
Mrs. Ludlow reached out and caressed her husband's arm.
“I told you about Sam Green, my first husband,” she said. “I consider myself blessed to have been married twice to excellent men, but there were some other bad options out there.
“Hubert Fry, on paper, looked like a great guy – he ended up being my second-worst relationship, and misses being first-worst by not actually swinging on me.”
“Who ever dared?” Capt. Ludlow said, his blue eyes instantly flaming up.
“Listen, my darling Hell-to-Pay Ludlow,” Mrs. Ludlow said, “he's already there and so you don't have to pay him out.”
“Just checking,” Capt. Ludlow said.
“Anyway, Hubert,” Mrs. Ludlow said, “and God's choice, because I was just sailing along with no clue that I was one of four. He honestly wanted to marry me because I was the type of woman he wanted for the mother of his children, and was being patient and not pushing me for sex or anything. But the thing was, one of the other women thought she was going to be the wife, and he got drunk one night and told her she wasn't it and I was. She got in her car the next day and followed him to our date and was going to kill us both when we came out of the restaurant … but I left my shawl in the restaurant and turned back, and she contented herself with running him down instead, and then backing up over him again, and then running over him again... .”
“Oh my,” Capt. Ludlow said.
“Obviously, I was devastated on so many levels, and I stopped going to church for a little while because I just couldn't understand why God would let any of that happen, but then I got the receipts, and all I can say is that God is the judge. His choice. I could have been just as dead, dating a man like that.”
Capt. Ludlow took her into his arms.
“My condolences to you, because you loved him, and I know how you love, and how that violent end must have hurt you so much.”
“It did – by comparison, losing Sam to what at least were natural causes was easier,” she said. “I told people I was a widow twice after Sam's death, and that I couldn't go through that again … but again … God's choice.”
“His mercy upon us both has been very great – I think we should stick with Glendella's story about God being good,” Capt. Ludlow said.
“Definitely,” Mrs. Ludlow said.
“You are the main reason I take such scrupulous care of myself,” Capt. Ludlow said. “So long as God leaves a portion of His choice for me to work out, I do not intend to worry you about being a widow any time soon.”
“I appreciate that, Robert, and the good looks don't hurt either,” she said.
“Well, if we at 56 and 58 only have eight children by adoption, it will not be because of my lack of effort,” he said.
“The last time you made that kind of joke, Glendella popped up as No. 8,” she said, and he struck his forehead.
“I forgot – let me shut up real quick!” he said, and they laughed.