“So, what we're doing with math today is just counting, snugglecouraging one person at a time, and you're going to be first, because we've been through a lot and our parents are dead but we've been healing a while, and you just got here and your people are still alive and acting a fool.”
Seven-year-old Amanda Ludlow was generally not the bluntest of the rather blunt Ludlow bunch, but sometimes … Capt. R.E. Ludlow just put his head in his hands.
“Lord, why does she have to be like me right now?” he silently prayed as he closed the distance between himself, Amanda, her ten-year-old brother Andrew, and their ten-year-old cousin Glendella whom Capt. Ludlow and wife Mrs. Thalia had just adopted in the same way they had adopted their seven grandchildren. Glendella made eight, and because she was just coming out of a terrible situation, Capt. and Mrs. Ludlow along with their cousins Col. H.F. and Mrs. Maggie Lee alternated a close watch on her.
Sure enough, Glendella started crying.
“It's so much!” she said, and fell into Amanda and Andrew's arms just in time for the much stronger 58-year-old captain to overtake them all in his embrace.
“Thanks for the snugglecouragement backup, Papa!” Andrew said. “We needed that!”
Nine-year-old George and six-year-old Grayson came out of the Ludlow house and joined the hug next, and before long, all ten Ludlows and both Lees were there.
“Well, I mean,” eleven-year-old Velma Trent said as she led nine-year-old Milton and eight-year-old Gracie her siblings along with her nine-year-old cousin Vertran Stepforth to the hug. “We love you too, Glennie!”
Afterward, Glendella stayed with Capt. Ludlow while Amanda and Andrew snugglecouraged one person at a time with all the other children there, and they all went back to where they had been.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Capt. Ludlow said.
“Thanks, Upgrade Papa, just for that,” Glendella said as she dabbed at her eyes with his handkerchief. “I'm a person, not a decoration. I had to just hang around that house like I was some kind of holiday ornament and couldn't hear all the dumb and horrible things going on.”
“That had to be difficult,” Capt. Ludlow said, “and I know a little bit about that.”
He silently prayed before sharing a deep part of his personal story, and was somewhat surprised that his prayer included gratitude that he could relate to Glendella in this way.
“I once saw three of my uncles do a horrible thing to three other people,” he said, “and I was expected to just be at their houses like a good little boy like I had never seen that – like a decoration, seen but not heard. But my grandmother would not have it, and convinced my parents that not only was I not going to their houses, but that they should not come to ours – and that as much as she could, she was going to take me to her house, away from it all, to get better.”
“Oh, so you had a Good Grandma, too!” she said. “That explains a lot!”
“This is why I went to get my grandchildren, and when you came, I kept you,” he said. “I understand."
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
She boo-hooed for a little while, and then added, “I don't know which one is worse, what Amanda and Andrew are going through not having their parents and most of their grandparents, or just having parents and grandparents that you know don't care and are still out there doing everything they want but caring.”
“It can make you mad – that's why Edwina is mad a lot,” Capt. Ludlow said.
“She told me she told off her own other grandparents, and I totally get it,” Glendella said. “I mean, not enough to plan to go learn actual curse words to call them back and cuss them out, but –.”
“Say what?” Capt. Ludlow said and half-turned, but then turned back to Glendella. “I'll deal with that later; right now, we are talking, Glendella.”
“I'm not even mad at my folks; I'm just real tired of getting up in the morning and hearing about the latest dumb thing,” Glendella said. “They could be loving each other and me, but no.”
Again, Capt. Ludlow prayed.
“Edwina, Amanda, and Andrew's parents – two of them were my children, and so, I lost them too, with their partners,” he said.
“I'm so sorry,” Glendella said.
“Thank you,” he said. “I mention it just to say that as long as your people are alive, there is hope that they might change for the better.”
Glendella's face lit up, and Capt. Ludlow's heart went out to her. She was 10, still a little girl. Of course she still hoped her parents and grandparents would love her. Of course.
But …
“But the challenge is, waiting on people to do right by you will have you tired,” Capt. Ludlow said. “I waited 10 years, and worked, and prayed, and watched my children choose everything else they wanted but to buckle down to being good parents to my children. But in fairness, they had watched me deploying to different countries over and over again, so, even though I called home and sent letters home as much as I could during my active duty years in the military, they felt much the same way about me that you and my grandchildren do about your parents. They were tired, too, tired of waiting.”
“Wow,” Glendella said. “I've never heard any adult man talk about how he wasn't perfect with his family.”
“In order to get rested and get better,” Capt. Ludlow said, “we gotta start with the truth. Here is another truth: here we are, Glendella. Other people may never figure it out, but we can choose every day to be family and love each other, like we are choosing, right now.”
“'Snugglecouraging one person at a time,' as Amanda and Andrew said it,” Glendella said.
“Exactly,” Capt. Ludlow said as he and Glendella tightened their embrace of each other. “We can choose, every day, to rest from being tired of situations and people we can't change, wait on the Lord to deal with all that as we pray and leave it in His hands, and love each other as family.”
“Yeah, let's do that, not all this other mess,” Glendella said, and then grinned at Capt. Ludlow's tender kiss of her forehead.
“I love you, Glendella, and I'm glad you're now part of my family.”
“I love you too, Upgrade Papa, and glad to be here.”
Capt. Ludlow's mind went back to being in his grandmother Hilda Lee Slocum-Bolling's embrace as she thunderously explained the facts of life to one of his aunts over the phone: “You keep having the murderers at your parties, so no, my grandson Robert is never setting foot in your home again either. He is not to be window dressing to your pathetic Illegitimate Stepdaughters of the Confederacy attempts to make good evil, and evil good – NO. I am choosing my grandson over you too. You are likewise disowned for covering for your murdering brothers.”
Then-Baby Bob Ludlow was only five years old then and did not understand the details, but he knew that he was safe, and grinned as he was kissed on the forehead by his grandmother.
“I am choosing you, Baby Bob,” she said gently to him, “and that's just that.”
53 years later, with his life having come full circle, another part of him healed from his own childhood trauma, for he saw how all that had prepared him to be the protecting grandparent his own grandchildren and their cousin needed.
"You have chosen me, so I have chosen you, Glendella," he said, "just like I chose my seven grandchildren -- and that's just that."