The Christmas Letters by Lee Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

and forward-looking.
    I remain very busy with “the here-and-now.” Little James is already learning to walk, and I can tell that he is going to be a holy terror before long. (I feel like every baby I have gets wilder and wilder—more active, at any rate. Especially as compared with Andrew, who was so good. . . .) But Sandy gets a kick out of James, saying that he is “all boy,” which is certainly true.
    We took the whole family to Halfmoon Island for two weeks again this summer, and really enjoyed it, thoughSandy left after a few days of course, he just had to get back on the job! (He is building 9 more houses here on Hummingbird Heights, all of them in the $75,000 range.) But Mama and Ruthie and I got to catch up on everything, and all the kids got along beautifully, they practically lived in the water. We had great weather the whole time.
    After several job changes, Ruthie is now in the sportswear business in Atlanta, working as a “girl Friday” for a young entrepreneur named Jay Moretz who has started his own line of leisure wear which you may have seen in the stores, named “Saturdays.” Their logo is a little red sailboat, I know you have seen them.
    When I asked Ruthie exactly what she does, she said she “makes Jay Moretz possible”! (In my own way, I could identify with that.) Anyway, Ruthie is just as crazy as ever, still a “firecracker,” as Daddy used to say, bless his heart.
    We were having this conversation while sitting out at the beach under a pink striped umbrella on the prettiest day of the summer, all bright blue and yellow, a day to break your heart. (Now why did I say that? I sound just like Gerald Ruffin!) Anyway, the waves were rushing in and the sun was shining on them in a way that really did make them look like they were “dancing,” and the air was so clear, not that kind of haze you sometimes get in summer, but clear as glass, I felt like I could see all the way toEngland where I have always wanted to go. All my children were in view—the twins, running out and back endlessly, chased by the waves and then chasing them, squealing and squealing—James, asleep for once, on the blanket beside me in the umbrella’s pink shade—and Andrew alone up the beach a ways, poking in the sand with a stick and staring out at the horizon, thinking deep thoughts, which he is (probably unfortunately) prone to. Mama sat in a beach chair beside me while Ruthie lay stretched out flat in the sunshine a few feet away, covered with baby oil and iodine, wet cotton balls on her eyelids, tanning herself scientifically with the kitchen timer. She turned over every 20 minutes. Sandy had gone back up to the cottage to make a phone call but now he was coming back down the dune, kicking sand like a boy. From where I was, he looked like a boy, and Ruthie still looked like a teenager. I, by contrast, felt old, though I am not but 31, of course. The twins were squealing and squealing, the sun glinted off the waves, and for a moment I felt breathless, don’t you remember this, Mama? You asked me if I was all right. Then Sandy came and ducked back under the umbrella and sat down beside me and lit a cigarette and squeezed my knee and I really was all right again. It was only for a moment that I had thought, Oh Lord! Who are all these people?
    Now I hope you will not think I am too crazy, readingthat last paragraph, because I do love everybody so much, and I am so proud of Sandy—our life really is the American Dream come true! Of course Sandy works all the time while I am busy running after the kids and driving car-pools and keeping the books for Copeland Construction Company, but I must say I enjoy this job, as it is just me and Sandy up way late into the night sometimes, just the two of us, trying to make it all balance out . . . once we sent out for a pizza at 1 A.M.!
    Also I am still teaching Sunday School at our church, following in Mama’s footsteps once again, I guess (just like the Christmas Letters),