Standing on the courthouse steps
Wearing my favorite dress
Ready to start my new life
Not ready, but inside of me
The life we made inspiring
You to ask me to be your wife
A head full of dreams
Burst at the seams
When I found you weren’t there
I stared in silence and despair
What on earth would I do
If I couldn’t marry you?
For everyone would know and soon
The child growing in my womb
Our child–
All the while
You’d skipped town, or so they say
A midnight train carried you away
You bastard
I felt the white hot rage
I let it flow all through my veins
Wondering what would become of me
Then, a hand on my shoulder, Dempsey
Your cousin spoke up slowly, “Lois”,
“I know you don’t love me but I want you to know this
I know that you are with a child
I’ve loved you deeply for a while
I don’t want to see your reputation in shreds
Would you marry me, instead?”
I knew I didn’t love Dempsey
Reluctantly I still agreed
Every dream in my heart now dead,
We went inside and we were wed.

So, this is actually a true story I chose to memorialize in verse. It happened in Florida in 1925. Grandma Lois would have been my great great great grandmother, and aunt Dot, her baby, would have been my great great aunt.

Lois’ father was the type of Southern Baptist preacher that ordered up his sermons with extra fire and brimstone. This was the South, after all. And the twenties, when single mothers were just not a thing. I can almost taste the palpable fear when I imagine it. I imagine her stomach all in knots, wondering what would become of her, of her baby–her daughter.

As I understand it, Dempsey was a fantastic husband, though Lois, married at the young age of eighteen and in the manner she was married– resented him and never grew to love him. Regardless, she did what she had to do to take care of her unborn child and when I think of her, I think of her sacrifice, and I am in awe of the strong young woman she must have been.

Much love,

PC