Part Love Story, Part Travelogue I by Julia Stewart
“Here is the first installment of my Grandparent's love story written by my Grandmother Margaret Emerson Winslow (before she added "Stewart"). This is part love story, part travelogue that takes place in 1909. Margaret ventured from her home on June 30th and didn't return to East Orange, New Jersey until October 10th. You'll have to read her story to find out where she traveled! She was 22 years old and this was her first long trip away from home. She had a "guardian" accompany her.” - Julia Stewart, Director of Creative Artists Migrant Services
Our
Love – Story
By Sweetheart
“A 'letter' from her new 'in love' self to her former, not 'in love' self. It can be a little confusing at first, but you will become used to how she writes to herself. -Julia”
Dear Girl That Was ~
Because you belong to the Past, a happy, girlish, irresponsible Past, I am going to keep you in touch with the beautiful Present, and the superlative, italicized, capitalized FUTURE. Oh! My other self that started out for an inconsequential automobile ride after supper did you suspect that you would cease to be when your eyes had seen and your ears had heard the wonderful message that brought this me into life? You are only a memory, but a dear memory, because the years you have been Me have been a beautiful cream color with always a hint of the rose in them that is uppermost now since my L--- ... I can’t say it quite yet, dear Other Girl, but happiness will teach me how in time.
How could you vanish so suddenly and so utterly in a moment when you have been the Me for twenty two years? Why, you disappeared in a look and never spoke after you heard those three words, spoken low but reaching toward heaven that made the world stand still for a heartbeat. It is late now, but before I find Dreamland where realities become dreams, I want to tell you everything that happened ~ even though you know all up to the time of the singing magic.
You remember, Before Girl, how you started from New York on that hot hazy day the last of June ~ why! Just a month ago this very day! That morning you woke up in your East Orange home and found the sunlight streaming in thru your south window. It did not look like a shaft of golden promise then, but you would know now if you were here. Your little gilt clock over the book-case told you that it was only five o’clock, and the precious things around your precious room seemed to say that you had almost surprised the fairies a-dancing round and on and in them. But of course you couldn’t sleep any longer. Nothing in your dreams was as enticing as the fact that you were to start west that very day. So out of bed you jumped and dressed yourself for the last time in the room that this I shall go back to in the fall. On went your blue traveling suit and up went your hair; pat went your hand on the pictures and books and click went your suit-case as you snapped it. “Goodbye, little room,” you said softly, then not trusting yourself to say any more, downstairs you flew, happy Other Girl. Surely you remember how beautiful the roses in the garden looked when you danced out to bring a bouquet in from the hot June sun and make the cool hallway fragrant and bright. A bud for Father’s buttonhole; a white Martha Washington for Mother’s hair; and a pink moss rose for Wallace to take to his newest love when he called for her brother en route for the ball grounds, and breakfast began. The talk was the dear, solicitous surface talk that families chatter when one of their number is going away on a long journey. The real feelings and unwelcome forebodings were hidden away to only peep out once when Father said, “You’ll come back to us just the same Margaret?” and Mother answered his rising reflection with, “Why, Father, of course she will,” while Wallace echoed more sarcastically than necessary you thought, “Gee, don’t worry. She’ll be the same Meg.”