Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
The Ludlows began a new Sunday routine on the first Sunday after Capt. Ludlow finished his treatment and the Ludlow grandparents visited home during their two weeks away to just rest. The captain had given his seven grandchildren miniature journals like the one he now had, and after the Good Neighbors Fellowship Zoom on the yard, he and Mrs. Ludlow gave the grandchildren time to write down their thoughts and then come and share that and anything else they wanted to from their journaling that week.
This is how Capt. Ludlow found out how upset eight-year-old Edwina had been by a phone call the previous day from her mother's sister.
“And no, I'm not calling her my aunt because she doesn't know me like that, and she's lucky I'm being raised by my grandparents who love me and won't teach me any curse words to call her something else!”
“I'll handle it, Edwina,” Capt. Ludlow said.
“I knew you would!” she said, and ran into his arms and bawled herself to sleep.
“Yeah, it really isn't cool,” eleven-year-old Eleanor said when things were quiet. “I don't think our aunts and uncles even get it as much as our other grandparents get it; if you did nothing during the time that we really needed you, you should really keep on doing nothing now.”
“I'll handle it, Eleanor.”
“I have no idea what is going on,” five-year-old Lil' Robert said, “but Papa, if you say you'll handle it, it's handled!”
“I'll handle it, Lil' Robert.”
“I'm good!” the little boy, who remembered nothing and no one about the situation, said before running off to play with his cousins who were his adopted siblings.
Capt. Ludlow stood up, took out his cell phone, and said to Mrs. Ludlow and grandchildren all around, “I'm just going to take a walk and this phone call – be right back.”
“Oop,” eleven-year-old Velma Trent from next door said.
“Yes,” ten-year-old Andrew Ludlow said. “Papa will be right back, but, somebody else's life is about to never be the same.”
Eleanor waited about a minute, and then got up to follow her grandfather, and Edwina went with her – and although Mrs. Ludlow and their Lee cousins Col. H.F. and Maggie saw it, they all let it happen, because Eleanor and Edwina, being drawn to the conversation between their grandfathers, were of course wanting to learn more about their own family story.
Capt. Ludlow walked to a quiet place in Fruitland Memorial Park where the sun shone upon him, and sat until he was very calm, and then called on the speaker phone so he could put the phone down on the rock next to him and keep his face toward the sun. His counterpart picked up, and after the pleasantries, the Ludlow grandfather got to the point.
“Tristan, what I need you to do is to tell all your children not to call or come around my home. It's too traumatic for Eleanor and Edwina.”
“But, Robert, it's near my daughter's birthday, and my other children feel like our three grandchildren together – their sister's children – are the only real connection they have left.”
“Tristan, what I need you to do is to tell all your children not to call or come around my home.”
No matter what Grandpa Tristan said, Capt. Ludlow stayed calm and answered it the same way until he added a bit in front.
“Tristan, you and I have talked quite a bit since you started treatment, and you've said to me that you wish you had done a better job warning your daughter away from danger. You still have five other children, and part of your healing is going to be to practice what you preach.”
Capt. Ludlow paused, and then dropped his basso profundo voice from its friendly middle range to its earth-shaking bottom.
“What I need you to do is to tell all your children not to call or come around my home.”
There was a long pause, and then a deep sigh.
“I remember who you are, Robert. You buried my daughter, your son, and your daughter, and did not shed a single tear before marching away to wreck the lives and livelihood of everybody who mistreated our grandchildren and their first cousins in foster care. I do not want my five remaining children on that list of people that bother Eleanor, Edwina, and Lil' Robert. I'll get that across to them, and in the meantime, I'll forward you all their numbers so you can block them.”
“Thank you, Tristan. I knew you would understand the situation.”
The numbers were sent, and Capt. Ludlow forwarded them to Col. Lee to block off the Ludlow house phone while he sat for a little while longer, again getting very calm in the sunshine before walking back home, where his two granddaughters sat like they had never left, waiting on him.
“It's handled,” he said, and they, who knew it, snuggled up to him – “Thanks, Papa!” – and kissed him on his cheeks as he wrapped his reassuring arms around them.
“Robert is practicing too,” Mrs. Ludlow said to Mrs. Lee. “Time was Eleanor and Edwina would not needed to leave from here to hear their Ludlow grandfather's side of the conversation.”
“He is much, much calmer – not just composed, but calmer,” Mrs. Lee said. “He is actually beginning to resemble his cousin Harry in temperament.”
“He will probably settle back to his core, and we know what that is like because we know Lil' Robert – a mature version of that same personality,” Mrs. Ludlow said. “Still immense in personality, still not taking any nonsense, but much more easygoing. I have to get to know him again, but I like what I am seeing so far.”
“Big Robert and Lil' Robert are twins, after all,” Mrs. Lee said.
“Well, you know they always were, but stuff happens at hospitals, and in troubled homes,” Mrs. Ludlow said. “But, thank God He can heal whenever and wherever He gets ready – even Tristan and Isabelle are getting better, so, there's that, too!”