Each Other

Despite a long day of chopping wood, pruning bushes and making bread, before I allowed myself to feel tired, I had to come face to face with the fact that I felt in-between; a feeling that winds down deep inside, being so intangible and hollow it cannot be mapped. The only comparison to that empty feeling was when I had experienced childhood homesickness. I longed for the familiar sight of Father’s tall clapboard home and its rolling yard. I longed for conversation with people I loved and for affection and human touch. No matter how I tried, my day’s activities in and around Marsh Station couldn’t overcome the lonely ache I felt deep in my chest.

  While in March Station I craved the news from the northern cities, and the world’s perspective on the war. I wanted to do what I had always done in the spring: compare the newest fashions in Harper’s advertisements with the displays at Stanwood’s store. I loved to fashion my own designs on my glorious sewing machine, an invention that freed me up from hours upon hours of hand stitching. That magical machine was waiting for me far away, locked away in a back bedroom, beyond Father’s study. I knew that I couldn’t possibly have brought it with me on my mission, but it would have been be so helpful with my work of the last few months.

  Of course tiny Marsh Station was no Boston or New York and didn’t offer popular shows. Even though it had been ten year since I’d since a performance Charlotte Cushman or my very favorite vocalist, Jenny Lind, I still remember what a thrill it had been to see them on a city stage. I had to wait out this war, or more realistically, make my way through it and then, when it was over, navigate back to New England to all the attractions and the culture that I missed. Patience, rather than impulsiveness, had, by necessity, become my navigator.

  Putting my needs aside also meant living a life of secrecy and ultimately, risk, for the Union. It was clear: our Federal troops had to take the southern capital at Richmond before autumn so the whole thing could end and we’d be done with it. One of my goals was to help that happen in any way possible.