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| A Motherless Child, Photo Montage. © by Ruth Zachary |
Fortune’s
Wheel or Predestination?
How many turns of fortune affect the rest
of life
that follows? Perhaps it is each and every
small
twist that determines the next, and
randomly
sets the course of a life, a family, a
country;
mere chance, perhaps, more than fate.
The
result is the same.
How much did choice influence the
attraction
and marriage of Charles and Ruth?
Certainly,
Ruth’s exposure to scarlet fever occurred
by
accident, for precognition would have
allowed
adjusting their plans, and avoiding her
death
days after childbirth. But it was that
exact
sequence of events that set the course of
her child,
of her husband, and of Ava’s grandparents,
who raised her baby to adulthood.
How many other small choices made by
adults
in Ava’s world pre-determined her
development?
How many second guesses in hindsight
failed to alter
the course of her life that became so
uniquely her own?
My Grandmother Ruth died eight days after childbirth, and my Grandfather Charles was too grief stricken for three years to cope with life after her passing. After four years Charles remarried, and wanted to take his daughter Ava with him, but by then Alfred and Laura were so attached to their grand daughter Ava, that they resisted the request made by Charles. My Great Grandparents Alfred and Laura cared for my Mother Ava until she was grown, even including sending her to college so she could become a teacher.
This poem appeared in Theories of Relativity, Stories, Letters and Poems About Family, by Ruth Zachary, a book published by Xlibris, which is available through Amazon.
The photo montage and poem above are the Copyright © of Ruth Zachary.
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