Although Lil' Robert and George Ludlow knew their Big Cousin Harry but had not before this met his second wife, Maggie Lee was an instant hit with them.
“I see you got one of those like I have,” Capt. Ludlow said to Capt. Lee as he watched his grandsons fall in love with Mrs. Lee. “Everybody loves Maggie just like everybody loves Thalia, and we just stand here and marvel about it.”
Capt. Lee smiled.
“Thalia was in the back of my mind when I met Maggie,” he said. “She and Ironwood's wife Agnes and of course my grandmother Linda. You can't go wrong with those models.”
“Indeed,” Capt. Ludlow said. “How are Big Uncle Horace and Big Aunt Linda? Please greet them for me, with my warmest and most respectful regards.”
Capt. Lee's smile widened.
“You may express that to them yourself, Robert.”
Capt. Ludlow turned around, and there stood Capt. Lee's grandparents and his great-uncle and great-aunt, Horace and Linda Lee.
“We're so proud of you, Robert,” the Lee patriarch said.
“So proud,” the Lee matriarch said.
“Well done,” they said together.
Capt. Ludlow thought back to his own father … oh, he had opposed his son becoming the type of man that was good with music and children, and would never have commended him … his grandfather was the same.
But his mother … half-Lee of the mountains … his grandmother was Horace Lee's elder sister, Hilda, who had taught him all the recipes of herbs and flowers that he had used to form the base of the Ludlow Bubbly … everything worth having in his life had come from the side of the family that had known how to live and love in communion with all creation … from the side of the family that came out of Horatio Lee, who had fled to the mountains as a teenager in 1870 from the temptation to resist the change brought about by the Civil War … to resist the temptation to keep up oppression and the pretense of superiority by whatever means available … to be free, and to allow others to do the same …
But old Horace's second wife had a child late in his old age, and she at 50 then … and so there stood Horace Lee himself, that last living connection to Hilda Lee and all that their father stood for … a turning at all costs from evil to good … and they had accepted Hilda's fifth Ludlow grandson as one of them, in a family gathering that spanned three centuries and now six grandly bridged generations of doing the right thing, at all costs.
“We consider you, Robert,” the elder Lee said, “among our sons, as we consider Henry although he is our grandson and you are our great-nephew, and so we had to come today, to encourage and strengthen you, Robert.”
This was the day of Capt. Ludlow's adoption, too, although it had been unofficial for 18 years anyhow.
Capt. Ludlow reached for every ounce of his composure – his little grandsons were wrapped up with Maggie Lee, but he knew the corners of their eyes were forever on him, and him falling over was not on the agenda of traumas he intended for them to have. However, his voice choked when he meant to say thank you to the elder Lees, so they just came and embraced him, and they sat down with him at one table – social distancing well and truly messed up, but, Capt. Lee had endowed his grandparents with N95 masks too – while Lil' Robert and George learned all about how lasagna was made and why it smelled so good and on and on and on, and love flowed even and especially where a word could not be uttered for joy and relief for also being brought home to the right family, at last.