ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART THREE, CHAPTER FOUR

 

Son of My Sorrow

Eliza Tuttle and Rebecca Jones
arrived, children in tow, at Diah’s house,
prepared for any length of lying-in.
They tried their best to soften Rachel’s dread
at this one’s coming well before its time,
legs kicking low, its head beneath her ribs.
But Scripture only added to her fears.
The local midwife, Nanny Dunn, smeared grease,
bound the nascent baby’s feet with cloth,
and eased him out into a world of hurt.

Why Rachel named her newborn son Benoni
can only be conjectured. She had borne
her labor pains as well as in the past.
Though undersized, his cries were deafening.
With plentiful red hair and dimpled chin,
he was the image of his father. Still,
her brow was furrowed with anxiety,
a pins-and-needles sense of worriment.
Perhaps it was the solar eclipse, or
the flame-like port-wine stain upon his cheek.

Rebecca and Eliza cooked and cleaned
and tended to the children. Two days later,
when Rachel asked her eldest daughter, Hannah,
to fetch the heirloom coverlet—for she
felt cold despite the heat—then threw it off,
her breathing short and quick, her milk suppressed,
Stephen went to bring back Dr. Smith
or Dr. Gustin. Neither one arrived,
both being in mourning for their wives, who’d died
of childbed fever just the week before.

 

 The chapter titled Son of My Sorrow comes from this Bible passage:

 

            And as she was having great difficulty in childbirth,

            the midwife said to her, “Don’t despair, for you have

            another son.” As she breathed her last—

            for she was dying—she named her son Ben-Oni.

 

            ~Genesis 35:16-18

 

 

Note: Ben-Oni, translated from the Hebrew language, means “son of my sorrow.”  Benoni Munson is listed as child number twelve of Obadiah Munson and Rachel Tyler Munson (page 460, The Munson Record). The death of baby Rachel (child number eleven) is also listed on that same page.

 

COMING SOON: PART THREE, CHAPTER FIVE

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART THREE, CHAPTER THREE

A Joyless Eye

Bound Brook. Brandywine. Germantown.
Valley Forge. As Stephen Munson spoke
of all he’d seen and done the past three years
while serving in the Continental Army,
his parents listened in intense alarm.
Knowing that the war was far from over
despite the victory at Saratoga,
and that the current military stalemate
meant the outcome could go either way,
Stephen kept his musket at the ready.

A sweltering heat wave swept across the valley.
As danger lurked upon the edges of
Westmoreland, Rachel, with a baby due
in late July, endured a weightiness,
not only from the pregnancy and heat,
but even more so from her husband’s absence.
Believing he had ample time to ride
to Farmington and back, to find a place
where they could all ride out the war in peace,
Diah had left them in the care of Wil.

 

Wil hid provisions in a hollow log
and left the family livestock free to roam.
He buried stores beneath the floor. He lent
Rebecca Jones his fifteen-foot canoe.
But there was nothing he could do about
the newly-planted sweet corn or the flax
and barley harvests of the coming weeks.
Then, one stifling late-June afternoon,
just as a new moon veiled the blistering sun,
Rachel fetched the birth-stool from the barn. 

 

 The title A Joyless Eye is from a line in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem, “To the Moon.” 

 

COMING SOON - PART THREE, CHAPTER FOUR