These are my oldest entries, newest at the top.
If you want to read it the way I lived it, start at the bottom.

Sunday, December 20, 1998
Ten months

The House voted to impeach the President yesterday. I heard it on the radio in the van while I was driving over to the church to set out the poinsettias for the cantata, and I sat in the parking lot and listened to the whole thing. Not because I care so much. Because it meant I didn't have to go inside yet.

The cantata was this morning. I played the piano for all forty minutes of it and did not miss a note, and Mrs. Vickery squeezed my hand afterward and said I played like an angel. I played like a machine that knows where the notes are. There's a difference, and I'm the only one in that sanctuary who could hear it.

The WMU made the Lottie Moon goal with two weeks to spare, and Opal Tatum announced it from the pulpit like we'd taken Jericho. I was glad. I'm glad about a lot of things in a far-off way, like weather in another state.

Sam wants a Furby. Every child in America wants a Furby. Jonathan said the last thing this house needs is one more thing that talks back, and then he laughed, and I laughed, and it sounded so strange coming out of me that I stopped.

Ruthie is ten months old. I have been sad for ten months. There. I've been walking around that sentence since March, and there it is, typed out on the screen, and the computer did not catch fire.

Friday, November 27, 1998
At Mama's

Thanksgiving at Mama's, two hours south. Five of us in the van, plus a sweet potato casserole on my lap and Ruthie's portable crib bungeed to the roof. My sister Rebecca drove down from Atlanta by herself, since her Paul was on call.

After dinner Rebecca and I did the dishes, like always, her washing and me drying. She's a nurse. She handed me the gravy boat and said, real quiet, "You don't sound like you. You sound like a tape recording of you."

I said I was tired. The baby. Everybody's tired with a baby.

She said the words "postpartum depression" right there in Mama's kitchen, with the turkey carcass on the counter. And Mama heard it from the dining room, because Mama hears everything, and she called back, "Leah's fine. Leah's always been the strong one."

And that was the end of that. Rebecca looked at me over the dishwater and I looked at the gravy boat. On the drive home I kept saying it in my head. Postpartum. Like a word in a language I'm not allowed to speak.

Thursday, October 29, 1998

John Glenn went back up into space this afternoon, and Sam's class watched the launch on the TV cart. He got off the bus and said, "Mama, he's seventy-seven years old," like he'd discovered something personal about the man. Sam turned ten on the 14th. He is all elbows and facts.

Ruthie pulled up on the coffee table this morning and stood there wobbling and grinning at me like she'd done it on purpose. I clapped. I did. I should have been happier than I was.

Thank you to the two ladies who wrote after my September entry. One of you said only, "You are not the only one." I read it four times standing at the kitchen counter, and then I deleted it so nobody would find it on the computer, and then I wished I hadn't.

Sunday, September 13, 1998
How are you, Leah?

The Starr Report came out on Friday, and this morning the men in the vestibule could not talk about anything else. Harlan Pruitt was holding forth by the coat rack. "A man that'll lie about one thing will lie about anything." Everybody nodded. I was holding Ruthie and the diaper bag and Lydia's Sunday school craft, a paper plate with cotton balls glued on it, and I nodded too.

Here is what I didn't say. Every Sunday for seven months, somebody has asked me, "How are you, Leah?" and every Sunday I have said, "Blessed!" with the exclamation point and everything. I'm not sure that's a lie, exactly. I am blessed. I have three healthy children and a husband who loves God and loves me and a roof over our heads that the church keeps patched. But I say it so nobody will ask the next question. That is what it's for.

On a happier note: Mark McGwire hit his sixty-second on Tuesday night and Sam begged to stay up, and Jonathan let him, and the two of them whooped so loud they woke the baby. I didn't even mind. I sat on the stairs with her and listened to them.

Wednesday, August 19, 1998

I haven't written since June. Nothing happened, which is the whole problem. July was ninety-eight degrees and I spent most of it on the couch with the baby and the box fan, telling the children to go play outside, and then feeling terrible that I kept telling them to go play outside.

School started Monday. Sam is in fourth grade and Lydia is in first, and she marched onto that bus in her new sneakers without looking back once. I waved until it turned the corner by the Methodist church. Then I went inside and sat down on the kitchen floor, right there by the dishwasher, and stayed there until Ruthie woke up. I don't know how long. Long enough that the coffee was cold.

Jonathan preached on joy Sunday. Philippians. "Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice." It was a good sermon. He is a good preacher. I sat in my place on the piano bench and wanted to raise my hand and ask how.

Monday, June 22, 1998
Vacation Bible School, survived

VBS ended Friday. Sixty-one children, about a third of them ours from church and the rest from all over town, which is the whole point. Sam was a helper. Lydia made a noisemaker out of two paper plates and dried beans, and it lives in my purse now because she says I need it.

The pastor's wife bakes. That's not written down anywhere, but it doesn't have to be. I made cookies every night for a week after the children were in bed. Oatmeal, peanut butter, the sugar cookies with the sprinkles. I didn't count, but it was more than any other lady brought, because I made sure of it. I stood at the counter at eleven o'clock at night rolling dough into balls and couldn't have told you why I was crying. I wasn't sad about the cookies. I don't think I was sad about anything. It just ran out of me like a faucet somebody left on.

At my six-week checkup back in March, Dr. Hightower asked how I was sleeping and how I was feeling, and I said fine and fine. He is a deacon. He sits three rows back on the left. I don't know what else I could have said.

Friday, May 15, 1998

Frank Sinatra died yesterday. Daddy loved Sinatra. He used to put the records on Saturday mornings and dance Mama around the den in his sock feet while she pretended to fuss. After the children were asleep tonight I sat down at our old upright and played "Fly Me to the Moon" real soft, the way I learned it by ear when I was twelve, and I cried, and that at least made sense to me. That was the right-sized crying for the thing.

Also the whole country watched the last Seinfeld last night except the Rutledges. We are not a Seinfeld house. I have seen it at Rebecca's and laughed until I snorted, but that is between me and GeoCities.

Sunday, May 10, 1998
Mother's Day

Every year on Mother's Day Jonathan asks the mothers to stand, and then he gives a carnation to the oldest mother, the youngest mother, the mother with the most children, and the mother of the newest baby. Miss Eula Barnes got oldest again, and she is ninety-one and deserves it. I got newest baby. Everybody clapped, and Ruthie slept through it on my shoulder with her mouth open.

I stood there with a pink carnation and my whole church smiling at me, and I thought: if they could see inside me right now they'd take it back. That's all. That's the whole thought. It went around and around all through the sermon.

Sam and Lydia made me breakfast in bed. Toast and a banana and a glass of orange juice with a spoon in it for some reason. I ate every bite. That part was good. I want to write down the parts that are good.

Sunday, April 12, 1998
Easter

Sunrise service at 6:30 in the churchyard, then breakfast in the fellowship hall, then Sunday school, then worship, then ham at the Tatums'. I was up at four ironing Lydia's dress. I forgot her hair ribbons and she cried in the van, and I said something sharp that I would give a good deal to take back.

When the sun came up over the cemetery wall and Jonathan said "He is risen," and everybody said "He is risen indeed," I said it too. And I felt nothing at all. Not doubt. I don't doubt it. It was just like the words went into a room where nobody was home.

That scares me more than anything else I've written here. I've been a Christian since I was nine years old at Bible camp. I've never not felt it.

Sunday, March 22, 1998
Back on the bench

First Sunday back at the piano since the baby. Opener was "Blessed Assurance," offertory was "It Is Well with My Soul." My hands remembered everything. It is a comfort that my hands still know what to do when the rest of me doesn't.

Everybody wanted to hold Ruthie. She went down the whole center aisle like a covered dish. Every lady who handed her back to me said the same thing: "You must be so blessed." I said I was. I am.

We got nineteen casseroles in the two weeks after she was born. I know it was nineteen because I've been returning the dishes, one Pyrex at a time, with a thank-you note in each one. There's still one on my counter with masking tape on the bottom that says TATUM in ballpoint pen. The casseroles were a kindness and I mean that. But they stopped, and people stopped asking, and I am still standing in the same spot I was the day we brought her home.

I cried in the van in the parking lot after church while Jonathan shook hands at the door. I had my sunglasses on. The children thought I had allergies. I let them think it.

Tuesday, March 10, 1998
The first page

Ruthie is four weeks old today.

My name is Leah. I'll be thirty-five next month. I have been married to a Southern Baptist preacher for thirteen years and been his pastor's wife in a small town in Georgia for five of them. We live in the pastorium next to the church, which means I can see the steeple from my kitchen window while I'm washing bottles, and the church can see me. We have three children: Sam, who is nine, Lydia, who is five, and Ruth Ellen, who was born on February 10th and whom we call Ruthie.

The church bought Jonathan a computer at Christmas for his sermons and the bulletin, and my sister showed me how to make one of these pages when she visited. I'm writing here at night while I nurse, typing with one hand, because I can't say this anywhere else. Pastors' wives don't get to say it.

I love her. I love her so much it scares me. And I am so tired and so gray inside that I can't find the bottom of it. It's like I'm living under a sheet of wax paper. I can see everything and I can't touch any of it. I keep waiting for it to lift, the way it did after Sam and after Lydia. Four weeks. It's only been four weeks.

If you know me, please don't tell me you found this. Just pray for me.

Leah

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