A letter from Papaw — Quiet morning. Drizzle on the porch.

Would have been forty-five years this week, me and Ruth.

I sat down to write you and didn't know what about. So I'll write about her.

She had a way with biscuits. Made them Sunday mornings, a double batch, and what we didn't eat she'd wrap in a tea towel and leave on the counter. I'd eat one cold Monday standing at the counter on my way out to the truck. She'd come through the kitchen and shake her head at me — sit down, eat it warm tomorrow — and I never did. Cold biscuit, standing up, the Ford running in the drive so it'd warm up before I climbed in. Forty-some years of mornings like that.

My hands shake some now. I dropped a spoon yesterday and stood there looking at it on the linoleum like it had betrayed me. My knee says there's weather coming before the sky does, and the sky took its time getting here this morning, and the knee was right by a day.

Ruth knew how to be in a kitchen. She didn't make a fuss of it. She just did the work, and then the work was done, and then she did it again the next day. The biscuits don't keep. She made them anyway.

I'm going to go sit on the porch. The Ford'll still start. It always does.

Love,