A letter from Papaw — Four in the morning. Couldn't sleep.

I went looking for the registration on the Ford last night. Glove box. Drawer in the kitchen. The folder I keep with the truck papers. Wasn't where it should be.

Ended up in the closet pulling down a shoebox I hadn't touched since before Ruth got sick. Old receipts, a Christmas card from somebody whose name I can't place, and underneath all of it a list in Ruth's hand. Grocery list. Buttermilk, lard, two pounds of coffee, oil for the truck. The truck I'm still driving. The list is older than some grown men.

I'll tell you something I don't say out loud. I worry. Sit at the table at four in the morning with a cup that's gone cold and worry. About the truck. About the run to Asheville next week and the noise the Ford's been making coming up the grade. About whether my hands will hold the wheel another year. About Hank's hip. About who's going to fill the bird feeder when I can't get out to it.

Brother Wallace used to preach on it. Be not anxious. I sat through it forty years and I'm anxious anyway. The Bible knows me better than I'd like.

I'll say it plain. Ruth's grocery list said oil for the truck in '83 and that truck still starts, and the worry I'm doing at four in the morning won't change whether it starts tomorrow. The Ford goes when it goes. My hands go when they go. The worry doesn't buy me a single mile.

I put the list back in the shoebox. Found the registration in the glove box under a flashlight, where I'd already looked twice.

Going to listen for the gravel when I take her out later. The tires on the drive is a sound I know.

Love,