In the Shadow of the Valley: A Memoir

by Bobi Conn

She was also the first person who knew, before I even said it, that it was hard to date a man with money, someone from a different class.

But there is no faking that kind of humility. You can’t pretend to love and give and forgive like my granny did. She didn’t go around telling people how much faith she had, or how good God was to her. I heard it in her quiet prayers. I tasted it in the food she grew, canned, killed, and cooked. I felt it in the softness of her skin, which grew loose and spotted with age, unprotected and unadorned. It filled her house and spilled into the creeks and waiting hillsides, it wrapped itself around me, and I held on to that when there was nothing else. CHAPTER 25 The Canary in the Coal Mine I’ve worried a lot about my father and how he became so cruel, so indifferent to those of us who loved him and looked for his love.

but it all follows a structure and has nothing to do with being ignorant or lazy—we were just country people talking like people from the country. Every group of people, everywhere, has a way of talking.

about her forgiveness. She had taken care of all of us for so long, feeding us, sharing everything she had, giving us vehicles and furniture and love that ignored how much we took, how little we gave. She forgave us for not calling as often as we should have, for not visiting as often as we should have, for using her savings to buy drugs or pay the rent because we had used our own money for drugs. She forgave us for not going to church, and she prayed for us each night and cried every Sunday.

That’s what happens when your house is unsafe and you can’t afford anything better—you’re called unfit, and nobody asks how you got to this place. That’s why someone who used to be poor will, if they have it, lend money to a poor person to pay a bill—they know the stakes.

grew up thinking there was something wrong with my family and especially with me. But I realize that, for the most part, the adults around me then felt like I feel now—childhood slips away without warning, and we find ourselves pretending to be grown, pretending we want to be part of this world with jobs and bills, but numbing ourselves with television or another glass of wine.

These are rotten fruits we are reaping from conquerors who planted their flags in other people’s homes and holy lands long ago.

I feel the magic of childhood and the whispering strength of forests waiting for us. I see miracles incarnate.

Not far from us is the creek I grew up playing in, full of pinching crawdads and the occasional copperhead. There’s the forest with its guardians, oaks and maples who watched me as a child. Granny and I can hear the sound of the leaves moving in the distance. It’s like a prayer she has taught me. EPILOGUE