Vox Meditantis

Route 2, Box 47
Bryan, Texas

15th June, 1950

My Dearest James,

Your latest letter arrived yesterday morning, just as the first light was creeping across the cotton fields, and I confess I read it three times before allowing myself the luxury of my morning coffee. There is something in your words – perhaps it’s the way you describe the mist rising from your mountains, or how you find poetry in the grain of walnut wood – that makes me feel less alone in this vast Texas landscape. I find myself trusting you with thoughts I’ve never dared share with another soul, and that both terrifies and exhilarates me in equal measure.

You asked about my work, about what drives me to challenge the old ways when it would be so much easier to simply follow tradition. The answer lies in a memory that haunts me still – a young woman, barely eighteen, who died in my arms three years ago because the town doctor insisted that her agony was “natural” and her husband forbade me from fetching the medicines I knew could save her. I held her hand as the life ebbed from her eyes, and I swore that night that I would never again allow ignorance to masquerade as wisdom in my presence.

Perhaps this makes me seem hard, unwomanly in the eyes of those who believe a lady should defer to masculine authority in all things. But James, when I read your letters – when you write of your grandmother’s stories and your hunger to understand the world beyond these narrow boundaries we’ve been born into – I feel a stirring of hope that there exists at least one man who might see my convictions as strength rather than defiance.

Last evening, as I tended my garden in the fading light, I found myself imagining you here beside me. I pictured your hands, which you describe as rough from mill work, gently examining the feverfew I grow for women’s ailments, listening as I explained its properties without that glazed look men usually wear when I speak of such matters. In my mind’s eye, you didn’t patronise or dismiss, but asked questions – real questions – born of genuine curiosity. The thought made my heart race in a way I thought it had forgotten how to do.

I must confess something that shame has kept locked in my chest for years. When I was thirty-two, I believed myself in love with the new physician who came to town fresh from his training in Houston. He seemed modern, enlightened, and for a brief, foolish moment, I dared hope he might appreciate a partner who shared his passion for healing. But when I questioned his prescription for a difficult labour, suggesting an alternative based on my experience, he looked at me as if I were a child playing at being grown. “My dear Margaret,” he said with that condescending smile I’ve come to despise, “leave the thinking to those qualified for it.” The romance died that instant, though he never understood why I could no longer bear his company.

Your letters tell a different story, James. When you write of finding my opinions “fascinating” rather than threatening, when you confess that my descriptions of medical procedures intrigue rather than bore you, something tight in my chest begins to unfurl. For the first time in my thirty-nine years, I dare to hope that intellectual companionship and romantic love need not be mutually exclusive.

You mentioned in your last letter the book of astronomy you’ve been reading, how it makes you feel small yet significant beneath the vast canopy of stars. I understand that feeling intimately. Each birth I attend reminds me that we are simultaneously insignificant specks in the cosmic order and miraculous beings capable of creating life itself. When I read your words, I feel as though you might be the one person who could lie beside me beneath the Texas sky and comprehend both the humility and the wonder of our existence.

I’m enclosing pressed flowers from my rose garden – not the medicinal herbs, but something purely beautiful, as you suggested all correspondence should contain some element of beauty alongside substance. The roses bloomed particularly well this year, perhaps sensing that they might travel beyond these familiar fields to reach someone who would appreciate their journey.

James, I find myself trusting you with my deepest self, hoping against hope that the man who writes such thoughtful letters might also be the man who could love a woman unafraid to speak her mind. If I’m wrong, if my boldness frightens you away, then perhaps it’s better to know now. But if I’m right – oh, James, if I’m right, then perhaps these letters are the beginning of something I’d stopped believing possible.

With growing affection and cautious hope,

Margaret

P.S. The roses are called “Belle of Georgia.” I thought you might appreciate the irony of a Southern belle making her way to the mountains of West Virginia.

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