I Had a Feeling Who It Was
The phone rang at just the wrong time.
I had just ordered three burgers and a salad. My car was third in line at the drive-thru window. I glanced at my phone’s screen, then hesitated. I hoped my family wouldn’t mind if I answered.
“I haven’t heard from you in a long time,” said a soft, warm voice, one with a slight Southern lilt that drifted like a breeze through a screen door.
I wasn’t entirely sure who it was, but I had a feeling.
“Madeline?” I asked, already suspecting the answer.
It was my godmother. The one I had promised myself to stay in touch with. I fumbled to sound glad—because I was—but the truth crept up on me like a shadow at dusk. How long had it been since I last wrote her?
“I guess I haven’t written in a while, Madeline. I apologize.”
Later, I checked. It had been five months.
“I enjoy your letters,” she said gently, her words carrying no judgment—just the faint suggestion of absence. Madeline had always been patient. Her tone didn’t scold. It reminded.
Mom’s Bridesmaid
It’s been three years since I began sending letters to her, kindling a friendship that hadn’t really existed before. She was my mother’s best friend, the maid of honor at her wedding, and chosen as my godmother—a sacred role, though one neither of us had leaned into it over the years.
My mother passed away more than twenty years ago, but Madeline remained like a quiet satellite in the family sky—always there, rarely in view. Writing her felt like finding a back road to my childhood, where memory had softened the potholes and blurred the edges.
In my letters, I shared stories about my own children, thoughts about faith, and small reflections from daily life. But gradually, I realized something deeper was possible. I started recalling moments from the past she might remember too—little anecdotes that connected the dots between our lives.
Mischief and a Familiar Couch
Like the night my Uncle Tony arrived home from college unannounced. Everyone was in bed. He let himself in through the back door, which was always left unlocked for him, and crashed on the couch. I must’ve been five. I woke, wandered groggily into the living room, and ran to my parents, panicking: “There’s a strange man sleeping on the couch!”
I’m sure that story made her laugh. For her and me, time folded back on itself.
Madeline is now in her nineties and living in assisted care, but she’s still sharp, still gracious. She’s become a kind of bridge—a living link to a family history rooted in that small town along the Ohio River. We moved away when I was seven, and many of those ties frayed and broke.
Now that I’m older myself, her voice carries more weight. More presence. When I picture her, I see that black-and-white wedding photo: her smiling next to my mom, both full of the energy and confidence of youth. Their friendship stretches behind me like a shadow cast in afternoon light—long, quiet, constant.
Quiet Elegance
Madeline never married. Her life was one of quiet elegance—a blend of religious devotion and independence. She poured her energy into her job as a secretary at the distillery where my mom also worked. The only time we saw each other in my adult years was when she came to the ceremony when I entered a Dominican lay community in my 30s. That gesture meant more to me than I knew at the time.
When I first called her three years ago, after so much time had passed, she paused before saying, “I’m sorry I haven’t kept up all these years as a godmother.”
I replied, “That’s OK, Madeline. We can make up for it by keeping in touch.”
It felt like a small redemption. A chance to rewrite a story we had left unfinished.
There was a silence then, the kind that doesn’t press to be filled. I imagined her sitting in her favorite chair, her delicate fingers tracing the faded floral pattern on the armrest, lost in memory or prayer or both.
A Catholic godparent is called to be a spiritual companion—to help guide the child’s faith journey. But when the child grows up, the connection often dissolves into polite distance, a role honored in name only.
Still, some relationships—like embers under ash—can be stirred back to warmth. You can always begin again. Sometimes, all it takes is a letter in the mail.