The Shut-Ins

It was somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Mother was preparing for her yearly pilgrimage. The old hand grinder was clamped to the table with care and calling out the back door Mother knew I’d soon be there.

She had all the dates and fruit and whatever she put in her famous fruitcake waiting for me to crank away. None of those big lumps in Mom’s fruitcake, no-sir-ree.

I knew better then argue with my elders so I “debated.” And so I explained to her that I needed to finish the snowshoes I was working on, the trapline was ready to be laid out. I knew what was coming.

“They’ll be no if, ands, buts or maybes,” she said with finality. “The shut-ins will be expecting us.”

Anyway, in a couple of days the big sweet fruitcakes were baked and loaded in my first car, a worn out Ford Falcon.

Off to the shut-ins we went.

They were mostly old ladies but some gents too living in what was left of a homestead or farmhouse. The barns had caved in and the pastures overgrown with brush and timber. Neighbors were good and sometimes stopped to deliver groceries and relatives came from far off cities on occasions but not often enough.

When we pulled into the yard, you’d see the curtains part and a smiling face appear, soon the door opened and they were there, leaning on a cane.

“Oh Veronica,” they’d say, “I knew you’d come.” In mom went for a visit and great fruitcake.

Meanwhile, I waited ever so impatient thinking only of my trapline. Not realizing what this meant to the shut-ins. After all, being an 18-year-old boy, ya-hoo, I never figured on getting old. Why it’ll never happen.

And so from shut-in to shut-in, Mom finished her pilgrimage. After we were home she’d say, “We brightened their day.”

What compels us to do good works is the Holy Spirit given to us when we realized Christ walked to Calvary and was crucified for us and in repenting we received Him as our Savior. And believe you me, my dear old Mother was filled with the Spirit.

The good book says in James, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this; to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”