“Ohio”

“Ohio was not the shimmying maiden called the tropics, or the handsome aristocrat of Italy, or the godlike giant of the Himalayas, or the romantic Bedouin of the Sahara. She was the warty, wide-hipped grandmother whose daughter had died young leaving in her care three wild youngsters: the old white-haired grandmother in the ankle-length black dress, who never wore makeup or perfume in her life, who cooked at dawn and dusk and mended socks by firelight, who led prayers at supper and tucked the young ones into their beds at night: the woman from whose body had been wrung out all frivolity and lightheartedness leaving it sinewy, strong, enduring, and tough: the woman whom a weak man might have called a harridan but who was truly a Christian, in the original sense of the word. Ohio would never win a beauty contest nor be voted most likely to charm its way to success. Of all the children, she was the one easily overlooked. But she should never have had odds placed against her, for there was in her barren coldness, her hard soil, and her clouded skies, something alive and vital, something determined, something unwilling to surrender.”