The First Farewell

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He was six years old.

Standing beside his mother at a train station
in Union City, Tennessee—
about to leave home for the first time.

His name was James Ray Lee.
My father.

Born in the summer of 1926, into a farming family in the northwest corner of the state, he entered the world without hearing—his mother having fallen ill during pregnancy. She would not yet know what that meant for his life.

Understanding would come in a moment both ordinary and irreversible—
a dropped pan, a child who did not turn,
and the quiet realization that would change everything that followed.

Soon she would be a widow.

With three boys,
a farm,
and no clear path for the youngest, who could not hear the world calling to him.

Until, by chance—or something like grace—a man passing through town—
a hired hand, she would later call him—
told her of a place.
A school.
A language made with hands.

And so a decision was made that would ask everything of her.

A ticket saved for—
penny by penny.

A journey too far for her to afford to make beside him.
A boy, sent alone across the state to a place neither of them had ever seen.

No account of what was said—or what could not be said.

Only what can be imagined.

A mother.
A child.
And the space between them, just before the train begins to move.

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Everything that followed begins here.

— Gathering the fragments, one memory at a time…