Almost every day Evelyn Luchs, my adoptive mother, greeted the world with a smile. People often said how good it felt just to be around her. She gave a lift to everyone she met. She had the good fortune to be raised in a loving family. She had an open and loving and generous heart.
But she expected performance. She was not a slacker and she did not allow us, her four adopted children, to be slackers. She wanted us to do and be our best, to make a sincere effort to use the talents we had been given. That was all she asked. Otherwise, her love was unconditional.
Though busy and active as a columnist, hostess, and officer in state and national church women’s organizations, there was never any doubt in her mind or ours that, after our father, we came first in her life.
In Children of the Manse I tell how she became my mother completely and without any reservations. That did not happen overnight as it did with my younger siblings who had no memories or attachments to our biological family. It was not so much that I resisted developing new attachments out of loyalty to my first family. I had been hurt by that first family, not once but many times, and I had come to believe I could not trust adults to be kind and to keep their promises. My adoptive mother told me later that it took a year for me to accept her hugs without resistance and two years before I could return her affection.
But in time Evelyn Luchs won me over and this is how I describe the conclusion of that process in Children of the Manse:
“In time my relationship with Evelyn Luchs led to a sort of imprinting of my new mother’s image and her very being upon me. I found myself imitating her gestures, using her words and speech intonations, absorbing her views and opinions, and sometimes even anticipating her thoughts as if our life rhythms had come together, and we were in step with each other. I was a child who had lost the rhythm for the dance of life. Evelyn Luchs taught me to dance again, to recover what I had forgotten or perhaps, had never known.”
How Sarah Bush Became Lincoln’s Mother
Abraham Lincoln had an Evelyn Luchs in his life. She was also not his biological mother, Nancy Hanks, because Nancy Hanks died when young Abe was nine years old. It is likely that at this point Lincoln became the serious (some say melancholic) and reflective human being we know, as have so many spiritual leaders and philosophers who experienced a painful separation from a beloved parent in childhood.
Ted Widmer, in the New York Times of January 29, 2011, describes the difference Sarah Bush Lincoln, Thomas Lincoln’s second wife, made in young Abe’s life. Among the possessions she brought with her to the rude and isolated Lincoln log cabin in the woods of Indiana were books. She later recalled that Lincoln read all the books he could get his hands on, and was already practicing writing and public speaking. (He imitated country preachers to the delight of his boyhood friends). Sarah Bush was, Widmer writes, obviously behind his rapid progress and she later recalled that “His mind and mine….seemed to run together in the same channel.” Lincoln’s father, Thomas, on the other hand, discouraged his interest in books and learning.
The bond between Lincoln and his stepmother became close and strong. In l861, now President of the United States, he received a letter from a friend in Illinois reporting that Sarah Bush was fading. Lincoln made a special trip under difficult conditions and without a body guard to a small hamlet in rural Illinois to say goodbye to the woman who had probably done more to shape him than any other human being.
How Sarah Bush Saved Abraham Lincoln
Widmer concludes his article,
“…if Lincoln saved the Union, she (Sarah Bush) saved him… At just the right moment, she encountered a small motherless boy, and helped him to become Abraham Lincoln.”
We all need women (or men) like Sarah Bush Lincoln and Evelyn Luchs in our lives. For most of us this role is played by biological mothers and fathers and many children are fortunate enough to have more than one or two such mentors, a grandparent or teacher or pastor or coach. I believe children cannot have too many adults interested in their welfare. But it is critically important that those of us who have lost our parents have at least one. All we need is one, if she or he is the right one: committed, loving, patient, and responsible.
For children who have lost their parents, however that happened, the arrival of a Sarah Bush Lincoln or Evelyn Luchs at the right time is a special act of grace. Some orphans and adoptees I know can quickly identify the woman or man who played a similar role in their lives. Would that all of them could do so!
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