Donna Humphrey

     I keep thinking about Judge Lefkow's mother.  I picture her writing in her notebook, maybe after she had finished her chores on the farm.  Is she sitting by the window with the breeze gently blowing the yellowed curtain near her face as she thinks about a world much different from her own?  Does she hope her husband doesn't ask her to start the separater to divide the cream from the milk she has just prayed into her pail?  Would she dare tell him that she could not do it now because she needs time to write?  I see her smoothing her hands over the big oak desk . 

She searches for just the right word to finish her poem.  Will she show it to her husband?  Or would he only laugh and say, "Donna Humphrey, you're a crazy woman.  You know we haven''t got time for such foolishness!"  

     Did anyone read her writing before her poems were found "in boxes, folders, desk drawers," as the paper said after her brutal death in the basement of her daughter's home?  Did it matter to her or was it enough just to get the feelings out on to the paper of her worn notebook?  When she wasn't writing, did she hide the poems somewhere in the Kansas farm home?  In a cupboard, maybe, next to the kitchen sink where she could quickly retrieve them after the house was quiet? I wonder where her ideas came from--the scenes outside the kitchen window, or Sunday church gatherings of farmer neighbors, or just her own mind after reading a book that thrilled her?  One of her pieces was titled "Frustration" and began: "I long to be a poet; and once, I thought I would..."  Who knew how she felt about herself?  A girlhood friend?  A hired hand?  Was she tempted to become close to someone who understood her better than her hardworking husband? Who even praised her for her penciled dreams and told her she was special?  I can't help but wonder.