September 26, 2003

• Chapter Two (cont.) – story begins 9/8

  
  

  When I was four, my mother and father separated. My father went to California to work in an aircraft plant and my mother and I to the farm. They corresponded and eventually reconciled approximately six months later near my fifth birthday. I am told that I didn’t mention my father for most of the time he was gone but when he returned I flew across the room and into his arms. I don’t remember this, but I do remember a tiny silver airplane pin he sent to me. I can see it clearly pinned to his coat in the closet of the house on the farm of my childhood.

  
  

  Thus began the years we were all together. Until I was 17, it was my extraordinary luck to know no other world but this one of crops growing, rivers flooding, animals being born and dying, fresh nature-scented air, and adults who worked hard to nurture it all. I had no way to know how I would miss it years later in the perspective of city life and world travel and grown-ups who have lost their way.

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  Deep Thought:  Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis.
  
  

  • 9:41 am
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