Shearing time is the surely the truest sign of transition from winter to spring, Aunt Maude told us. [1]  Because it was the first year I’d ever wintered with sheep, I still remember it vividly. The professional shearing team of two young women and four men from New Zealand arrived in a caravan of trucks and vans and began to stake down shoulder high metal fences in the pasture for the first thing in the morning, when we brought in the flocks that were to be shorn of their wool. The washed and bundled rounds of clean wool would then be safely stored out of the threat of inclement weather under the sideless, roofed structure left from the nineteen Thirties when small time wool production was still a component of the local economy of the Umpqua, like timber and mining. I got stepped on as much as I had been at the Christmas Dance, but I couldn’t seem to contain myself, there were a thousand interesting things happening in a small place and I wanted to see them all! I already sensed that my experiences in life were going to lead me to places as exotic and challenging, as they were difficult to pronounce.  

            I found it hard to sleep that night. For the first time since we arrived her in the rental van I had something to look forward to in the morning that I really wanted to do! Maude made Johnny and I eat breakfast, since we would be too far from the house to return and eat once our nerves settled down into the routine that was boring to her from long experience, and as I was bounced from side to side on the rutted path leading out to the lambing valley I regretted eating so fast rather than not eating at all. Despite the chill of the day as the tall mountains around us kept the newly risen sun from shinning down into the cleft of the valley floor where we were standing, Ron, Michael, Howard, and Sven wore only short sleeved t-shirts and darkly colored jeans that looked as though they’d be worn thin rather than bout that way.  The shearing shed was divided into two open areas, supported by slightly curved uprights that had bowed with the seasons and the weather over the years of their use. Sheets of yellowed plastic on slender frames provided much needed light the length of the shed, allowing fresh air to blow in over the stench of oil and sheep and would provide welcomed respite from the sun by the time it was directly overhead.  While the wall behind the men were lined with small brightly lighted windows allowing the flow of natural light into the shadows casting a pale lemon oblong on the floor of the men’s feet as they oiled and warmed their electric shears. Plastic jugs that began their lives as milk cartons hung on wire hooks suspended from the support beam between the flat roof and the sloping plastic awning facing into an incredibly green and mild looking landscape I quickly lost the chance to take not of, the way I had when I was simply watching the sheep with Lucky earlier that year. Jackets were quickly discarded and flung off the bare pole of the center support beam, since muscles that were aching and sweaty with exhaustion would cramp horribly if left unprotected once the day’s work would be done, and yet, this year, the end of the first day seemed an eternity away, filled with exotic actions and orders, and I wasn’t sure what to expect! The occasional vibration on the slightly raised wooden platform running the length of the portable shed adding to my excitement like the sound of revving motors before the Indy 500! Even Johnny forgot he was suppose to be ‘cool’, ‘detached’, and ‘sophisticated’ and he acted his age for a change, drawing smiles and words of explanation or encouragement. There was an odd sense of wearied expectation, like seasons actors taking a first time thespian under their wing and as the morning began to warm and brighten, an endless stream of unwilling black forms were dragged into the remnants of the last cast offs of the clipping, down with hand shears that looked as old as the mountains around us, forced off their feet and held between the legs of their experienced captor while the slightly soiled fleece fell free from their remarkably shriveled bodies in great long clumps. It was our job to bring a new animal, too heavy to carry and too frightened to assist to the head of the shed and take away the denuded animal so it could be replaced. The only time the Shearer was allowed to stretch or lengthen even momentarily, then the next animal would be manhandled into place, its frightened pleas falling on deaf ears since it was only their dignity being injured, no matter what they thought, and I had to carry or ‘walk’ the denuded beast to the holding pen, then race back for another while Maude or Charley approached with one on their arms. The light bantering stopped until the midday break but by then I was so sore that Dad had to literally pull me up from the ground where I’d sat down. I obediently took the two aspirin Roxy offered me, but I didn’t quibble with another youth from one of the local farms took my place. I ordinarily love Maude’s potato salad but to eat, I would have had to move my arm to my mouth and my shoulder screamed in protest as the slightest flicker of movement!

            As we ate lunch seated on a bales of hay, Roxy explained that annual shearing was actually necessary since sheep had been bred for millennia to produce a dense fibrous coat that needed to be removed for the health of the sheep. In addition to the odd lot of sheep who’d dropped early lambs, we had a large number who seemed sure that any attempt to chase them or move them where they didn’t wish to be was akin to 3threatening the life of their unborn and the cloven hooves can break the skin unless a wiry hide and thick mat of hair protected the assigned guardian so I kept Lucky on a tight leash despite his whines of complaint and Tug and Spike remained in the field with Uncle Charley and Johnny until the second day, when it was our time to have our ewes go under the buzzing clippers, coming out like new army recruits with shaven heads - and bodies. It was back breaking work and after drawing blood once from the belly of a struggle ewe who was barren this year, I gave up in tears. Bent over nearly double, the large man with oddly gentle hands had her down to twitching but safe skin and a large pile of dirty wool kicked to one side, while the cleaner, finer coat went into a second pile for washing. By then I was grateful for Maude asking me to ‘help’ prepare a meal for the seven professionals who’d come along to help move the sheep. I definitely marked a line through Sheep Wrangler on my list of possible career paths before the first morning at the job was completed!  

            I was thrilled when Bonnie and Tiffany accepted my casual invitation to attend to stop by and watch, but as the weather turned chill and nasty, as spring weather will sometimes do, the noise, the smells and the boredom won out and we retreated to the former garage shed to race Johnny’s slot cars. He objected fiercely until we allowed him to join us and pick the car he wanted. Naturally he took the fastest one because winning seems so important to him, even against three older girls. We lost track of just about everything till the first sounds of thunder rent the heated silence like a high powered jet breaking the sound barrier, then the sound of dime sized hail striking the tin roof, followed a few seconds latter by a flash of cloud to ground lightening that briefly lit up the afternoon darkness like daylight! In the city I probably wouldn’t have thought anything about it, except to be annoyed by the grind whine of the fire trucks as the engines swept past us, but out in the country, that was an entirely different matter and lightening was force that had to be respected, like any other power of raw Nature!

            Johnny jumped up and down, squealing with excitement at the open door of the shed, no matter how we screamed at him, I guess he didn’t want to show fear in front of mere girls but I’d heard too many stories about people being struck by lightening or being too near to trees that were the highest object around them! As soon as the hail ended, we sprinted for the house, the sky overhead swirling ominously with dark clouds. The regular television station sounding a warning for people to get out of their cars, to get safely indoors and stay away from the windows.

            Bonnie began to cry and we were too frightened to really be able to console her.

            “  Id this was the Ozarks, I’d be headed for the basement. “  She said through her tears, trying to appear braver than any of us felt.

            The door slammed loudly. It had been ripped out of my brother’s hands as he’d tried to get Lucky into the house. The phone rang, Bonnie’s parents, asking her to stay here and wait out the storm, reassuring her that tornados were rare, almost non existent here in the mountains of the Pacific, but she began to sob softly, begging for them to come get her.  Twenty minutes later they arrived. I could see the picky-ups driving up the steep muddy path from the nearly invisible corrals and trailers where the shearing crew took refuge to play cards and listen to the radio. We all had to wait out the storm. At the time I never thought to ask Johnny about Lucky, I assumed he’d come in and was hiding somewhere to escape the increasing severity of the winds and the storm.

            After they showered to warm up and clean off the mud, Mom and Dad took turns playing the Monopoly game with us and looking out the window in concern. Only two dozen sheep remained unshorn and they were so closely huddled together under the low shed in the field until they were a single mass of gray until they were unidentifiable as a single animal against the slanting gray sleet. The ewes which had already been clipped had been trucked up to the barn and the doors firmly latched to prevent any of them from panicking and racing indoors in their unprotected state. After nearly two hours the storm passed and the clouds thinned, resting on the tree tops as if they needed to rest before meandering north to join their plumber cousins. With Tiffany’s natural good nature we were soon joking about how they resembled the sheep and it was almost a disappointment for Mom and Dad to reach for their coats and the truck keys. The interlude had been pleasant and for the first time in the nearly thirteen months since we’d been forced from our house in California, Dad was relaxed and smiling. Even graciously enduring Tiff’s rather ponderous perchance for bad puns rather than groaning and making a face they way he usually did.

            Johnny made it clear he was bored with the sheep and pretended an interest in his video as we stepped back outside. It was a little bit of a shock, seeing how much mud was rolling down the hillside. We’d lost our bid to keep the dead trees in the hillside woodlot next to ours from being cut down to make room for a housing development and the land had been graded and staked out to begin construction, and my only concern was in hearing Dad’s remark that two wooden stakes with colored streamers had been washed away. Things were going kind’ a smooth finally, at least there weren’t any more swastika’s painted on the barn and no one slashed Mom’s tired while she worked at the Vet’s office, being ignored was better than dealing with open hostility, but I feared we’d be accused of doing it on purpose because Johnny and his friends insisted on playing up there and looking for loose nails and end pieces sawed from the lumber framework for the empty houses.  

            Uncle Charley drove over the hill from Maude’s property, leaving a muddy gasp in the new grasses as the heavy duty truck ground its teeth and plunged downhill more often than it did forward and we could hear his anger long before the flatbed slid to a stop and he stepped out in washing boots that he usually reserved for fishing along one of the twisting canyon pathways of the North Umpqua river.

            Tug and Spike were so covered with mud that even when they jumped down and tried to shake themselves, the dirt remained caked in their fur, making size the only means of knowing which dog you were looking at. Uncle Charley never got their names right anyhow so I guess it didn’t matter. The nineteen ewes we were to help him place on the truck were dumbstruck by fear and Tug (he was the larger of the two) got a nasty kick to the forehead that drew blood. He kept shaking his head to try to clear the blood out of his eyes as Uncle Charley was trying to look at him, and my uncle’s mood grew more surly with every passing minute. I didn’t even realize Johnny had come out of the house until Uncle Charley growled at him to go get Lucky, as he attempted to lift Spike bodily and put him back inside the truck to wait until we had all the frightened, pink skinned beasties in the back of the truck.

            Johnny had to whistle twice before Lucky appeared at the rim of the tree lot. But instead of obeying, Lucky shook the wet mud and water from his coat, deliberately turning around and running from sight. We learned some new cuss words and when Dad took his brother side to complain, we were treated to a shouting match that left us as miserable as the drifting rain that had sifted through the trees and wet everything with their chill grasp. Worse, nine of the ewes were missing! We hadn’t thought that shorn of their bulky outer covering, they would be able to squeeze through a newly broken board that hardly looked wide enough to permit Lucky, or maybe Spike to squeeze through!

            Then we heard it. Like a runaway freight train, a massive mudslide filled with icy water and debris loosened from someplace upstream where the storm was full raging in full fury, and tumbling down the normally placid stream behind the house with ungodly power, trapped by the tall stone and pine defined walls that ran down the entire length of the valley! My heart leaped in my throat! Lucky was muddy and wet! He’d found the missing sheep and was driving them toward us in bleating protest, drawing out attention to the top of the hill, now cascading mud and water and downed tree branches.  The largest ewe blocked the way of two smaller forms, attempting to turn to the right or the left, but blocked by something she could see, thought we couldn’t. It had to be Lucky, pushing at them from the other side of the hill. He’d spent his entire life defending these obstinate creatures and knew their cunning and fears, but his attempts were being thwarted by the lead sheep who feared attempting to place her cloven hoof on unsteady ground that was already breaking away and swirling around her.

            From nowhere, a barking form leaped out at the huddled and confused beasts, splitting the flock into two sections. Spike! Then Tug, coming from the other side, pushing the frightened animals back into a single mass tumbling down the crumbling hilltop, headed straight for the blackberry thicket and the grape vines. My heart leaped into my throat, but event he small movement I made toward them almost turned the milling flock back uphill! Causing the two dogs to have to sprint, growling and barking, and biting at their heels until they wheeled and ran downhill again.

            Johnny had the gate open as they pressed together like burrs stuck to one another’s wrinkled skin, racing in toward the shelter and warmth of the sheep pen, followed by Spike and Tug, who laid down on their bellies, panting wetly, as they watched the movement of the milling animals while Johnny slipped in the mud, frightening so badly that two of the ewes tried to clamber up the mule troth to escape out the hole in the side of the barn again. Maude’s voice hollered at them so sharply, both dogs looked up in her direction expectantly. 

            Only the largest ewe remained, lowering her head and butting at Lucky when he tried to charge her into going downhill. Without warning, a resounding boom echoed across the knoll as fresh mud and rocks poured downhill, followed by the aging tree, its roots pulled up and waving behind it like a woman’s hair on a toboggan ride that slammed into the machine shed, sintering the plywood and interior dry wall like a knife moving through sheets of tissue paper! With an almost human cry of fear, the large ewe wheeled and ran past her guardian blindly, followed by Lucky, as he limped as quickly as he could follow, clearly exhausted by the long ordeal, his coat plastered to his side with mud and rain. I tried to call him back, shouting his name as loudly as I could, but he was too tired or too stubborn to hear. I knew he would do his best to guide and protect her, but

what could he do against a rampaging wall water and downed trees rushing at him? I had to help! Or at least force him to return with me!

            “  Laura, Baby! Come back! It’s dangerous! “  Dad made a futile grap for my arm.

            "  I can't! I have too! "  I pleaded, watching the aged dog disappear over the muddy hill.. I saw the agony in my Dad’s eyes and he must have seen mine, for he thrust his good hand into his pocket and drew out his cell phone, thrusting it at me. “  There’s no reception! “   I protested.

            “  It has a built in GPS. I love you!  “

            It sounded like one word, but he flicked his hand to me in the instinctive gesture he used to send Lucky after ‘his’ sheep and I obeyed, trusting the Great Unknown to see him safely back to the house in the new rain that had thickened into a most, blinding sheet of gray.

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            Every few steps up I had to grasp for a handhold on some root or bush as the muddy water swirled around my ankles chilling them. When I reached the top and saw the devastation, the broken Queen Anne’s Lace stems broken, their bowl shaped white blooms trampled into the mud by the passage of the flock uphill and I could just glimpse Lucky and the pink form of the shown ewe at the river’s edge. He was standing below her while she tried to get up her courage to leap to the rocks, stamping her foot at him as if demanding he stop his loud barking and let her alone, then he’d race forward and she’d slip, striking the damp mounds of rounded stone by getting back to her feet in panicked defense of her life, soaked through. Had they not been so near I wouldn’t have had the nerve to go down? I hoped she’d be too engrossed with keeping the dog at bay to notice me running downhill at her. Otherwise she’d leap in an instant and I knew Lucky would follow her! But at the last moment she heard the pebbled under my feet and with a supreme effort she leaped across the dirty froth on top of the rising water, landing on the first stone, but losing her balance and falling on her side, all four feet in the air. Lucky tried to bark, but he was hoarse and I couldn’t find my voice. I wanted to scream for my father, Uncle Charley, anybody! But no one could hear me! I was on my own.

            It was then I felt it. The sense of someone or something larger than myself who was there, in the cold slanting rain, calming me, showing me what to do. I called Lucky back sharply, there would be time to make it up to the tender hearted old dog later, but if he leaped into the water to attempt to rescue the sheep was now moving in the muddy current, I doubted he would have the strength to keep his head above the water! Instinct made her fight to right herself and her legs disappeared, the water rushing up her back to the nape of her neck as she held her nose as high as she could, Sputtering and snorting as water and leaves and mold caught in the swift current clogged her nose. Without a second thought I lowered myself into the icy water, gasping in pain and shock at the coldness. The melting snow had been little affected by the spring rain and it felt like a giant bear trap had just slammed shut on my calves and knees. I could hardly move, I felt wooden and numb, Even the effort to brush the wet strands of hair out of my eyes was almost more than I had the energy to do!   

            I was struck between the shoulders by a tree limb and bent forward instinctively, my face pushed down into a swirling mass of leaves, moss, and dirt and I nearly sucked in water for an instinctive breath of air. I could feel the stones of the river bed lashing at me as I swept past, unable to get my feet back under me again and I could hardly see through the clumps of wet hair hanging down in front of my face as I used my hands in

a vain attempt to find enough traction to stop my downward flow. I could hear the dog barking in the distance, short, hoarse commands that seemed to make me ache as I heard them for they spoke a weariness that was swiftly overtaking me as my wet clothes offered no protection to the scratches and thumbs pummeling me like clothes on an old fashioned corrugated washboard! My kneecaps ached and I thought I might be bleeding, but submerged in water, I couldn’t tell!

            There was a sudden alteration in the flow of the water, it seemed to be reaching an obstacle and swirling back partially before clearing the obstruction. The Narrows, a quarter mile of rapids that was normally less than a foot deep. Johnny and I had gone crawdad hunting here more than once. But even as I strated to be struck in two directions, I was raised up on the water and now the pain became more severe bcause the stones turned when my hand or foot tried to brace against them, loosening the smaller stones that struck at me like angry insects. I’d forgotten why I was even there, every ounce of my being focused on somehow getting free from this stinging monster and getting my feet back on the land.

            Just then, the water closed over my head and I was held under by the force of the new waters pouring over the miniature falls cascading downstream. I couldn’t tell where the water ended or the sky started and I panicked, pushing one-way and then the other, unsure of what was up or down or safe? My hand struck the side of a boulder that had been loosened from the hillside. It scraped flesh and the pain lashed at me, demanding I breath or scream. But as I clung to it, watching the muddy flow at its base, some deeply buried instinct propelled me to use it to fight the current toward the portion of the rock without mud. I opened my mouth too soon, layering with the acidic tartness of dried acorn brush and I spat till my mouth was cleared enough to allow me to force in great gulps of air almost as wet as the water pushing me against the rock as its prisoner. As my mind cleared I looked around, teeth chattering, so cold I was past feeling anything but numb. I saw without being able to comprehend for the first several seconds. The ewe was up to her neck in water, unable to risk attempting to bleat as the foam smashed at her eyes and nose, but she wasn’t moving. She wasn’t swimming; she was simply suspended there! I pushed myself to my feet, shocked to find I was only in four feet of water 

            The water around my legs came close to pushing me off my feet but I forced myself across it diagonally. I could see the back of Lucky’s spine, his head so low he was snorting from the foam and debris coming up his nose. But his body mass was keeping the frightened sheep in place. The bank beside her was clawed with failed attempts to get her hoofs into it sufficiently to pull herself upright. I could hear his labored breathing and I could see his body trembling violently, though I couldn’t tell of it was cold or exertion! I called his name and his head raised slightly. He looked at me sideways, his face cut by branches or stones, the red flowing down in tiny rivulets with the rain and the water of the raging stream. His tail moved slightly across the leaves and mosses caught in the eddy where he was braced, stiff legged but I wasn’t sure he had the strength to hold on until I could reach him. I had this horrible awake nightmare that he would collapse just as I reached him and they would both be swept downstream beyond my reach! Without conscious thought for anything but releasing him from his terrible burden I reached down and grasped the bared and wrinkled nape of the ewe’s neck, literally fling her body to the top of the muddy embankment. Her weight almost knocked me off balance and she just laid there, breathing in and out. As I seized his sore paw, Lucky gave a terrible cry, but it was my only hope of keeping him from being washed further downstream in the muddy outpouring! He’d used up all of his strength in protecting the small ewe from being washed downstream and he lay limp in my arms. I wondered if he’d passed out from the pain or sheer exhaustion. While my mind was focused on finding another way up to safety, something small and warm stroked my cheek. It was his tongue. I was forgiven for hurting him! With the last of my strength I pushed him as high as I could. His paws loosening exposed roots and causing more of the mud to tumble in, burying my ankles but at last his paws found a root large enough to bear his weight and he pulled himself up, out of my sight. 

            I had to lean against the damp mud until I found I could breath again. Thanking God and hoping that somehow I could find a way to climb up too. I had to allow the swirling water to carry me toward a group of cottonwood trees before I found enough soil to bear my weight and allow me to clamber to the top of the rain soaked embankment. By the time I could force my trembling legs to bear my weight, the ewe was standing upright, watching me with deep seated hatred but willing to stand there with her rump turned toward the slanting rain. Finding a tree large enough to offer me shelter from the relentless icy drip of water, I leaned against the pine sap, not caring how difficult it would be to get it out of my hair when I rejoined that partially remembered place of safety. I didn’t know where the sheep was now, and frankly, I didn’t care! It was her fault we were in this mess! As Lucky leaned against me, as if I were some sort of comfort to him, I wrapped my arms tighter around my chest and tried to push away the sense of comfort that was attempting to calm and reassure me. We could no do nothing more until the rain stopped. The area around me was totally unfamiliar and I feared I’d miss the house or the road and end up lost in somebody’s empty acreage. Then I realized I was still blindly mumbling, ‘Thank you, God. Thank you.’ Under my breath and I stopped myself with an effort, enraged.

            “ So what if You are there? So what if You do exist? “  I challenged mentally as my teeth chattered together so violently I feared I chip them. “ What difference does that make in my life?  “

            I waited for the sense of rejection, of disdain, but it never came. Instead I found myself listening to the raindrops as they lessened and then the sound of the waters as a pale sun broke through. Slowly bird sounds reemerged and I felt an odd kinship with the life around me. The birds, and the foxes, and the chipmunks, we had all shared the disaster equally, but we’d survived. I could hear the sound of a single engine plane overhead but as I crawled out, I saw it was only a black dot now on the fading sunset. The ewe leaped to her feet when she saw me, but she made no attempt to flee. I woke Lucky and he groaned as he forced himself to his feet. Standing up on unsteady legs, he almost fell over attempting to free himself from the clinging muck stuck to his coat. As I made my way between the trees, attempting to find a way back up the hill I saw a magnificent buck step into view. We must have been downwind from him because it was several seconds before he stopped eating at the fallen branch shoots and looked sharply in our direction, disappearing from sight in a single bound. Life was resuming. Wind, rain, or sun, it would continue as it had since creation. I felt a sense of connection to everything around me, even the butterfly that came out to dry its wings in the fading sunlight. I had my answer now. That in the midst of chaos, order and purpose exist. In the midst of the chaos of my life and attitudes, order and purpose existed. And there was such comfort in that, I could face whatever challenges life threw at me. I wasn’t alone anymore! I hadn’t been alone-in a true sense, but following an impulse I was too tired to struggle again, I turned left and found a trail worn in the smooth stone by generations of deer’s hooves and from there, to the top of the ridge. I could see home! There were several new cars parking in front of the main house, including a sheriff’s car and I waved happily to the tiny black figure at the back door of the house.

            When Mom and Aunt Maude raced up the ruined hill to embrace me and wrap a blanket around my wet clothes, I felt what heaven must be like! Dad and Uncle Charley got out of Charley’s pick up and while Dad raced to me, Charley raced further up the hill to the wearied dog and the docile ewe. Picking her up and laying her across the back of his neck, though her weight caused him to bend forward. Her head hung down and her ears lay drooping like she didn’t have any strength left, but she’d been found and was being carried to safety. As I leaned against Maude’s amble form I knew just how she felt! It was good to be safe and in the arms of someone who cared, someone who could provide what I was unable to create for myself! I was so tired my trembling legs felt as though they couldn’t carry me the last few steps from the truck to the welcoming light cast by the back porch light through the hail of stinging rain and sleet, but I had to look back, I had too!  

            Dad and Uncle Charley were standing shoulder to shoulder at the sheep pen as the ewe laid down in the straw near the manger.

            “  It gives a whole new meaning to the story Gramps used to tell us about the man who left the ninety-and-nine sheep and went looking for the one that was lost, Phil. I’m glad you’re here!  “

            They embraced and I looked away quickly but as I did I found Maude smiling too.

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            It was a difficult two-year transition but once the Christmas Tree Lot was opened in December, we had our first Chanukah with ‘real’ presents, and it was fun, but am I perverse to look at the previous two and cherish them so much? I don’t know. I never thought of myself as having a martyr’s streak.  The opening of the restored and rebuilt Slot car track in the spring coincided perfectly with Johnny’s voice change when he could use the whine of the miniature cars to cover the sudden change in his voice from a nasal whine to a deep baritone, sometimes in the middle of a single word! And gave me something to pretend a keen interest in until I could conquer my unkind but keen desire to giggle uncontrollably. I had no idea the human face could turn so many different shades of red and purple! I guess Big Sisters are just built that way, to make up for all the times he made me blush in public? No, I guess not either. I guess there’s just a mean streak in me, but what the hey, its my kid brother. I can do what I want, but Heaven help the girl who tries to break his heart!

            Oddly, the thing I remember the most took the least time to happen. We were just sitting there, on the new picnic table and I had my feet up on the bench, the way I usually yelled at Johnny and his friends for doing, but instead Dad just walked over and sat down next to me. His legs were so long he could just lean them out, with Lucky taking his usual place under them like a furry footstool, of course. I remember asking him point blank, no intro, no warning:

             “  What’s wrong with GOD? Why did all those twists and turns and disappointments have to happen, Dad? Why couldn’t we have just come up here from California and settled in?  “

            He laid his hand on my knee but he looked up toward the ridge of blue hills that defined and limited our view even though I knew with my mind that many miles distant a mighty river rushed lengthwise toward the Sound and then to the Sea, whether I could see it or not; like the unseen events that had pushed parallel alongside our lives. He gave a soft sigh after he’d been silent for so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer. I needed him too. Not to challenge him, nor to ‘reason’ him to my way of thinking like I’d learned in Science Class, even or compare my answer to his, but because I couldn’t see any good reason for it if what he just said about God was true!

            “  For one thing, merely being practical, none of it was available when we first got here. Mrs. Ferringer was still alive but in poor health, Doc Peter was still grieving himself to death over his wife’s loss, and Mr. Fliedecker didn’t know he’d have to sell the farm a year early to pay for his heart surgery; and we didn’t even know them, so it wouldn’t have touched our lives in any meaningful way until we were prepared to receive it instead of what we thought we wanted and needed.  “

            “  Thought? Thought we did needed! A house, a home, someplace we didn’t have to say ‘excuse me’ or ‘thank you’ for permission to simply take a breath?  “  I snapped.

            “  Or to teach us humility?  “  He added softly, giving my knee a light squeeze until I risked looking up at him even with the tears in my eyes. “  I guess maybe, even, to teach us a little about ourselves and about GOD. “

            I frowned in puzzlement and found myself cocking my head to one side like Lucky did when something of human speech caught him off guard and I laughed at the gentle image of self-mockery. When Dad chuckled with me, I felt a fresh bond between us that my turning sixteen couldn’t threaten.

            “  You know, Sweetheart? “  Dad said thoughtfully, and then paused. “ When we get to heaven one of the loveliest mansions we’ll see will have a Mezuzah on the right side of the door, and over the top of it, glistening in diamonds on a solid ruby background will be the words: “ Laura’s House, built with love and compassion, furnished with treasures, old and new!”  But in the meantime, Princess, there’s trees to prune and spray, and I need you to look at Mr. Balky, I can’t get the ignition coil to fire, and if you can get him running, I need you or Johnny to plow down the mustard before it goes to seed. Help me up, would you, sweetheart? I’m not as young as I used to be. “

            “  In a minute, Dad. But first I want to tell you a secret. “

            He laughed and raised one eyebrow at me, Mr. Spock style, but he waited.

            “  A secret? “  He repeated, with love and laughter in his voice, and an odd sadness that wasn’t there a moment before. “  You haven’t told me a secret since you were six years old. “

            “  I’ve known this one about that long. “  I agreed, trying to sound mysterious and wise. “ You are the best, the sweetest, and the wisest Dad in the whole wide world, and that encompasses a lot more space than I ever imagined - even six weeks ago!  “

            He nodded and whispered, “Yes it does. “  Then he looked away as we watched the flock of crows pass over the edge of the orchard. No doubt to roost on the Scarecrow Man we’d built so laboriously. “  It was so secret, I never even guessed it!  And we still have work to do.  “

            But we lingered and so does the memory.

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The End