Oh to be here.
Wyoming on a clear afternoon with summer starting to settle in as the cattle low somewhere out in the pastures.
Warmth rising up through the earth and time to sit on the porch and quilt. Winter and its dreary snow gone. Hard. The cattle the same, but used to somewhere warmer. Texas and its dust much the same but never as frozen. Coats needed in winter but of a Wyoming fall variety and no need for swaddling in fur to go to midnight mass on Christmas Eve.
Some of it the same. Nearly as far to get to an Episcopal church as it did back then. Everyone else something else and closer but Mother from the city and wanting her own. Not wanting to settle for someone else’s prayers and hymnal just because it was closer.
Children and grandchildren and home at least to them. But not a real home. No, home where the heart is. Lost dolls that big and little brothers tossed into the bushes that were never found again. Cattle with long horns and houses with walls that are so thick that you can’t even bang on one side while someone listens from the other.
Albums found and pictures lost but one in the very back of the cookbook shelf where no one else peeks.
Grandfather’s ranch and the summer before seventh grade when those fat corkscrew curls were so big. Nights spent with hair wrapped around what felt like entire sections of the newspaper but pretty in the morning.
A memory . . .if only . . . all afternoon to take the wagon out . . . no one to make anyone come back and someone else to make the dinner . . .bliss. . . too bad it ever had to end . . .
