Homeward Bound

My Dearest Husband,

We have begun the long trip back home to the West. I just hope you are there to greet us! Bron has spent so little time with his Father! Now that you have defeated the evil, we long to have you with us!

However, I know what you do is important, and I will not bother you with our what must seem boring and trivial lives. Know that my not harassing you does not reflect a loss of love, but rather a strengthening of it! We will endeavor to make the farm a hale and hearty home for you to come back to!

I will share with you a story that was shared with me by a priest in Timiro to remind you of your true place.

And on the 8th day, Ra looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a caretaker”

— so Ra made a Farmer.

Ra said, “I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the town”

— so Ra made a Farmer.

“I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild; somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous tools, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife’s done feeding visiting ladies, then tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon — and mean it”

— so Ra made a Farmer.

Ra said, “I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt, and watch it die, then dry his eyes and say, ‘Maybe next year.’ I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of wood, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps; who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, and then pain’n from oxen back,’ put in another seventy-two hours”

— so Ra made a Farmer.

Ra had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds, and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor’s place

— so Ra made a Farmer.

Ra said, “I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his plow for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark.”

It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not cut corners; somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week’s work with a five-mile drive to temple; somebody who would bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh, and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says that he wants to spend his life “doing what dad does”

— so Ra made a Farmer.

Know that you are cared about-

Your Loving Wife Crystal

Sent on the 28th of Thoth, in the 25th year of Emperor Voelkian Itomas II

Picture from Piepkorn Photography .

Speech stolen from the inspiring Paul Harvey