Everyone has an opinion, ya know? Recently, our third son Atticus (pictured above), critiqued our Instagram content. “It’s getting stale,” he said in that blithe manner typical of an apartment dweller with three houseplants. “No interesting stories,” he said, “and you posted four photos of Heather in a row.”
Read moreMuck and Mire
Two years ago, when my father-in-law got in trouble with a knee replacement, we found ourselves making frequent trips to visit him. We had closed on this agricultural property by then but hadn’t yet made any concrete plans for the future. You can imagine how we suddenly paid very close attention to all the farms we passed en route through Iowa and Illinois. We wondered about furrows, and the uniform distance between them. We noticed flags on the sides of some Harvestores, but not others. We took note of fencing and pole barns. But mostly, we stared at the miles of farmland underwater.
Read moreOwning Up
This is a three-part story that really has nothing to do with the pretty photo above until the very end.
Many years ago, I took my young nephew to see Thomas the Tank Engine, a horrid film made expressly to lull adults to sleep. Which is exactly what I did. Who knows how long I’d nodded off but something startled me awake, and good thing too, as my little nephew had disappeared from his seat next to me. Nothing ruins a nap like a missing child.
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