5 June 2020. Cinde's Prairie.
And pretty close to what she requested, after my suggestion that we make her a place on the prairie..."With some sheep," she said, smiling, adding with delight, "...and some small ponies... And maybe some rabbits..." These wishes being so genuine, who could not grant them? And quite in line with the tenor of the times--her view that animals could be kinder than people. Not always, of course--for there's Jimmy the contrarian, right alongside. Would he prove a good shepherd? Well, that remains to be seen--he may well have something else on his mind today...
Nevertheless, it all fits in with stories past, even when we barely know them. The first and second bottomland, there near the Sappa. Beaver City, with Uncle Dale half-way up the ladder of a windmill, still fixing them at 80. And Aunt Twyla, with a hand so steady that when a letter arrives it looks as if she could still be sitting at a sloping wooden desk in the one-room school...
Dorothy got out quick--not the she didn't carry the memories along inside. Put on her good dress and jumped over the creek--but she still knew from chickens, and when she'd say to me, "You're just a city boy..." I was quick to acknowledge her expertise in the matter. Usually having to do with common sense more than prejudice--although she did like a good steak...
Even Janet retains some of the diction. "We just did the warsh," with that Nebraska "r" tucked in--or the disappearing "l" in a glass of miwlk... But these are small matters, odds and ends, you can leave them on a hook in the mudroom when you take off your boots...
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I flew over once, it was one of those New York to San Francisco flights, with that endless and ever-extended evening light as you gradually make your way west. Looking out the window onto a golden-gray-brown expanse--you could almost see the curvature of the earth--through five miles of mist-filled late-summer air, and somewhere down there, judging from the map, a place I felt I almost knew...
