The children and I returned from their week away, my half-week away, visiting my parents. We rolled in close to dinner time, road-weary and a tiny bit cranky. (Okay, only I was a little cranky.)
We checked in on chickens and cats and sheep and dogs and then set to unloading the car as Pete cooked dinner.
Lupine looked down over the garden and paused.
"Mama, I need to see what's happening in the garden. With you."
I declined.
There was work to do.
And I watched, an armload of detritus from the backseat in my arms, as she put on her boots and walked down into the garden to check on the tomatoes and kale, zucchini and beans.
What am I doing?
I emptied my arms and headed through the gate to find her.
We stood there in the fading light picking cherry tomatoes and eyeing cauliflower for another day, our shirts loaded with veggies like distended cloth shopping bags.
I looked out over the cut hay, the sheep, the bee hive, and the veggies. The light was the amber it can only be at dusk in August, and tiny insects like fairies sparkled and swirled about us.
Standing there, beside my girl, I felt my heart might burst.
And I kissed her on the head and said,
"Last year (and the many years before) this was our dream. We imagined this.
Everything we can see. It was what we were wanting.
It was our 'someday.'
And now it's our life."
And she smiled and I smiled and we crammed more tomatoes into our gathered shirts and laughing mouths.
And then I remembered writing this. Three years ago. (Look at that little Lu behind those blossoms!)
And while no, not everything we laid out is solid quite yet, so very much is.
We chose this.
And while the journey here was not without heartbreak, we never stopped believing in this dream.
We wrote this story and then closed our eyes and leapt across the void and into this life.
Love,
Rachel