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A quote: “What’s coming will come and we’ll just have to meet it when it does.” ~~ J. K. Rowling
I’ll start with a story …
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“What a memory, Sam!”
“Son, I might be older than dirt, but I remember my childhood. Sometimes too sharply.”
I leaned forward in my saddle, looking at crumbling buildings as to let Sam have the dignity of wiping away his tears without me staring.
Fallen siding, glassless windows, but I sensed good bones. And the tangled trees hid this high-mountain canyon from sight.
Good.
“Sam, God must have sent you to us because this place will do. I feel much encouraged.”
Sam beamed, “I’ll get my rocking chair on a porch?”
“Indeed, you will. Now let’s go get the families.”
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license
Cameron says: “I think you got the short end of the inheritance,” my friend said. To his surprise I burst out laughing. “What? What’s so funny?”
“All those years I was mad at the old man for taking away my summers and loaning me out to his buddy’s construction companies. Graduating from high school and realizing that I couldn’t afford college so I gave in to his demands and became a carpenter.”
I had to sit down as the laughter overtook me. “This house was why. He never fixed it up because he wanted me to do it and make it mine.”
It’s not much to look at it, but it’s a place to call home. We’ve fixed the essentials — roofs, walls, floors — but the rest we’ll just have to live with while we focus on securing our food supply. Getting the fields plowed and planted, gardens worked, barns, chicken houses and hog houses secure against predators both four-footed and two-footed.
I still think about the people who didn’t make it. The ones who weren’t able to get out before everything came crashing down, and the ones who did, but were able to live a productive life only because of one or another bit of medical science. The little pioneer cemetery has far more new graves than we’d expected when we set out.
But the one I think about the most is the one who doesn’t have a grave, just a memorial stone. My younger sister had been living with hypothyroidism ever since her second kid was born, and she told me straight-up she couldn’t face what was waiting for her when her pills ran out. That’s why she accepted the mission to take out the gang that was coming after us, because all of us knew it was a one-way mission, and this way she’d die a self-sacrificing hero, not a selfish suicide.
I still remember seeing the pillar of smoke and flame rising into the sky, and wishing I could still pray like I did when I was a little kid, when I still thought of the Creator as a person with human-style thoughts and feelings. I sure hope Lil’ Sis was right, because she really deserved a better hand than what life dealt her.
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