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Knowing |
| Written by Lane | |
| Saturday, 15 March 2008 | |
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Share it:      Knowing...
Jane came in from the fields, filthy dirty and dead tired. Trying to make this old farm work was sure a hell of a lot of work. The urge to just run still grabbed her now and then, but she was finally starting to think of this old patch of dirt as hers. Just now all she could think of was a clean wash cloth and a cold glass of anything. The wash cloth came through, but all the fridge had to offer was some left over mac & cheese along with a cartoon of milk whose use by date had come and gone a week ago. She settled for a glass of cool well water and collapsed onto the old porch swing, thanking god for the light western breeze finally starting to blow and for the setting sun that was taking its heat with it over the western horizon. Jane settled her right arm on the empty seat beside her and let the familiar ache wash over her. It was still as deep as ever, but now it was more like an old friend she welcomed in than the bitter enemy it had been in the beginning.
It had been 15 months on her own now. She still only managed to make it into what passed for a town in this part of the country about once a month. Too many people still dropped their eyes when the passed her by or tried to stop and ask how she was doing and if she needed anything, was she getting by okay? Hell yeah she was okay!! Just as long as she didn't think about JD too much or remember how life had been the three years they had been together...making this old farmhouse a home. When that happened, entire days seamed to slip by, and that was something an old farm did not look kindly upon.
It didn't make a difference that JD and her never made things official. Everything they had done had been together, a full partnership. A full half of this place had belonged to her, paid for with the money her mother had left...the other half was JD's, money he had scraped together for his dream. It hadn't mattered that he was a decade older, that she hadn't been his first love...just that together they seemed as one. While the dream to own a farm had started as his, Jane had taken it to heart. Just listening to him talk about quiet evenings on the porch watching storms roll in over the plains. Knowing that every dime they made was earned by their own sweat and pain. And making love under the stars...oh how great those three years had been, truly it now seemed like the most perfect of dreams.
Now the work that they used to share was hers alone, the dream they used to live was hers to own, and the life they thought to grow was hers to sow. The horses looked to her to bring the oats in the morning. It was her job to make sure the gas tanks stayed full of diesel. If the lawn was gonna get mowed, it was sure as hell not gonna get done unless she managed to find the time. In the beginning the weight of it had nearly drowned her. Early on , it seemed entirely hopeless that she could make a go of anything. It was only some perceived responsibility to JD that made her get up and give it a shot. At first, the weariness was the only thing that would take away the tears. The bills and the weather and the ground gave her no time to think about what was. The blisters, the broken axles and the weeds gave her more than enough to worry about. These distractions from the real paind made her put everything into the dust and dirt. Made her work the eighteen hours at a stretch just to fade into oblivion each night. But now that she could fix fence in her sleep, grease the tractor blind folded and was used to getting up at the crack of dawn to check the horses before cranking up the Deere...the heartache was seeping back in.
What was difference this time around...different than those first few god awful lonely weeks...was that she now knew what she was capable of. She knew that tears would dry up in the face of living...she knew that more blister busting, back aching, joyous hard work was just a six hour sleep away...she knew that fields had no care for crying eyes or lonely hearts. And she now knew the meaning of tough...and she knew that she was it. Copyright 2008 Lane |
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