He comes barreling up, covered in mud. Grin splitting his face wide open. God’s gift was rain all week just in time for his weekend excursion out to the farm. The farm where he begs to move so he can live with grandfather. I ask if he would miss me, but he says no. Though offers grandly that I can stay at the farm with him if I wish. Nonetheless, here he comes, saturated in mud and wetness from exploring and exploiting every mud puddle within walking distance.
She comes, tugging my hand, begging for a horseback ride. Batman in particular. The horse she claims. And if she’s had her rides in for the day, she keeps dragging grandmother back with her to brush the horses. Knowing she’s not allowed to go on her own. Then asking if she can tell them goodnight as the bonfire dies down.
His proclamations span the farm life. We must feed the cows and ride the tractor and go find daddy and see the ditch and explore the barn. He’s overcome. He gestures wildly with his hands as his brain tries to order his sentences in place so he can accomplish all he has ahead of him this weekend. This youngest of the three, not to be confused with his father.
This is the Vincent farm. This is their joy.
If you haven’t realized from the writing and the fashion and the travel, then let me let you in the worst kept secret. I am not a country girl. Not by a long shot. I am a city girl in every sense of its meaning. Indoors and clean hands and foodie restaurants and traffic and the symphony and high heels. I married a country boy. A man of the land.
His children, our children, have it in them. In their blood. The eldest packed for our trip last Monday. The baby offered to teach me how to drive the tractor. The little lady recoiled when she found out I couldn’t saddle her horse.
But I see the beauty. Even in the midst of my city-ness. I sat stunned at the sunset. Amazed as the colors transformed before my eyes. I listened as my father-in-law shared that the clouded full moon overhead meant rain tomorrow. I smiled as my mother-in-law and I heard the laughter of the children feeding the cows from fields and fields away. The delight so intense that it spiraled through a hundred acres of air.
I see God in the fields. In the sounds. In the silence. In their eyes. I know so much more about the world He made and designed and breathed and envisioned when I sit here drinking coffee on the porch as the sun spikes through the clouds or the rain arrives nearly sideways through the air.
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