Just Fine

Summer is ticking by. The rain stopped for a few days, then returned with renewed vigor in a series of hammering downpours. This morning – right now – it is clear, and I am stalling for time before morning milking, waiting until the sun is high enough to reach the fence post where I halter Pip. I need the sun. We all do.

Our older boy got his driver’s permit, and we travel the back roads, starting and stopping and swerving at my command, and I think about learning to drive myself, more than 30 years ago now. God. It’s been three decades since I was my boy’s age. It seems like such deep well of time but I know it’s not. I think about him at 45, myself at 75, and it feels impossible, like a feat we can’t achieve.

Yesterday, he stalled in the middle of the steepest hill in town, and I thought for sure I’d have to be the one to get the car going again (it’s a manual transmission), but on the second try, we were off again, and by the time we made the top of the climb, I figured everything will probably work out just fine.