The View From Here

When we first got to Texas I felt like I had been plucked out of my natural habitat and dropped onto the set of an old western movie. I am just now starting to feel settled in the way that only a family can do.

I still spend hours every day feeding this newest member of our family, but the fact that she is two months old now blows my mind. I sit in the corner of the sofa, snuggled up to this little person who smells like the most beautiful thing you could imagine, even after she’s pooped and spit up all day long. I sometimes wish I smelled like her.

I’ve planned and prepared to plant the herb garden for at least a month, and it still hasn’t happened. Maybe this week, once Papa puts up the last of the pallet fence and it can be safe, at least from the longhorns.

We butchered our cow a couple of weeks ago. The simple truth, as I see it now, is that you really can’t fully appreciate the food given to you unless you know it in some personal way – the soil it grew from, the red coat that covered its flesh, the drought it lived through. I think we may be starting to get a glimpse at the real gratitude you can have for your provisions when what once bought 1.5 days of food has to buy two weeks of food.

And right then, when you think all you’ll be eating is eggs and potatoes for weeks, 200 pounds of cow is either canned by generous neighbors or stored in a solar freezer, boxes of food show up at your door from family members willing to ship them, and neighbors with beautiful and bountiful gardens let you pick all of the lettuce and collards you can carry home.

Yes, friends, I could get used to the view from here.