Friday, August 8, 2014

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My wife, Ms. 8, and I will be returning today to Sherwood Cottage from central Iowa, where we have been this week. It is the place where my father grew up and where his mother and several of my cousins and other relations yet live. Being there for a simple visit, rather than for a funeral or a wedding, is not a bad experience. The weather has been quite good, and the food to be had is plentiful and of high quality. (Visit the Amana colonies. Have the pork chop. Drink Millstream.) And a bit of not having to run at full tilt was not unwelcome.

Such am I, however, that even amid the time with family and at the table, my mind was much on the work I have to do and upon The Work that calls to me always. I suppose it makes of me a poor family man that my attention, except for bouts of taking care of Ms. 8, was so much divided. (And even the care of my daughter was not so intensive. Great-grandmothers and aunts do wonders.) Perhaps it points to deeper problems altogether. Or perhaps it is simply a mark my studies have placed upon me. It matters little.

I have come to the conclusion that I do not belong too far out in the countryside. Iowa farmlands can hardly be called nature, as they are quite settled and as bent to human need and desire as anything not paved over can be, but they are very much not the comfortingly enclosed book-lined walls in which I thrive. They are needful and worthy--I am not the sort of scholar who holds in contempt those who work with their hands--but they are not for me to walk. They are not for me to till. I am not so optimistic as to do well upon them.

That is what seems to me to be present in much of my family, more connected to farming country and agriculture than I ever have been: optimism. They have in large measure a quiet assurance that all will be well, and I have long since found myself unable to muster it for more than a few brief moments at a time. They seem to have done so from the womb, so I must wonder what it is in my makeup that vitiates against doing so. Whence it comes, I know not, but I have to wonder nonetheless if I am missing something through not having it. I have to wonder if I am missing something from not having bidden things grow from the ground and had my bidding answered...

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