The men excuse themselves, out to be with their flocks by night, covering in dirty jackets and boots. The women move to do the dishes, divvying leftovers for all the households and putting bones and scraps in an ice cream pail for the farm dogs. We cousins occupy ourselves. Someone starts the coffeepot and I skip around the living room chanting a new song:
Just as they’d been told.
Just as they’d been told.
And they found it all—
just as they’d been told.
In half an hour the men come back, the chores quicker with four sets of hands, knocking snow off their boots and wiping their steamed glasses. Grandpa is still out—finishing some last task. The adults pour coffee and duck into the bathroom to change diapers. Then, Uncle Jeff stops everyone, Grandma in mid-wipe with the flour sack towel dangling from a casserole dish, we cousins weaving through legs and crawling around the floors: “Listen! I think I hear the sleigh bells.”
Six little heads swivel and listen. Jeff points, his wavy hair tan like Dad’s: “Maybe out the window!” Six small bodies clamber onto the couch and invade the curtains. Dark. Snow. The line of pine trees black against the far gravel road, the space in between empty like the sea at night. Dad calls, winking at Jeff, “I think I hear them too—better check the bedroom.” We jump and tumble through the living room, Sara’s foot gets smashed, she wails, we stomp and batter back to the bedroom. While we’re away someone thumps on the hallway wall. “The roof! That must be the reindeer!” Frothed and vibrating like atoms waiting to be split, our arms and legs are stiff with adrenaline, little fists balled at the ends of our now-too-warm pajamas.
The door smacks. “ho, ho, Hooooo!” Squealing, bumping. “Are there any kids in here or have they all gone to bed?” We scream in response and careen like water bugs, knotting up in ourselves. Father Christmas clomps through the kitchen with his pillowcase bag over his shoulder. He steps into the living room where we are wide-eyed and humming. We’ve been good and we’re desperate for the affirmation.
A few minutes after Santa leaves, Grandpa stomps back in, buzzing his lips and shaking his hair. “Sorry I took so long!”
We burst between the wrapped boxes and run to the kitchen shouting. “Santa came!” “He brought me a present!” “He was fat for the chimney, Papa!” “Santa came!”
“Oh, I’m sorry I missed him. Maybe I’ll get to see him next year.” Grandpa smiles over his thin teeth. We surge back into the living room and settle in our family clusters, the adults on chairs and couches, we cousins on the floor, the moms on the edges of cushions, ready to help with tape or ribbons.
Grandpa settles back in his armchair, a mug of coffee on the table next to him, and watches his brood: his wife, his sons, his daughters, his daughters-in-law, his son-in-law, his grandsons, his granddaughters. Sits back, the father, the giver of gifts, and watches over.
That spring, Megan and Mindy were in the barn when the pigs got out. A fence latch supernaturally slipped, or wasn’t shut tightly enough, and the hundred-pound sows surged from the pens, rioting and shrieking.
Dad shoved through them, his calves crushed between heaving bellies. Mindy yelled, “Daddy! Daddy!” her arms outstretched, while Megan’s eyes welled under her bonnet, panic freezing her elbows rigid.
He had brought them to the barn, something unusual—had taken them out to be with him. Whether it was an action of love to be near his daughters or a necessary duty to help Mom now that Grandma had moved out of town, I don’t know.
Grandma and Grandpa had moved off their farm, after years of losing money, when Grandpa found a bank for sale in Rockford and decided to gamble on a new life. Though the bank was in a town of only 2,500 and Grandpa was learning the trade hands on, business was going well. He had no trouble relating to the farmer clientele, and everyone needed loans. My parents included. To try to make ends meet, they’d bought a second farm to rent out. But that wasn’t enough. Eventually, Dad started selling insurance from a desk in the bank lobby 50 miles away. Several days a week, he would get up in the mornings, haul feed and clean a couple stalls, then walk back to the house to shower and put on his brown suit and tie in time to be in the boardroom by 8:30. The days in between were crowded, hectic, and it may have been easier to overlook details like pen latches.
When Dad reached Meg and Mindy, their fists clenched his jacket and he scooped them up in his arms like lambs. They clung to him as he wrenched his legs through the churning sea of pigs. He’d left them standing on a low ledge when he’d brought them to the barn, a precarious place for three-year-olds—a corner above a concrete floor. The danger of the height had kept them from being crushed.
Dad left the livestock spurting from the pens and brought Megan and Mindy to the house. Mom was excavating the cupboards for her canning supplies, preparing to stretch the garden produce as far into the winter as possible. Meg and Mindy ran for her when Dad set them down. “Call Jeff and have him come fast as he can,” he said. “The pigs are out.” Megan and Mindy were stunned. I stood in the living room and watched Dad rush back out to the barn.
By the time the hog-flood was dammed, Mom had no use for her Mason jars and six piglets had been trampled. It was clear something important had been protected, but things had also been lost. No one was ungrateful, but in the choice between hard work and Provision, it wasn’t clear to me who had failed.
One clouded, fall afternoon I crouched at the backyard stump overturning wet wood dust to find dry underneath. Meg and Mindy were inside with Mom and I had bounded out to the stump in my spring jacket, exhilarated by the blue nylon hood gathered around my face and the cool air on my cheeks. I liked being alone, with no big sister responsibilities, free to touch and absorb the world rather than to give and interpret.
As I wondered at the airy sawdust just below the springy wet surface, Dad walked across the yard from the barn, his face a tanned triangle under his green hat. I was surprised when he stopped in the yard. I saw him often enough: he spent most of his days just feet from the house where we girls did crafts and made cookies, but he worked with the pigs or tractors alone. We only interacted on my ground—in the kitchen, at bedtime in my room, or over dinner—never on his. We shared atmosphere but not space, like two lions naturally distant from each other precisely because we were the same species.
When he came close, he asked if I wanted to swing. I nodded and ran across the yard with my fingers in fists and my arms swishing against the coat, the lining crinkling in my ears. I wrapped dimpled fingers around the cool chains and Dad stood close and gave me a push. He smelled like pigs and dust. On the backswing he grabbed the chains and ran alongside while he pushed, then he thrust his arms up and let me go in the sky.
After a couple flights, he slowed me down and my feet skidded on the dirt under the swing, my toes wiping the soil crumbles back and forth as the seat swayed. He squinted up at the sky and watched a line of geese flash over the yard, arrow across the field, and sail toward the distant trees. I watched him look at the birds. He looked back down from the sky, his eyes still squinted at the corners: “What do you say we walk to the woods? See what’s out there?”
The woods were behind the house, a crease in the rippling fields, locked in by acres of worked land. The only way to them was to walk over the fields. I was not allowed near the field that bordered the yard, but at harvest time, yellow cornstalks flew from the combine into the grass and became my brooms and magic wands. I played with them around my stump, knocking the stalks against its sides and tracing the tangled grooves in its weathered flank with tips of leaves. I nodded and we started across the grass, his crusted boots and my pink tennies.
I kicked the leaves as we walked and spattered my shoes with the leftover rainwater locking the leaves together. The field ahead of us was grooved like God had raked it. At the edge of the yard, tufts of seeded grass perforated the line between, marking the boundary. Dad stepped cleanly over them and the seeds caught on my corduroys. When we stepped into the field, my knees pumped and lifted up and down the waves of soil while Dad’s boots skimmed