By: Raven Merz
The sun rose over me early that morning. The time hadn’t changed, but it was ready to. That made me droop a little, because I knew I’d be missing the pitter patter of little feet for at least a few months until the weather heated up.
Speaking of the little feet, no sooner than the sun was up did I feel them rushing toward me, still gentle while moving with urgency. The pressure increased until they were right on top of me, no doubt finding my grass ticklish under those bare little feet. Only at this point did I decide to open my eyes, the buds that had drooped a minute ago perking up, looking at the young towhead with hair that matched the field that stood behind me. She was grinning, the scarce sunlight framing her soft face in shadows. After just a brief moment, she raised her hand to wave. I imagined that she was waving to me, returning with billowing grass.
My delusion was broken when the wind blew my eyes to face the field, where I saw the old man. The hum of his tractor had become like the sound of the wind to me, and I had forgotten he was there. But, there he was, one of those soft, wrinkled hands that often dug in my dirt patch to plant the crops I grew in the air, waving back.
I felt the little tyke moving when he put his hand down, so I decided to look through another blossom, one that was pointed in her direction. I saw her flittering over to the large, heavy bag that the man had left on my edge this morning. She plunged her hand in, emerging with a handful of corn seeds.
Good. I thought. I was wondering if he’d forgotten this year.
More tiny steps, and she was on the left side of my dirt patch. She knew how it went.
With reckless abandon, she dug her hand into the dirt, happily dropping in a few corn seeds and quickly recovering them. With hands so small, the shifting of the dirt was a rough stirring that I needed after recovering from the greens being harvested.
As I watched her bobbing around the patch, I felt a jagged line being formed along my left side, then two more moving further in. I chuckled a little, knowing that she was learning. Many of them would have to be moved to not be too close together, but it wouldn’t be her who did that.
After she was done and was called away by some cousins I didn’t see much of, the early morning was quiet. I could hear some faint joyous yelling in the distance and tried to move my eyes to catch glimpses of the kids playing, but they had always been told to stay away from me if they weren’t working. After they went inside for lunch, I could only hear the animals occasionally braying and mooing and a light breeze.
In the early afternoon, I felt some heavier steps heading toward me with determination. Although the boots approaching me could hurt when they kicked up dirt, his steps were always comforting. He didn’t possess the little tyke’s childish whimsy, but he was stable. I knew things would be done right here. I turned my eye to look at him when I knew he was close.
He made his way to the left of the patch, the grooves of his boots stinging a bit, and got down to a knee without going anywhere near the bag of corn. I could feel the knee press down as he dug his hand into a particularly misplaced patch of dirt and moved it and the seeds underneath in line with the row he’d plowed just last week.
I saw him smile and chuckle a bit.
“Better than she did last year,” was all he said as he moved to correct the other sown seeds.
I smiled a little, too, blooming all of my blossoms fully for him to see.
When he was done, he looked up, seeing my flowers. I saw a brief look of contemplation across his tired face, and he grinned.
More large footsteps, and him getting closer to my eyes than he ever did. I could see the wear on his face, so different from the smooth face I had seen lay me down all those years ago.
It stung a little, and I had to look through a different flower, but he picked one from the stem that all of my blossoms sat on. I’d always wondered where my eyes had come from, and now I wondered where that one was going.
My gaze followed him to the house, where I saw an equally tired, smaller woman. I had seen her a few times before, and his face lit up whenever she came near me. He handed her my blossom, and her face turned the same color as his when he’d been working too long.
The last thing I saw was a small embrace, before they shut the door.
Beautiful, I thought, keeping my gaze on the house. Just beautiful.
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