No talking needed

When I was 17 years old, I spent the summer working on a dairy farm. My mother's friend Kurt had invited me to help out there because his brother was away for the season. I cut the grass, threw hay bales, put away dishes, cleaned out the bulk tank every day, and dipped teats in iodine before milking. I could not have been more content.

The house where I lived with Kurt's elderly parents was a big white four-square with a red roof. Ever since I was a tiny child, I had evaluated farmhouses, deciding which one I would live in when I grew up. After long consideration, I had decided that my house would be white, and it would have a red roof. For that summer, I lived in the home I had been imagining for years, without even realizing it. The house, where Kurt had grown up with his five brothers and sisters, was old and quiet except for the midday meal, when its spacious old dining room filled with people and food. As I climbed the dark wooden stairs to go to bed each night, I felt the walls around me embrace a deep stillness as well as a wild clamor of life, and I wanted that house to teach me to carry both of those qualities within myself.

Today, I have been imagining myself in the yellow kitchen of that house, sitting at the kitchen table and looking out towards the red barn. There are cookies on the counter, and nobody ever worries about how many a person might eat. There is butter on the table, softening in the growing heat, and my eyes light on it as I search for something to say to Kurt's father, who is sitting quietly at the kitchen table with me. Kurt's father has a deep, warm presence just like the farm itself, but he also as quiet as the fields. I want so much to connect with him, and so in my rather awkward way, I tell him that the soft butter will be easy to spread on toast. He agrees with gentle good humor, and the silence reigns again as I scan the room for something else we can talk about together.

In the way of many old farmers, Kurt's father would have been happy to sit in friendly silence together. He did not need to be talking to feel a connection with the people around him. At the time, I was not proficient in that silent language of companionship, and so we limped affectionately through many short discussions of household objects.

Yesterday was the funeral for Kurt's father, and of course I could not go. The white house with a red roof sits locked and empty because Kurt's mother now lives in assisted living. I was grateful that I could sit outside for a long time this morning, listening to the wind in the Maple trees, and feeling the presence of that dear man in the quiet of the fields.