During the late 70’s, my family moved from town to a five acre hobby farm.

A neighboring family lived about a quarter mile up the road. Real animal lovers, they kept 7 house dogs in varying sizes, had a stable of six or so horses, and their chicken population grew steadily because they didn’t have the heart to butcher the birds. Roosters crowed from dawn until dusk, eliminating any need for an alarm clock. The neighbors also kept a couple of pigs.

In late winter or early spring, before we moved to the farm, one of the neighbors’ pigs had been born with crippled back legs. When the mother pushed it away, the neighbors quickly rescued the piglet and bottle-fed it until it was weaned. Then they let it have the run of their yard. The pig’s crippled legs kept if from running too fast but even so, one day in the early summer, the piglet disappeared. Although the neighbors looked high and low for it, they couldn’t find it. They figured they had seen the last of the little piglet.

Behind our hobby farm was a slough bordered on the south by our neighbors’ cornfield. My husband couldn’t wait for October 16, the opening day of pheasant season. At the time if a farmer didn’t post a no-hunting, no-trespassing sign, hunters were able to enter open or unfenced areas without first obtaining permission.

Wouldn’t you know it? On October 15, we had the first blizzard of a winter that would become the worst Minnesota winter in 30 years. The snow was still coming down on the 16th, but my husband was undaunted. He put on his gear and he and his golden lab went out to hunt the slough. There were no pheasants in the slough though; the heavy snow had driven them to seek shelter in the cornfield.

My husband didn’t get too far into the cornfield before he heard his dog barking, accompanied by squealing such as he had never heard before!

The squealer was the neighbor’s pig! Because its crippled hind legs had never matured, it had to sort of walk-crawl to make its way around. It was no longer a little pig since it had spent most of the summer in the cornfield. In fact, my husband said it was one of the biggest pigs he had ever seen. There was no way the pig was going to get out of that cornfield on its own!

My husband drove up to ask our neighbors, if they knew who owned the pig. Of course they did. It was their pig! So back they all came- Mr., Mrs., and their three kids. The neighbors brought a toboggan with them, shoved it under the pig, and pulled it out of the slough. Then they had to walk the quarter mile home through a foot of newly fallen, unplowed snow, pulling the pig along on the toboggan. Their parade made quite the comical site!

We were lucky to make it to town and back most days of that snowy winter. We didn’t see our neighbors again until spring. When next he encountered them, my husband asked what had become of the pig. They told him that soon after they had brought the pig into their house, it had developed pneumonia and died. They buried him in the cornfield.

Yesterday a comment by a reader of Blogging for Bitter Women made me remember the day I wanted to do cartwheels in the parking lot. The reader (another Linda!) commented that if she had superpowers one of them would be to cartwheel down the street. I’m with her. In fact there was one day when that is exactly what I wanted to do!

My daughter’s first day of nursery school. My son was safely tucked away in first grade which meant, after I dropped my daughter off at nursery school, I had three whole hours to myself. I had to get something at K-Mart. I don’t remember what because I didn’t buy a thing that day. When I stepped out of my car, I suddenly realized that for the first time in six years I had no car seat to unbuckle and no sweaty little palm clinging to mine… or more to the point, no reason for my sweaty big palm to latch on to a sweaty little one.

There was more than spring to my step. I could actually visualize myself doing cartwheels in the parking lot, but I didn’t. I was worried that my post-partem physique would land flat on its face if I tried. So instead I went into K-Mart and browsed. I spent an hour looking at the latest magazines and best sellers. Then, with no little-bull-in-a-china-shop in tow, I headed over to the gift section and delighted myself with the intricacies of K-Mart knick-knacks for another hour. Next I went over and looked at clothes for me! However, time ran short. Nursery school was soon over for the day and I had to pick up my daughter and be a mom again.

These days I look back on that day and the memory still refreshes me. Yet, sometimes I miss those sweaty little palms.

As I sit here tonight and watch the new star that I have found in the heavens, memories collide and I am reminded of a sweaty little palm that held tightly onto my hand, a palm that, too quickly, slipped from my grasp.

That star probably isn’t really a new star, but I am sure that I have never seen it before. It shines brightly and steadily, just to the left of the crescent moon. It shines as if it had a message for me. “Don’t worry,” it says, “No more stops, Mom. I’m home.”

Reason tells me that the words are only memory, but my heart is sure that it recognizes the star. I have been talking to that star for a long time, since the first time I felt it flutter in my swelling belly—

“Okay, little one, just one more stop and we’ll go home and rest,” I said as I walked through the doorway to Sears. Behind me, another customer couldn’t help but chuckle as he inquired, “Do you think he really hears you?”

I laughed, too and replied, “I don’t know if he does or not, but right now, it’s the only way I have to tell him I love him.”

I have loved him for a long time, since the first tiny flutter that told me he was truly there and alive. I think it was only then that I believed he would eventually come into existence. I picked up my order that day, went home and set-up the new bassinet. While I worked, I talked to my baby boy.

I talked to him all that summer as his small body grew and moved inside mine. Then on September 5, 1975, I was struck dumb as I held this miracle of life in my arms for the first time. Soon, though, I found my tongue and continued talking to Lance Quincy Paquette. I talked to him for the next 21 years. Sometime, during that period, I even learned to talk with him. The last time was on March 30, 1997. He called home from Fort Polk, Louisiana that Sunday to ask me how to keep score at Gin Rummy. I treasure that call, knowing that it was just a way to reach out and hear, “I love you, Son,” and reply, “I love you, too, Mom.”

Two days later, I learned that I would talk with him no more. I learned that day about the death of an earthly star and the birth of a heavenly one. The miracle of my son is gone. I see him in one bright star that flutters momentarily in the night just as the spark of his new life fluttered inside me so many years ago.

I talk to the star.

Creeks and wooded walkways had all been explored.

Forts were built and dismantled; some were rebuilt and some were abandoned.

The days were hot, too hot for outdoor play, and so after supper we all went out into the dusk to reconnect our friendships with backyard (and front-yard) games.

• No Ghosts Are Out Tonight.
• Hide and Seek.
• Freeze Tag.
• Statues, although Statues was forbidden—(”You’re gonna pull someone’s arm right out of the socket” “You’re gonna fling someone right into a tree, if you’re not careful”)

The dusk would deepen into night and we could be seen coming out of our houses with blankets and pillows, preparing for one more ’sleep out’. We would lay under the stars laughing and giggling at the corny jokes we had heard and retold, deliciously shivering in mock-fear of local ghost stories and urban legends; the next one of us trying to outdo the last one. Finally, we would all climb into our bedrolls with sleepy eyes and try to pick out the constellations above as sleep picked us off one by one.

In the morning, we would wake up waterlogged with dew and trundle back into our houses where comfortable beds invited us to sleep in. Later there would be time to plan and play through the day. Later we would each find activities that would push back thoughts of the Labor Day Holiday that was both the advent of a new school year and the epitaph of summer.

The day had been humid, hot, and long. Warm skin tingled in the grasp of the cool night air. A million stars beckoned to my imagination. All senses acutely alive, I listened for the sounds of the night and heard the laughter of neighborhood youngsters; voices kindred to those of my children so many years ago.

For just a moment, I wished the nostalgic wish that occasionally crosses every grandma’s mind. I wished that I could go back in time and hear the youthful voices of my children and their friends one more time.

“More time,” I thought. “What would you do if you could have more time?” Of course, I don’t know. I can only hope that I would spend it more wisely than I did before. I hope that—

• I would spend more time provoking their laughter and less time stifling their tears;
• More time praising their virtues and less time picking at their faults;
• More time enjoying their present and less time fretting about their future.

For the truth is, we don’t get to keep them forever. In fact, sometimes we don’t get to keep them at all.