This essay was first published on the Plough.com on 16 February 2024
On a typical morning in my childhood, I wake and trudge down to the barn to help Dad with the farm chores: chickens, two horses, a milk cow, a dog, a pig or two. I am often conveniently fifteen minutes late. When we arrive back at the house, Dad, who is a pastor and instructed by the Bible to be grave and temperate, is making up songs about jumping ditches and losing his britches. My sisters are glaring at him because they dislike mornings and say it hurts to laugh before 10 a.m., but his zany humor wins the contest and they smile, if reluctantly.
The older boys have packed their lunch for the day of work. I sit at the table, between my next older brother and my next younger sister. There is cereal, buttered toast, and eggs most mornings, maybe two pieces of bacon or sausage for everyone. Everybody communicates in monosyllabic grunts. My older brother yawns, stretching to bump me on the head with his forearm. He does this every morning on purpose. After breakfast, there are family devotions (the boys eyeing the clock), and then we part ways for the day’s work.
Continue reading this essay on the Plough.
(Publishing rights do not allow me to re-publish the essay here. It’s just as well, however, because it will give you an opportunity to meet the Plough. Dig around over there, subscribe to the print magazine. It will be worth your time. They are not paying me to say this.)