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The little girl giggled while the orange and yellow butterfly flitted just out of her pudgy-handed reach, a dancing wonder God had created just for her.
“Ce-Ce, not too far,” her mama’s voice echoed through the spaces of her small world.
The toddler didn’t seem to hear, the opening colors of her universe overwhelming her awakening senses enough to exclude all else. A hopping cricket, a scampering squirrel, a plot of red and yellow tulips beckoning off in the distance--these were her reality of the moment.
And the prairie stretched before me as far as I could see.
The walls of the cabin sucked the air from Celia’s very lungs even as her birthing sister struggled to take her first breath. Finally, the singular newborn cries broke the spell of worried anticipation. Doc Littleton brought out the swaddled bundle to the awaiting 13-yr.-old, who loved this newest member of their family on sight.
“Doc! Something’s wrong!” Pa’s panicked shouts bellowed from behind them . . .
In the days that followed, Pa’s grief gave her as much sorrow as Baby Hope gave her joy. He was shrouded in a leper’s garment, an unapproachable stranger, pitifully ignorant of his needy children. Celia took charge, daily taking the little ones to her favorite meadow, the balm of their innocent play healing her own broken heart.
And the prairie stretched before me as far as I could see.
Celia fingered the pearl-adorned lace at her wrist the same way her mother must have done on her wedding day. Lucas, her new husband, was stabling the horse and buggy while she meandered through the ‘back forty’ of their property, reminiscing and daydreaming. The faint scent of her mother’s cologne, Eu de Wisteria, wafted through the folds of the dress. She closed her eyes and imagined her mother standing next to her, gray-haired and weathered by the sands of time.
“What’s my sweet bride doing out here?” he whispered softly in her ear, his approach muffled by the cobwebs of her mind.
“Just wool-gathering, I suspect,” and she pushed all sad thoughts away to begin her marriage to this, God’s gift to her, this strong and loving man. Arm in arm, they strolled back to their new homestead.
And the prairie stretched before me as far as I could see.
The young woman removed her wide-brimmed straw hat to give the wind permission to blow through her abundant hair, a luxury she rarely indulged in. Stockings and shoes chaperoned this meeting between woman and nature while she twirled around, barefoot, in the soft Spring grass. How freeing to be herself out here, how clean and refreshing to release herself with carefree abandon from staid social dictums, from worries, from life itself. Celia spanned the panoramic tableau surrounding her, raising her gaze by layered degrees until, finally, the horizon greeted her in all of its mysterious grandeur.
“Mom-my, Davie woke up. You want I should pick him up?” and she took one last glance before returning to the homestead, where she was needed almost every moment of her waking hours.
And the prairie stretched before me as far as I could see.
Fifty years have come and gone, all lived on my plains. My gait has slowed, my once thick and luxurious hair now thin and silvered, but my spirit is as spry as ever.
“Where has all the time gone?” I wonder, standing still and quietly viewing the distant horizon.
Although my eyesight has dimmed, I am able to make out the shadows of our children’s and their children’s homes dotting the distant landscape. And, like an age-hewn boulder, I am standing tall and robust in my mind’s eye, my offspring as rocks chipping from my crevices and spilling onto the ground of Celia’s Meadow, my namesake more than any human name-after could be. I know these rocks will scatter farther than I have ever dared, and I will yet live to hear about their adventures to faraway places, those places of my dreams that no longer tempt me to leave.
“Lucas would call me fanciful, were he still alive,” smiling through unshed tears, “but I know what I know, and that’s all there is to it. To look at a thing is much different than seeing a thing, but to see it in all its tainted glory and yet still love it—that is truly seeing.”
And the heavens stretch above me as far as I can see.
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