Another wonderful gem from Ann Voskamp: How You Can Keep On Hoping for What Seems Impossible

Never got over this…
So if you turned right after Clappison’s Corner and drove real slow around the potholes, you might see it?

Sneeze or blink, and yeah, you might not.

But it’s there on the top of a mossy stake, pointing the way you gotta take, either way: Hope.

You don’t want to know where all the other roads lead.

Just down the road from Centerton, thats’s where my Dad grew up on a dairy farm.

Right around the corner from the Dykstra’s* dairy farm. Hank Dykstra had seven kids and a heart attack. Fell over dead to this world and alive to the next when their oldest boy, Richard, was only 14.Sometimes people are so quiet and brave, we forget that they are suffering.

Sometimes people are so quiet and brave, we forget that they are suffering.

 

My Dad and Richard Dysktra were both farm boys about to start high school when Richard took over the farm and helped his mom raise the six other kids and milk 40 Holstein cows morning and night, 365 days of the year.

Dad said the high school bus would wait at the end of the lane for Richard and Dad would watch the door of the barn to see if Richard was coming from his cows to class. That only happened less than a handful times a month.

Because sometimes the road you’re on is more important than the bus waiting out on the road that someone else says you have to take.

My Dad grew up milking cows and growing corn, got married at 24, and bought a farm 3 hours west of Centerton.

Richard Dyskstra grew up milking cows, raised up his 4 brothers and 2 sisters, got married at 37, and bought a farm 3 hours east of Centerton.

6 long hours of unwinding road now stretched between the two neighbour farm boys and their farms.

You can read the rest here.