An austere clarity

Word arrived yesterday that the stone memorial for the family farm we sold last year in Iowa has finally been placed.  That -- and knowing a family reunion's coming up, and I'm unable to attend -- is making me a little sad today.

Addicted as I am to the mountains and the sea, I couldn't have imagined living there, but I found the starkness of those bare flat lands hauntingly beautiful, and I'm grateful the austere clarity of that life still echoes in the souls of my husband and our daughters.