She beckons us to burn and offers us roast for remuneration.

Yup, on the crop farm today with my mother-in-law who had sticks for us to pick and toss into a roaring inferno in the ditch. Yup, I wore my overalls and old running shoes, and my mom-in-law guessed correctly that I was dressed for haulin'. She likes to point and sharply yap and bustle about the place, making tidy and decrying bedlam, dandelions, sticks, lazies. She has fake red hair, and stalks about on thick strong legs like Godzilla at home for the weekend yard drill (?). Yup, she sets a solid table, though, and we ate and ate like we bucked bails for years on horse drawn wagons. I think I have some new blisters. I'm not so muscular as those old timey men were. Right now, Mom-in-law's yard is likely shimmering in the Missouri river bottom moonlight. In her categorized fields, the little wee forked corn pokes upward searching for orderliness in order to grow straightlaced. They smile all together. Mom-in-law is rocking in her normal rocker before jumping up to do one last self-assignment before collapse. All is well.

Don't tell anyone in her county, but for Mother's Day, I've a self-mission to undertake the purchase of a delightful bird bath for her. She can haul it (or direct one of her men to haul it) outside her bay window, and she can waste a few minutes each morning in luxurious mesmerization as the little birds play and splash. Perhaps she'll spy in the afternoon as well. Maybe she'll stop her stalk and remember her own childhood in the creek. Yup, Mom-in-law needs a bird bath; a hammock would become an automatic stick gurney for her next order of incineration. Next Sunday, she will pause, perhaps, to know that she is loved like she, self-ascribed, is, and more importantly to her, because of what she still, stringently, does.