After a long day of traveling the day before we anticipated taking the morning to sleep in. To make matters even better we found ourselves in the most ideal setting for comfortable relaxation...grandma’s house! My friend and I were making our way to a week long conference in Ames, Iowa and decided to take a few days to visit her grandparents along the way. They lived in a small town surrounded by farms and cornfields. It was the definition of 'quaint'. The main street only had a few shops and a movie theater that looked like it was straight out of the 1950s. Her grandparents had a modest farmhouse tucked away between vast cornfields that stretched in all directions. It was the kind of place city folk have nightmares about, but I thought it was adorable.
This particular morning my friend and I snuggled in under the covers; which happened to be one of her grandmother's handmade quilts. The shades were drawn so not to let the sunlight in and indicate to us how much of the day we’d slept away. Despite our best efforts, my friend’s grandmother let herself in to our room at quarter to seven in the morning to drag us out this warm comfort. Curiously, she did so in the most grandmother of ways by firmly, but gently ushering us. And due to our dreariness we had no sense not to take her direction.
She came in to the room and told us there was something we had to see. She pulled the covers back and started to help us out of bed. Before our feet even touched the ground she had a curtain held open as she pointed out the window. My friend and I stumbled clumsily over and rubbed our eyes so that they’d adjust to the sunlight. Looking outside, we saw the most surreal sight. For a moment I couldn’t register what I was seeing. I felt like I was in a child’s nursery rhyme and should start looking for Mother Goose.
Outside, just in front of the morning mist that lay heavily on the ground, we spotted my friend’s younger cousin parading three young sheep around the property. Maybe it’s because I’m not from the country, but it was a rather unusually sight that has stuck with me. He was a young teenager with straw blond hair. He had black rubber boots on that came to his knees. He carried a staff that came to the top of his head. With the tall boots on he took tall steps, raising his knees up high before placing his foot back carefully on the ground. Behind him trailed three young sheep. They watched him eagerly and followed one by one as he marched between the wishing well and decorative wagon full of flowers in the front lawn. He had no idea we were all watching. And grandma had no intention of being the only one to see this magically moment between a boy and his sheep.
She smiled at us warmly. Noticing the sleepy squint in our eyes she let the curtain fall closed once again and told us there was no need to be up so early. We tucked ourselves back in under the quilts and fell back asleep. It could very well all have been a dream.
