31 Day Challenge: Memory Fields

It's October. For weeks I have watched the tobacco fields  slowly disappearing from the ground up. The beautiful gold and greens which once held hands across the earth now hiccup across the fields. And one day, you blink and the field is bare. Only stalks remain, raggedy stems that were stripped of their clothes. Some still have little flower hats that had not been tipped and topped off earlier, almost like the matriarchs keeping watch over their families. They stand tall, watching over their flock. I miss them. I speak of the fields as if they were old friends...But the friends are gone and I am not. 

Such sweet sadness lays in the corners of my heart. The corners which I didn't even know I had. This little girl from the Queen City now soaks in the wide open spaces and cows and corn as if it were in her blood. And, it is. The love of the land was passed from father to daughter who turned into a mother who had her own daughter...A daughter who wants the tobacco to always stay and moms to never grow old and Nanas to never leave for heaven. A daughter who married a mountain man and had a boy who eats boogers and a baby girl who was a fleshed out picture of God's grace and restoring. I don't want to forget who I am right this minute passing these tobacco fields, and I don't want to forget the fields I've passed that brought me to this moment. 

So, for the rest of October, I'm reliving my fields. I'm sharing my story. Each day will be a year of harvested memories, starting as early as I can remember. And one day, I want to gather in my big basket heart and mind the stories of my mom and dad. For Jonah Riley. For Madison Grace Anne. For the legacy that brought me here and the legacy that I will leave. 

Feel free to drive by my fields each day, and I urge you to remember who you are and Whose you are.



I absolutely have to tell you that I can't take any credit for the prompting of pondering a legacy. Jen at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam is participating in the 31 days series, and I'm looking forward to following her journey of being a mentoring mom! Someone like me needs people like her who are willing to be honest and share pearls of truth. Several other bloggers I will be following include The Nester and Emily at Chatting at the Sky. There are so many talented women out there that I can't possibly list them all. Go to The Nester to get an exhaustive list of bloggers to follow for the month of October!!