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By Root 314 0

the Nearings and Papa made a deal with Keith to section off three acres between our two properties for a campground, and the Nearings financed the building of tent platforms and a cook shack. Visitors set up tents to work for us, the Nearings, or Keith and Jean, walking up and down the path in the woods between the three homesteads. Lunch and garden produce were provided in exchange for work, and there’d often be a potluck at Monday Night Meetings. Music, the smell of wood smoke, and voices talking and singing, drifted from the campground in the evenings. From my perch on Papa’s shoulders I could see the fire pit glowing in the dusk and knew that soon the chords of a guitar would join the stars twinkling above.

Screaming in delight, I held tight to Papa’s ears and tightened the grip of my legs around his neck as he flew me across the farm and home for dinner. “Your father has the confidence of a natural athlete,” Skates always told us in that complimentary way reserved for the most important attribute a person could have. It was a confidence you couldn’t help but love. The problem for me was that the more people came to our farm, the more competition I had for his attention. When they came, I forgot why I’d wanted friends so badly in the first place. Mama agreed; she wished everyone would leave us alone.

“Went for the most refreshing swim today—best I’ve had all summer,” Mama wrote on September 27, 1972. “We are trying to get back to normal after a busy hard-working summer. It’s great to be six months pregnant and enjoy all of our usual pleasures thoroughly.”

As well as the friends in the campground, it seemed I would also get that sibling I’d dreamed of for so long. The birth would be at a hospital this time because Eva, the midwife who’d delivered me, wasn’t available. Papa considered doing the delivery himself, as Mama’s grandfather had done for his children, but decided against it when the hospital agreed to a natural birth and to allow Papa in the room, requests that were rarely granted at the time. The fact that her mother was so enthusiastic about a hospital birth made Mama, who preferred to have the baby at home, even madder, though she eased her stance after her father suffered his first heart attack that fall, relieved as she was at his recovery and not wanting to add to his stresses.

“I’ll only stay the required twelve hours,” she stated. “Then I want to come straight home with the baby.” Papa knew better than to argue with a very large pregnant woman.

Our new neighbor Jean was fascinated to hear of my home birth and Mama’s resistance to the hospital. Products of midwestern upbringings and recent military service, Keith and Jean were trying to navigate the strange world to which they now belonged. It wasn’t until after they moved up that the Nearings discovered, much to their not always silent disapproval, that Keith and Jean were “carcass eaters,” as Helen and Scott called nonvegetarians.

The arrival of our new neighbors is perfect timing, Mama thought to herself, despite their carnivorous inclinations. Or maybe Helen planned it that way. Mama had explained to Helen that she wouldn’t be able to do the book work come winter with the new baby, and Papa had been too busy with his own plans to help Scott as much as he used to. They would have to forgo the money earned from the Nearings with the hope that they could make it at the farm stand the next summer. The Nearings needed a new couple to do their bidding, and planning to be away that winter again, they offered discounted land; then Helen asked Keith and Jean to take care of their house and do the paperwork as Mama had done.

The campground was clearing out for the winter, but one hearty soul remained. Brett, a marine biology major with fine carpentry skills, had visited the Nearings with his girlfriend on bicycles the summer before. They’d ridden across the country from Ohio, stayed for a couple weeks to work for the Nearings, and then biked home. During his short stay, Helen asked Brett to bring up our mail—the Nearings’ mailbox being, at that time, the