Big Sister's Last Summer
a goodbye that wears a different shape on each day of the week
Big Sister Pig had been counting the days, but quietly, and only to herself.
It was her last summer at home. She was eighteen, and at the end of August she was going to head off into the big somewhere — to the city, or to a school, or to a place that had not exactly decided yet what it would be. Her bag was already half packed. The zipper was already a little frayed.
She did not, on most days, talk about it. She just slipped a little earlier into the hayloft. She read a little longer. She put her hand on each horse's nose for one extra second.
Mama noticed. (Mamas always notice.)
But Mama did not push. Mama, instead, baked.
She baked a peach pie on a Tuesday. Big Sister came down, somehow, just as it was cooling.
She baked corn bread on a Thursday. Big Sister came down again.
By Friday Big Sister had begun to wonder, quietly, if her mother was using pie as a kind of homing signal.
On the second-to-last Saturday, the whole family went out to the back field with a quilt and a basket of biscuits. They did not say it was a goodbye picnic, because that would have made it one. They just called it lunch.
Papa told the same three jokes. Mama hummed. Big Brother fixed a fence post on the way back. Middle Brother played something slow on the porch swing. Little Sister braided three different pieces of grass and gave them out as bracelets.
That evening Big Sister climbed up to the hayloft one more time. She sat in her usual corner, with her usual sweater. She did not read.
Below her, the horses moved softly in their stalls. The dog sighed. Somebody — she couldn't tell who — was washing dishes. Somebody else — she couldn't tell who — was laughing.
She closed her eyes. She tried to put it in her pocket: the smell, the dim light, the soft sounds, the whole big quiet thing.
She wasn't sure if it would fit.
But she found, on the way down the ladder, that it had — at least the part she most needed.
She was going to be all right.
And the farm, she knew, would be there when she came back.
It always was.