Bittersweet

I got the check from my father today. It's an exciting day, I have never seen a check for this much money before and I am so very grateful for it. The check is from an account that my parents shared and because checks are so rarely used anymore, this one still have my mom's name on it as well. It is both eerie and appropriate. The note my father enclosed invokes my mother as well and I become teary reading it. As much as my parents, and now my father, have annoyed me over the years, I have no doubt of their love for me and their desire for me to do well and be happy. This goatventure that I am on with the help of my family and friends feels strangely rooted in my childhood. The most rural time in New Hampshire. When we first got a goat ourselves. My mother made clothes for me. We had a big vegetable garden and she made pickles, granola, yogurt, and jam. We made tortillas together as a family and the filling always takes me back. We picked blackberries and in the spring we tapped the maple trees and my father made maple syrup over a wood-burning stove in front of the barn/garage. Our cat had kittens in a dresser drawer and the old lady down the road a field that had hay bales in it every year. My brother and the neighbor kids (there were a few) adventured into woods following stone walls made in seemingly ancient times. We tasted clover and rubbed buttercups on ourselves for the heck of it. Looking back it was such an innocent and simple time for me as a kid and I think there is a part of me that is seeking that simplicity again in this venture. And in some ways a connection back to a time when I unabashedly loved my parents and needed their protection and security. When I felt safe and secure. It's so strange what all a simple check in the mail can bring up.