I'm Not That Old

I'm not that old.

I just have a really good memory.

I was very young when I first saw the red deer of summer. It was a long time ago in the northern farm country of Minnesota. Seven deer were standing together.....looking at us and listening with their ears raised high. Their redness was a stark contrast to the green of the clover and alfalfa and the darker green woods behind them. I knew immediately that they were special beings because they were so beautiful and so fearless. They moved with grace and dignity--alert, but not alarmed.

My father put me up on his shoulders so I could see them better. Some of the deer fluttered their white tails then, flickering a higher state of alert. The deer were talking to each other.

He held me steady and we stood very still for a while as the deer watched us. "Those are the red deer of summer," he said softly.

He seemed to say it with a certain amount of pride. I remember wondering if the deer belonged to us.

I held on tight and watched them slowly moving across the field. The setting sun lit them bright against the dark trees. I liked them. It was good to be who I was, sitting on my father's strong shoulders, the setting sun warm on my back, watching the deer on our own land. "Are they our deer?" I asked.

He shook his head. "No. They're free deer. They go where they like."

"Do they like us?"

"I think so." He put me down and we started back toward the house. "They're bold now. Nobody hunts them now and they can outrun anything that chases them. Sometimes dogs and coyotes get them in the spring, when the snow is deep and crusted over and the dogs can run on top and the deer break through.....but now......they can outrun anything and they know it."

We walked back through the thick clover until we hit the cornfield and then walked in the dark warm smell of the tall corn rows to the grove of trees around the house. The cows were gathered at the back of the barn, switching their tails at flies--waiting. They were large and clumsy compared to the deer. They were not free cows. They were our cows. We would milk them by hand and separate the milk from the cream. The skim milk we would mix with feed for the pigs, and the cream we would sell to the creamery in town.

Of course, I was too young to know much about all that. I watched my mom and dad as they milked the cows and wished I could milk a cow. My dad could turn the cow's teat to the side and squirt milk about six feet. He could aim it at the cats and they would sit up and drink from the stream of milk as it shot through the air. It looked like fun to milk a cow.

Those were happy days. The future was bright and held limitless promise. I had no idea how poor we were, and, in reality......we were no poorer than most of the people we knew. Most of us, as I look back on it, probably thought we were quite lucky......doing quite well actually. This, of course, was before television came to teach us how little we had and how much more there was to want.