just a wisp of a dream

Last night the rain came down, hard, and I had my new Chinese lantern lights up in the north window and I fell asleep to the water falling like music. It had been a full shift at work, good weather always means full shift at the store. My little niche has been carved out there. I make good food, I smile at everyone and in my way draw the customers out, asking about where they are from or where they are going. It's the shop-girl persona of my youth, when people would arrive at the farm and a thirteen year old tomboy with long skinny legs and goofy teeth and big wavy hair would tumble out of the front door of our old house and greet the people from away.

My specialty is greeting people from away. My whole life I've thought of myself as an ambassador. First for the farm, for Maine, for my small town, and now twenty years later it's the redux: I'm representing Byron and that is important.

The people I meet at work! The faces, the fancy SUV's, the experienced gold panners, the newbies, the folks who come to camp regular, the folks who come a week a year.

In this job, I don't get paid much, but the experience is joyful even if my feet hurt at the end of a long day.

And through this job I found a new job, a temporary job. The dream farm, my dream farm? It's occupied right now, by cousins, cousins of the owners, cousins from France with little children. And these cousins heard that I was good with children, and spoke French, and would I please come and be there for an afternoon so the adults could get away?

Of course, of course! I will see the inside of the dream farm! I will explore it with the children, and walk the grounds, and maybe find the old abandoned house from which the Provenchers all sprung. The erudite, tall, distinguished cousin told me the main house was last updated in 1915!

A dream, a wisp of a dream, unfurling this summer. Me and the dream farm. I don't want to own it, I just want to see it, breathe it in, photograph it, feel the ghosts.