Bridges seemed to me to be appropriate places to dream, to make decisions, to read and write, or to contemplate the wonders of the universe. As I recognized God's guiding hand even upon the water flowing within the creeks' banks, I wondered about my own path. Where might He lead me?

   My favorite bridge was the narrow tractor bridge that Daddy had built of rough, creosoted planks stretched across iron rails fastened into opposing banks of the creek in the middle of our farm. This bridge was the only link connecting the front and the back halves of our property.

   Our farm was shaped like a rectangular serving dish. On the high, front rim along the road stood our canary yellow Victorian farmhouse with its white gingerbread trim on the wraparound porch. We had a large barn, also canary yellow, with a shiny standing-seam roof. Pasture, hay, and cornfields lined the farm's back rim. Through the middle bottomland flowed a marvelous creek which spring rains often sent spilling over its banks, flooding the adjacent, low-lying corn fields with water the color of heavily-creamed coffee.

   Climbing onto a wooden fence rail beside the barn, we would watch the swift current of the rising flood obscuring fence rows and familiar landmarks. And we'd pray that our wire and wood-framed "floodgate" stretched across the creek would protect the bridge from floating debris that might rip it from its moorings.

   Days later, after the flood subsided and the creek was once again contained within its banks, enriching silt would remain atop the bottomland's loam. This soil would grow the season's best corn, unless the flooding had come too late for Daddy to replant. Farming, which always held an element of risk, also required good timing.

   In the summer when the creek flowed clear and smooth, I liked to sit on the tractor bridge if I wasn't helping Mother in the house. Since it had no side rails, I could dangle my legs over its edge and watch the water below washing over stones and pebbles, rounding and polishing them until they became as smooth as robins' eggs. Even in the hottest "dry spell" the water continued its steady, gurgling flow, providing a home for sunfish, minnows, tadpoles, turtles and snakes. I watched and pondered the water's patient polishing of pebbles, likening it in my mind to a poet's polishing of phrases--or to God's allowing this life's stresses to shape and perfect an Eternal soul. And something flowing deep within me recognized a divinely-crafted Plan.

   Sitting on that rough bridge, I also knew in my heart I wanted to be a poet, a writer, more than I wanted to be anything else. I promised myself I'd write for as long as I lived, for as long as the stream flowed. Yet I wondered if I could ever be as consistent as the stream. I wrote sporadically to please my family, my teacher, or a writing contest judge. But could I stay with it through the dry spells and droughts of a lifetime? My attention was all-too-often pulled away from my journal by dragonflies darting above the water's surface, by butterflies flitting among the blue cornflowers, or by birds soaring up into the giant cottonwoods along the steep banks. I listened dreamily to crows cawing raucously across the treetops to their companions. And I watched them swoop and disappear purposefully into berry thickets or cornfields. Oh, to be so focused upon my own purpose!

   But time seemed to pass more quickly when I was writing in my journal. Minutes...hours...whole summers flowed by as I dreamed and wrote on that bridge. Some mornings, as I waited on the bridge with Daddy's water thermos for him and his John Deere tractor to reappear from the far end of a field he was cultivating, I would read Mother's copy of James Whitcomb Riley's Afterwhiles. I could identify with the Hoosier poet's country folk and simple themes.

   Sometimes I would peer down through the space between the bridge's planks to watch the sparkling water as it flowed toward our neighbor's farm. I wondered if I'd be like that particular 75-year old neighbor who, it was said, had never slept a single night in any house other than the very one in which he'd been born. Wonderful and safe as our farm seemed for now, I hoped one day to go far enough not to be able to sleep in my childhood's room.

   An hour or two after dinner (In the country our noon meal was always dinner, not lunch, and the evening meal was supper) when the blazing sun forced my retreat uphill from the bridge to our house, I'd enter the kitchen, journal in hand, with a bit of sweet clover stem I'd been chewing still clenched between my teeth. All the windows would be open in hope of catching any possible breeze. Daddy would be leaving, lunchbox in hand, for his night job as a truck mechanic at Frigidaire.

   Mother, taking a brief rest from her work, would be sitting at her desk in the dining room, counting out the rhythm of her latest poem. She had hundreds of them already. People were forever asking her to "whip up a little something special" to read at the church, the Grange, or somewhere. (And, most likely, two of her sisters in Michigan were similarly occupied sometime during the day with their own poetry and hymn-writing.)

   Grandpa, Mother's father, was usually in his sunny room at the front of our house. With windows on three sides, his room opened onto the wraparound front porch. A retired preacher and schoolmaster, Grandpa sat ramrod straight in a swivel chair at his oak rolltop desk. His ancient Underwood typewriter's clacking echoed through the otherwise-quiet house. He had composed songs, written poems, stories, and scholarly articles. Now, at more than 80 years of age, he was typing his dissertation to earn his doctorate degree in theology.

   The desire to write must flow in our blood!

   But sometimes desire is not enough. Even a child's promise--such as the one I made to myself on the tractor bridge--can clash with financial reality and parental wishes.

   Daddy had attended a Christian college for one year before giving up his dream of becoming a minister. He had then returned home to help his parents who, once he had become big enough to work, had kept him out of high school so often that he graduated three years later than he should have--and then, only because he'd told them he was determined to finish school, even if that meant leaving home to do it. Later he married Mother, who had dreamed of attending college and becoming a teacher like so many in her family. But Mother's dream had ended with eye problems. Her doctor had to advise her parents against allowing her to strain her eyes with studying.

   Although it meant re-mortgaging the farm, my parents wanted me to attend Daddy's alma mater. And, since we didn't personally know any writers earning a dependable living from their writing, and, because my education must lead to immediate "gainful employment" upon graduation, it made sense that I should become a teacher. Teachers were in demand. I could graduate from college, earn a living as a teacher, and, in the process, fulfill their dreams.

   So I promised to become an English teacher.

   When I carried my treasured volume of James Whitcomb Riley's poems to my first scheduled conference with my college adviser, he promptly informed me that Robert Frost's poetry was considered much superior to Riley's. I'd never heard of Robert Frost. No teacher in my high school had mentioned him. But, after recovering from this insult to Riley, my old favorite, I learned that Robert Frost was a farmer-poet, who had been inspired by his mother to be a teacher for his livelihood--just as I had been. I was thrilled, later, when Frost came to our campus and read to us from his poems.

   One time, Frost was questioned about what promises he had referred to in the lines "but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep." He reluctantly, but playfully, answered, "Promises come in two kinds: those I make for myself and those my ancestors made for me--called the social contract."

   I thought I understood something about such promises.

   Thus reminded to take all promises and obligations seriously, when "invited," I joined my college's honorary writing club in which every member promised to read an original composition at each meeting. My compositions certainly qualified as "new," having been completed only minutes before I read them!

   I still had miles to go.

   But my parents were pleased by the several writing awards I received in college. And Daddy lived long enough to see me married and established as an English teacher. In those first years, I almost put aside my writing--until the night after Daddy's death. I didn't want to parade my grief in public. But, at home that night, I wondered whether the floodgate of my soul would be strong enough to hold. I prayed for strength, understanding, and the ability to move past this devastation. And I began to learn how both prayer and writing can help a person bridge troubled waters and to sort through grief, restoring a sense of understanding and peace to the soul.

   Everyone who cared to listen had heard Mother read her poems. But often long periods elapsed during which she heard me read very little of my writing--either the "academic stuff" that I had to write to earn college degrees, or the more "personal stuff" that I shared with almost no one. But one day while Mother was visiting, and my husband and our daughters were away, I took time to read and discuss my work with my mother, the poet.

   For several hours that spring afternoon as my voice rose, fell, hesitated, or choked with emotion, I shared with Mother the ebb-and-flow of my life's writing. We recognized anew how both joy and sorrow serve as silt to enrich the soil of writing--and of life. There came into my mother's eyes a warm look of understanding, of joy, and of pride in me, in us, that I did not recall noticing before. And our tears fell gently as a farmer's rain.

   Within the week, we learned that Mother had terminal cancer. The agonizing weeks of her hospitalizations, surgery, and dulling medications that followed robbed her eyes of joy. And, finally, almost of recognition. I never again saw that special warmth in her eyes. In less than a year, Mother crossed the bridge into Eternity.

   There is no writing award I could treasure now half so much as that one special afternoon of reading, risking, opening my writing and my soul to my mother, the poet whose own writing was often filled with words of faith and hope. Such precious hours those were--the two of us alone, not just Mother and Daughter, but fellow writers, fellow Christians--unaware that we approached the final Bridge, yet holding fast to all that was dear between us and reaffirming a promise shared.

   For once, my timing was perfect.