“Front or back?” “Front.”

I hold open the door to let her through, and she takes the rocking chair in the sun on this still-cool afternoon. This passes as a modest modern chivalric gesture on my part as I sit in the other still in the shade. Afternoon coffee ritual. She drinks from her autumn-themed Polish pottery cup; the one with bright cheerful flowers is reserved for the morning. I drink from a small white cup first used by a Flatwoods, West Virginia, hotel. (My sunrise coffee is sipped from a hefty cream-colored Lea’s Pies mug from Lecompte, Louisiana.) These details to our rituals are important, always.

Spring is coming (from another spring).

We laugh long and hard, tears streaming, over something neither of us recalls even thirty minutes later. A bluebird sits on the front gate, a mockingbird and a sparrow on the southern, side gate. The sun is now low enough to warm my chair. I tilt my cap down to keep the winter’s light out of my eyes.

We talk of the upcoming early evening projects, the before-dinner work that roots us to this farm. Modest in scope, each: reattaching a barn gutter for me and a stall gate the sheep managed to detach for her. After that, chores, supper (her night to fix dinner), and cleanup in the kitchen before retiring. We will both read. Nan Shepherd keeps her company past 11, while Vincent Starrett has me slumbering by 9:30.

But that is later. Now we just sit. The birds do the same. A pause in the day for all of us, until the sheep begin to bawl and the cows gather at the fence to stare us down. It’s feeding time. “I still have one more sip,” she says when I start to rise. It’s a daily ruse of sorts to keep me on the porch. She makes an elaborate gesture of savoring what is not there. Rituals satisfied, we stand in unison and move toward the porch steps. The sun also lingers on the horizon before heading to bed for the night.

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