Daddy decided he was going to take us to see something special he had discovered on a lot upon which he and his partner were constructing a new home. Mama didn't come with us, but that wasn't unusual. We often went places only with Daddy.

When we reached the lot, we got out and he walked us to the rear of the foundation his men had recently laid. He brought us to a large fallen tree trunk under which a hole had been dug and around which some dried grass had been placed with obvious care.

Inside the hole were baby field mice, still pink and blind. They were feeding off their mother. Noble wanted to pick one up. but Daddy told him it would alarm the mother. We should just stand back and watch for a while.

"Not long from now," he said. "they will see and they will be old enough to go off on their own."

"What will happen to their house?" I asked.

"It won't be important anymore. They'll each create their own homes later, and the females will have their own babies in them."

"Why don't they just come back here?" I asked.

"They want their own," Daddy said.

"Sometimes, we have to move on and find ourselves.

Were all a little different and we need something that's ours, not something that belonged to our forefathers, but something that we create ourselves."

"You create homes for people."

He nodded. "Yes, so you see, if everyone stayed in the home he was brought up in. I'd be out of work."

"Mommy wants us to stay forever at the farm,"

Noble said, his eyes small like Mama's.

"I know," Daddy said. "But someday, someday you'll leave. It will just be in you to do it. And you mustn't be afraid."

"I don't want to leave." Noble said petulantly.

"We'll see," Daddy said, his voice dripping with wisdom. He winked at me. Where would we Do.

Noble and I? I wondered.

I looked out then toward the mountains in the distance.

I was doing that now.

And I was smiling and thinking about Daddy holding our hands and walking us back to the car, the breeze lifting the beautiful strands of his hair, his eyes full of hope for all of us.

And I knew in an instant what he was saying.

'We would leave our home someday perhaps. But we would never leave each other.

Never.

end.