At My Daughter’s Colorado Ranch Wedding, She Slipp…

By fall, I was signing hospice papers and learning how quiet a house could become. The ranch had been our dream. We bought it in ’94 when Claire was eight, when this side of Colorado was still mostly scrubland and old ranchers who thought Denver was a different planet.

Two hundred fifteen acres of rough grassland and gnarled trees, an old farmhouse that leaned a little too much in the wind, a barn that needed more work than we had money. We signed the papers with our hands shaking, terrified and thrilled. People thought we were crazy.

“You’re going to drive forty minutes to the nearest decent grocery store?” Linda’s sister had said, horrified. “What about schools? What about culture?”

“We’ll plant our own culture,” Linda had joked.

“And potatoes.”

We did. We planted a garden that first spring—crooked rows of carrots and too-many zucchini, roses along the front fence, lilacs by the porch. Claire ran wild with the neighbor kids, learned the names of birds before she knew the names of luxury brands.