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My grandfather lived on a farm in the middle of the West Texas Panhandle. For most of my life, I thought the nearest town to him was Hereford, until Mom pointed out a smaller, closer town. In any event, Hereford’s hard enough to find on a map.

From first through fourth grade, I lived in Lubbock, Texas, which was about an hour and a half drive away from Grandpa and Granny Kay’s farm. We drove North from our house in Dad’s black pick-up truck, the one with the seats that pulled down from the sides in the back and the teal-green camper shell on the back.

Once we got outside of the city limits, I always swore that I could see Grandpa’s house, even from a hundred miles away. I saw the burst of trees that bracketed the edge of his property silhouetted against the spotless blue sky that faded into brown dust just at the edges of the horizon. The Panhandle is almost always golden brown either from the heat or the wheat harvest, with the seasonal burst of growing green or wild white cotton.

The land there is as flat as the sky; it looks like it stretches out forever. A professor once told my class that the flatness, the foreverness, scared her. But I have spent too many years daydreaming about riding my horse across the endless Texas plains and I couldn’t understand what was terrifying about having adventures into eternity.

Grandpa and Granny Kay’s house is bordered by a wooden fence and the trees that I saw all the way from Lubbock. Over the driveway entrance used to hang a wooden sign emblazoned with their last name. In my mind, the sign is still there; I am always somewhat surprised to remember how many years it’s been since it was blown down in a storm.

I am not a farmgirl, not even a townswoman. I prefer bustling roads and easy access to an international airport and cities that have forgotten the definition of the word “bedtime.” I prefer to have five overpriced hipster/bougie coffee shops within a 10 mile radius and public transportation that spans the length of my city, any city.

A pastor once chided my congregation by observing, “You don’t grow by running away; you grow by staying put.” But I wasn’t listening to him; I was trying to figure out what country I was going to next.

And yet when I think of John Deere tractors or half-wild kittens that ran away from me or barn singin’s with the local church or Grandpa’s homemade vanilla ice cream or the wooden sign that Granny Kay made for me for my childhood bedroom door...

And yet...

A few years ago, I visited The Farm for my grandfather’s ninety birthday. My husband and I drove down from Amarillo International Airport, a city to the North of The Farm. As always the skies burned in the mornings and again in the evenings with the sunrises that began next door in eternity and sunsets that ended in forever. But this time the sky was bracketed by a forest of wind turbines on either side of the highway. The long white blades circled, circled, circled in lazy sweeps, whisking away the wind and memories and other ethereal things and the red lights flashed to warn off the airplanes and any lingering nostalgia.

Like Don Quixote before me, my heart surges within my chest and I keep mixing up my windmills and my giants.

There is nothing new under the sun. In the Bible, Ecclesiastes proclaims the bittersweetness of a time for everything; a time to be born, a time to die. Everything is meaningless, says the book's "Teacher," and we all return to dust in the end.  This is supposed to be a comfort; nothing lasts, so relax. Serve God and enjoy life; let the winds of change take you down new and interesting corridors of life. On my better days, I actually believe it.

But it's a little harder for me to believe in the goodness of change when flashing red lights are interrupting my view into foreverness. It's harder to rest in the surety of God when my nostalgia is being forcibly swept away by giants with windmill arms and I’m starting to wonder if there might not be more to Don Quixote's story than what was covered in that one Wishbone episode.

I am not David, ready with faith in the Lord and a slingshot. I am Don Quixote battling windmills in place of giants. I am not entirely ready to give up the fantasy that the next time I step foot on the farm, everything will be exactly as it was a decade or more ago.

And yet…

Last year, Granny Kay died a few days before I gave birth. Shortly after that, Grandpa moved off The Farm into a nursing home. The Farm now belongs to a local businessman; someone else lives in Grandpa’s house now.

Things are different now; modernity always finds us––even on the edge of eternity.

But past the windmills, in the backdrop of the lumbering giants, the skies still burn at sunrise and sundown. God is still good.

Me and Don Quixote, we ain’t afraid.

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