And now I am a writer... my first written piece

FIELDS OF MY FATHER

It is that sublimely strange time of day, when the sun is setting and the stars are not yet in their appointed place.  It is the time of day that in the valley, the heat dissipates and the breeze is born.  She comes gently off the Western slopes of the Sierras and gathers in her arms the fragrance of the foothills transporting it to the vineyards below.  I breathe it in, a strange combination of orange blossoms, alfalfa, ragweed, and rich fertile dirt.  It is an old, familiar and well-known smell.  I stand in the vineyard and drink it in.

I remember the first time this smell was introduced to me.  I was with my father as we went to the fields to irrigate.  I was perhaps three or four, aware of all around me and hungry to memorize it.  I remember the breeze kissing my cheek, blowing the hair from my face and the soft earth, like sifted flour, puffed around my toes as I walked.  I absorbed the aroma.  

“What is that smell, daddy?” I asked.

“That is the smell of God and his earth,” his only reply.

I had heard of this God guy before, but till that moment I never knew how sweet his breath could be.

At dusk as the sun turns the Fresno sky red and seems to suspend timeless, before the stars take over, the aroma of God hangs like a satin comforter over the vineyards trapping the perfume bouquet beneath it.  It is in the silence of that moment that earth, God and innocent little girls are one.

I would grow up to pick grapes in those fields, to love in those fields, to fight in those fields, but mostly I learned to be one with God in those fields.