That evening when Cris came for our goodnight hug, I held her tenderly and when—eventually—she tried to leave, I held her hand and asked her to sit and chat with me for a while.
“I haven’t had the opportunity to tell you how nice it is to be back with you and mom.” I started to say something, anything.
“Sure you have. You told me that the very first night.” She smiled as she replied to my comment.
“Well, I haven’t told you how much I like the changes that you have gone through.” It was my turn to smile at her. I wanted to catch her of guard, and apparently I did.
“What changes would those be?” She tried to sidestep my point.
“Well, the way you have grown into a beautiful young woman, the way you have managed the farm, the way you have transformed this family. Should I continue or is this enough?”
“No, continue, continue. Especially about the beautiful young woman part.” She laughed.
“Well, you probably don’t know this, but that day when I saw you for the first time after all these years, I didn’t even recognize you. I thought you were some other woman.”
“Well, I have changed a lot. Hard work and good food have managed to transform me into this.” She moved her hand up and down while pointing at her body to indicate that she was talking about her physical changes.
“Yes, as wonderful as those changes are…” I paused for effect, “You have also grown a lot mentally. You are very mature for your age.”
“Well, I am not that mature. I have these childish thoughts and longings, but I know I’ll get over them one of these years.”
“At the same time, those thoughts and longings may keep you young forever. Hey, who doesn’t want that?”
“Well, we’ll see.” She tried to change the subject.
“Listen, how about I take you up on your offer of giving me a tour around the farm? I promise I won’t let anyone interrupt us tomorrow.”
“Okay, I am game.”
“Maybe we can even make a picnic out of it.” I knew I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t want to seem anxious.
“Yeah, that sounds good.” She actually seemed quite enthused about the idea.
We spent most of the day on the farm. I helped her with a few tasks but mostly I just watched her at work as she told me about what she had done or what her plans were about different parts of it. She was quite the worker and she had some very good ideas. We had our picnic under the shadiest tree and spent a lot of time talking, about my university, people around town, things happening in the city, my plans with the college, and her life in general, about our mom, about some of our relatives, and so on. I listened to her very attentively and I complimented wherever a compliment was due. She showed a lot of enthusiasm about my prospects and how she was feeling proud of the way things were turning out for me.
We discussed everything, except our personal lives, romantically that is. She didn’t ask me anything about matters of my heart and I didn’t bring up the subject of her social life.
By the time we came home, we had become quite close, friendship or otherwise.