As the child of the farmer, leaned up against the window, watches his father stand silently in the field, he knows not of the genuine struggles of the man he watches. He need not be acquainted with the woe his father is confronted with ever so periodically. He may only wonder. He need not worry about how to feed their family. He need not worry about the future of their lineage. He need not worry for the children he had brought into this cruel, cold, careless world and age. He may only wonder. The child was born with an advantage of innocence, which allowed the child to be merely concerned with more trivial matters. The child worried about the dust in his eyes on a particularly blustery day. The boy would avoid going outside the home if he could recognize the wilting ash tree in the front yard swaying in the wind. Even the slightest swing from side to side would dissuade the venture out of the house. The dust was dangerous to the child. The dust was simple and easy to hate. The dust was bad. It made the child's eyelids swell and it made his eyes red, red like the tomatoes that his mother had been growing for the past six weeks. The boy's mother had brought that similarity to his knowledge as she was washing out his eyes out with a washcloth from the kitchen sink. The boy remembered laughing as his mother told him that and he remembers his mother's laughter as well. His mother did not laugh much. Neither did his father. He knew they were kind-hearted and he knew they wanted to laugh, but father was always tired and mother was often as well. His father was always working. Most often he was in the field working or tending to the livestock in the barn. Sometimes, his father had to tend to the house. The house was old, so the roof would leak after rain, which was not very frequent. His father was an exceptionally busy man. His mother was also consistently busy, but she regularly made time for her child. The mother could not but worry for her son. She was uncertain about his future and about the future of the life they had worked so hard to try and preserve. She remembered how she thought her life would have been when she was a youthful adolescent. She pictured herself with a family that could live without worry or care, but none of those dreams had come to fruition. She feared that those dreams would be forever unachievable, but she deceived herself into believing the future she had always pictured was feasible. Without this false hope of a finer life to come, what hope could she provide to her child, even if it was false. False hope was much more valuable than no hope for without hope there is nothing. The mother had given her child false hope, but he had not know of its falseness. The boy only recognized it as true and undeniable hope. This hope is what kept the child's thoughts genuine and unsullied. His mind was pure, as a child's should be. His parents had lost that purity for they had been broken down. Broken down after the sorrow brought upon from the deaths of their parents. Broken down after watching the last breath of their first child, taken by pneumonia. At that point, they were truly defeated. But the boy did not know of any of those misfortunes, for the parents never displayed their brokenness. They understood that they could never show that side of themselves for they were required to remain iron-willed, for the sake of their child.
As the child of the farmer watches his father stand silently in the field, he wonders what his father could have possibly been achieving while standing out upon the crops. He had ideas, but his ideas were pure and innocent, so they could not have been possible in any matter. The harsh reality of his father was that he had gone into the field to avoid his son. He could never allow his son to watch him at such a time he was experiencing, for at that moment he was weak. He was weak for crying. To his son he was strong-willed, stern, and uncompromising, but, in actuality, he was weak. Weak for being afraid, weak for not knowing what to do next, weak for not being able to provide for his wife and son. His son could never witness this weakness for it would abolish his innocence. Innocence was important for the child, for innocence was bliss.