The Christmas season was a stressful and hectic – although my parents were reluctant to admit it was so.

It had not been the best of years. They had scraped together the money to make the annual farm payment. However, money was among the least of concerns.

Son Art had received a draft notice months ago, went to basic and more specialized training at Fort Polk, Louisiana. It was common knowledge that Fort Polk would lead to Vietnam deployment, a conflict that Mother prayed daily so that it might not come about.

We watched with passionate interest the news that fighting in Vietnam’s Central Highlands near Pleiko and Dak To, battles that went back and forth. Walter Cronkite and battlefield reporters informed about casualties, strategies, and long hoped for peace talks.

While men died, negotiators haggled about the shape of the table where they would be seated.

Mother contacted the Post Office about sending fruit cake overseas to see how it might be best packaged. Fruit cake would be a reminder of home – much more so than the rolls of chewing tobacco that the church community shipped him.

Mother’s fruit cake was among the best, in part because it not only contained candied fruit, but bountiful amounts of butternuts cracked by Dad.

There was so much to be done and little time to do it.

Ducks and geese were not yet harvested. Mother waited until the ground was dressed in snow before butchering the Muscovy ducks because the cold helped eliminate pin feathers. Using hot wax and tweezers to do so was frustratingly slow, but necessary to make the fowl presentable.

The carrier would find a plump drake in the mailbox and the milk hauler got one, too, along with Christmas cards to thank them. She would receive and write hundreds of cards in the perfect penmanship that her mother had taught. No card carried more importance than the once received from a South Dakota woman that mother took in when she was in trouble.

She had once been a teenager, unmarried and pregnant. Our priest had asked mother if she could take the girl in so that the girl’s parents could avoid scandal. The baby was born, and the mother and child returned to South Dakota. She married the child’s father, raised a family and wrote Mother at Christmas time.

Mother did not look forward to harvesting the geese, not because it was hard work plucking down from their bellies but because they were friends who followed her on the path from house to garden. Goose-down pillows would eventually become gifts for grandchildren to mark confirmations, marriages, and other life-changing occasions.

“How am I going to get all this done in time,’’ Mother asked more than once while juggling clothes washing, meal making, bread baking, egg candling, and the worry of having a son in harm’s way.

“Our Fathers are always good,’’ she said, when asked what could be done to bring him back safely.

Faith, hope and love can overwhelm the darkest of circumstances.

The house, as always, was crowded with people on Christmas Day. Midnight Mass was handy so that milking and chores needn’t be rushed, Uncles came with a huge bottle of sweet wine, married sisters brought pies. The folding card table that Mother earned by redeeming Green Stamps was set up in the living room for youngsters without a place in the dining room. We lamented that as yet we were not old enough to sit at the dining room table.

The elm and maple wood stoked in the furnace and conversation warmed the house.

We were certain that come summer our brother would return, the crops would yield abundance, and all would be well. When time and distance allow, a slow drive past our former home place reassures me that in faith the promise that the future will be flush with fulfilled dreams.

To read more of Mychal Wilmes' Farm Boy Memories, click here.

Mychal Wilmes is the retired managing editor of Agri News. He lives in West Concord, Minn., with his wife, Kathy.