Not so long ago, I heard her tell the story. We were at her kitchen table in the old farmhouse near Madelia. Was she making bread? Just Estelle, her daughter, Julia, and me. And Maggie, the black dog, on the wooden floor.
Maybe I had mentioned my teen-age tale, the thrill of climbing the Tour Eiffel, then gazing out over the rainy rooftops of Paris? Estelle kept kneading the flour, then gestured out the window. “When I was three, I climbed to the top
of the windmill,” she said, dividing the dough into loaves of bread, patting them into their metal pans. She was playing. Her father had turned away, then turned back, saw her, hand
over hand, ascending the steel frame of the high Aermotor. He followed, without a sound, fearful she would turn around, panic. Oh, if she fell, like a falling star! But her gaze was far
off over the flat cornfields, watching the grey sky shift, form a rainbow, shimmer like ribbons, over the blue silo. She barely noticed her father’s arms or felt her feet touch the safe ground.