The picture on the cover of the dairy magazine was of a middle-aged farm woman, about forty, smiling directly, yet shyly, into the camera. She wore five blue ribbons around her neck. Her skin was clear, almost translucent, and her eyes were lovely and innocent, not the innocence of the religious devout or a child -- she was a grown woman -- but the sure-footed innocence of a herdswoman. The woman in the picture was once my friend -- that is why my father sent the magazine -- and for a moment I felt transported against my will back to my parents’ home, the air too thin, the rooms too small, me pacing the short hallway from my bedroom to the living room window, and I felt a wave of the deepest longing I had ever known, a longing too large for the body, almost cartoonish unless you are the one living it, and you are fourteen, and then it is deathly serious.