Making Do When the Men went away

All five of her daughters had already been born when the first shot was fired. Like many other women in small farming communities, she kissed her husband good bye and took up the reins of the family farm.
The task would be made somewhat easier when army engineers ran electricity out to the farms. It would still be a full days trip to go into town by horse and wagon to shop. It would take half a day when anything was needed from the local sawmill.
There was no phone or tv. Only one of the girls was old enough to walk down the road to the schoolhouse. There was no indoor plumbing, washing machine or running water.
Her grandfather helped bring in the sixteen cord of wood it would take to heat her uninsulated house and run the wood stove each year.
Still she counted herself lucky. None of the telegrams delivered in the community came to her door. None of the girls came down with anything she couldn't take care of.
And she had Charlie. He had captured her heart from the first moment they met. She knew deep down that she shouldn't give away her heart .... that noone in the community would understand.
Out of respect for public opinion she wouldn't allow him in the house. Charlie spent his nights in the barn and was waiting eagerly to meet her every morning at dawn.
Somehow she never mentioned Charlie when she wrote to her husband. He was away ... fighting for freedom, and it just didn't seem right to worry him. There were a few snickers when she went to church with the girls, but somehow noone quite knew how to broach the subject of Charlie.
Eventually they all just decided to take the easy path and let her husband handle Charlie when he came home. Speculation sparked and occasionally flared up about how that would go.
The girls had all started school by the time her husband came home. Thanks to her grandfather and his friends, the hay had been baled and was up in the loft. Sugar was short so there were no sweets for the homecoming hero.
Finally, at long last, it was time to come clean about Charlie. On Sunday when their buggy rode into the churchyard, everyone was waiting and wondering and watching.
Going to war changes a man in ways both big and small. If the community was expecting him to get excited about Charlie, they were in for a surprise. After the horrors he had seen overseas, her husband didn't get excited about Charlie. He was actually happy that Charlie had helped his wife through the lonely years he was away.
And because he had already seen enough killing... and because he loved his wife .... Isabelle's pet pig Charlie lived to be a ripe old age.
Webmaster note: For all of you who have already asked ... yes this was a true story. Isabelle's husband was one of over a million Canadians who went to WWII. It was told to me by Isabelle, on the evening before I left for basic training, in 1974.
The years had not dimmed her affection for Charlie ... nor her love for the normally thrifty Scottish farmer who went against everything that he knew to let Charlie live out his days as Isabelle's pet. Charlie was still there after the girls were all grown and gone and lived to the ripe old age of 22.