Every morning in Monticello, Iowa, around 7:15, just after the sun tips over the silos, Eileen Carter puts on a pot of coffee. It’s not gourmet. Just plain old Folgers, the kind her husband Frank liked best before he passed four winters ago. She measures it carefully, clicks the old machine on, and watches the slow drip as the house fills with the familiar aroma.
Eileen’s lived in the same two-story white farmhouse for fifty-seven years. Raised three kids here, all long gone to Minneapolis or Des Moines. She’s got grandkids now, but they’re busy with ball games and college and work. “Which is exactly how it should be,” she’ll say, though her voice softens a bit when she talks about them.
Most days, she keeps a rhythm. Coffee. Then the dishes. She doesn’t need to do them every day, not with just her there, but she does. There’s something about the clink of the porcelain, the steam rising from the sink. It reminds her she’s still part of the world. After dishes, she walks down to the mailbox, rain or shine. Not because there’s much mail—just the Gazette and a coupon flyer, but because she likes to nod at the neighbors driving by.
Sometimes, she reads on the porch. Sometimes, she bakes for the ladies at church. Sometimes, she just watches the squirrels go about their own business in the walnut trees. “They’re busy little fools,” she jokes. But she admires them.
One Friday afternoon, her neighbor’s daughter, Annie, all of twelve, came by to ask Eileen about a school project on “local history.” They sat at the kitchen table, lemon cookies between them, and Eileen talked about when the grocery store was still downtown and how the old high school had burned in ’83.
Annie looked around the kitchen and said, “It must be lonely here.”
Eileen smiled. “It’s quiet,” she said. “But not lonely. There’s beauty in doing what needs to be done. The dishes still need doing. The laundry needs folding. That means life’s still happening.”
And that was that. Annie wrote a fine paper, and Eileen had another reason to bake on Thursdays.
It wasn’t flashy. But to Eileen, it was enough. And somehow, that made it everything.