Summary

The speaker holds a pen and prepares to write. Outside their window, they see their father digging in the garden with a spade. The man leans into the flowerbeds, and when he stands back up the speaker imagines him as he was twenty years ago digging a potato patch.

He set his boot against his spade with the handle balanced against his knee and harvested potatoes from the earth. Then he buried the new ones that he and the speaker had prepared together. The speaker reflects on his father’s skill, which was just like his own father’s. The speaker’s grandfather made a living cutting turf from the bog. As a child, the speaker once brought him a bottle of milk while he worked. His grandfather drank it all in one go before returning back to slicing away the heavy mounds of...