To Pay and To Hold

Prologue

What would you be willing to do for the ones you love? For your family?

What would you do to save their lives? What would you do to keep them happy?

What would you be willing to sacrifice to keep their dreams alive?

I've left my family... to give them the help they desperately need. I walked away from the farm that was in our family for generations, that gave work to my mother, my sister, my brother... my father, whom it made sick. I walked away from everything I have ever known.

To save them.

Sometimes, I am not sure I am not a bigger fool than they are.

I left a farm so deep in debts, debt which have been dug ever so slowly by lean seasons, bad weather, contracts stolen, contracts lost... the debt we needed to cover the costs of keeping our father alive, to keep the farm running in his absence, to hire people when me and my siblings were too young to save anything.

I made a vow that one day, I'll make it go away. I won't let my mother lock herself in the knitting room to cry almost every day. I won't let my siblings sacrifice their own lives to keep the land, to keep it running, keep it alive. I won't tell my father to sell the house he grew up in, where he brought up his own family.

So, I left. When everyone expected me to stay. Because I always knew we were a sinking ship, only an iceberg away from capsizing. Because somewhere, somehow, I realized an independent paycheck? The money I am able to earn on my own? Is the only thing that can save them. Is now the only thing keeping them afloat.

Too often, it still felt like it was never enough. Even when I got better, when I found more customers, when I found the rich people willing to pay a lot of money for my creations... It was still not enough. It was... like using a spoon to try to carve away decades of mud from a lake. A river. Making progress... only ever managing to slowly inch closer to the ever-shifting finish line.

Which is why I did not understand my reactions to the letter.

When I got the offer to have all our debts paid... I should have screamed with joy. I should have called the number, got the meeting... signed the papers.

What would you be willing to do for your family?

I thought I knew the answer to that question.

I was wrong.