This dot-to-dot farm scene was lovingly colored by Karen Schwaller's granddaughtter.

Our little granddaughter visited us not long ago. It’s an hour’s time or so between our driveways, so drop-in visits don’t happen very often.

Still, we are grateful no one has to board a plane for a visit. Connecting flights confound me at times — in the same way that finding only one sock in the dryer does.

During her stay, she emerged from the basement and handed me a coloring book picture she had completed and gifted to me. It was from a farm-themed book, and was a connect-the-dot image of a barn and silo, complete with straw bales sitting outside in the grass, straw coming out of the haymow widow, a fence behind the barn, and a weathervane atop the barn.

It was a little slice of Americana that spoke of the life I knew growing up, the life I have lived as an adult, and the life she is now living as she is growing up.

Except no one thought to add the manure pile out behind the barn.

Or the flies that come with it.

Or the farmer running behind the animals trying to chase them back in.

Regardless, this connect-the-dot picture was colored with the true precision of a young child. The clouds, weathervane and most of the sky were all blue, the grass and part of the sky were green (bad weather coming in maybe?); the top and sides of the barn were red, the front of the barn was green, the straw was yellow, and the fence and silo were brown.

But the best part of the whole picture was what was not there to begin with.

She drew hearts all over the picture.

Lots of them.

Nine of them … all over everything.

I suppose a child psychologist would make little of that. (SIDE NOTE: I won’t tell you that

on the back side of the picture was an activity where you were to find the one cow that was different from the others, and I couldn’t directly see which one it was. But our granddaughter spotted it right away. There’s no need for any psychologist to know that.)

While hearts scribbled all over a connect-the-dots picture may not make it worth millions via the standards set by those in the “million-dollar-artists” club, it made it valuable to me. Because not only do those hearts (scribbled in red) possibly indicate her love of us or the life she is living, they might represent her role in the future — something begun by generations before her, carried on by us, now carried on by her parents, and loved by her.

There is a direct connection on the farm between past and future generations. And while those hearts she sketched may have been just something she likes to draw, I like to think they are a measure of the sweat and sacrifices that generations before her — even the one just before her — have poured into the lives they have lived … a life which she now gets to share.

While her farm memories will look and sound different than memories the rest of us have had growing up on a farm, the nucleus of those memories will remain the same. She will grow up having a direct hand in feeding, clothing and fueling the world.

She may not find that so amazing right now. But one day that picture will tell the story of the enormous gift she was given — a chance to share in a life that can offer over-the-top kinds of joy, and at times, deeply-rooted sorrow.

Her gifts from her life on the farm will be many — including character beyond measure, a sense of responsibility, and the constant lessons she’ll have learned about never giving up on tomorrow.

She will have witnessed it; and someday she will connect all the dots of her own life.

In the meantime, that barn scene picture with all those red hearts adorns our refrigerator. No need to show the side of shame, where I couldn’t see right away which of the cows was different than the rest. That can just be our little secret.

Karen Schwaller writes from her grain and livestock farm near Milford, Iowa. She can be reached at kjschwaller@outlook.com.