The Monday after Easter, I called a dentist in Hastings named Dr. Reinke.
I’d heard from a friend that his Saturday hygienist was retiring. And nobody wanted the shift.
“It’s eight to four,” Dr. Reinke said. “Every single Saturday. Most of my farm families can’t get in during the week, so the book’s always full. Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” I said.
For four years, I left our house on the east side of Kearney at six-thirty every Saturday morning. Half the year it was dark. I drove forty minutes to Hastings. I cleaned teeth for eight hours straight. I drove home.
Every Saturday paycheck went into a separate savings account at our bank on Central Avenue.
We never touched it.
Not once. Not when the furnace went out. Not when the transmission went on the minivan the second winter.
Luke’s snowplow overtime went into that account too.
When a big storm came through, the county ran the graders and plows around the clock. Luke would come home at four in the morning, eat a bowl of cereal standing up at the counter, and sleep for three hours. Then go back out.
We didn’t take a vacation in four years.
We drove that same minivan until it had two hundred and fourteen thousand miles on it.
Hailey’s school clothes came from the church rummage sale. And she never once complained. I still think about that.
The kids knew what we were saving for. We told them the very first summer.
Cody was five. He asked if he could have his old bedroom back. The little room at Grandma and Grandpa’s where he took his nap on Sundays.
I told him we’d see.
Hailey made a chart on a piece of poster board and taped it to the inside of the pantry door. A big thermometer. Like the one at church for the new roof fund.
Every month, she colored it in a little higher with a red marker.
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