Mother's Day

I got to go "home" today, that being the place I was brought to from the hospital. It is different now, but the memories are still there and it hasn't changed so much that I can't hear my childhood self laughing and playing there with my imaginary friend or the three little boys who lived across the road. All I had to do was run to the top of the hill by the road and yell. Sure enough, there would be a reply and they would come over to play. We were poor, really poor, but I was happily oblivious to this. We were so very rich in the things in life that trully matter, that I didn't know we didn't have money. I was very happy to ask these little boys to stay for supper. Mom had just enough food for me, my Daddy and her to have one half of a chicken breast each, some vegetables, milk and dessert. She would give up her chicken and half mine with one of the boys so that each of us had something to eat. She just gave this without question, and cheerfully. And I was never really in trouble for asking them to stay even though she would quietly tell me before we went out to play that I was not to ask them to stay for supper.

We had a well with delicious, cold water brought up by cranking up a big bailer on a rope. I remember having to wait for the few peices of sediment to settle and then getting a big drink of that cold, wonderful water from the big dipper. What I wouldn't give for a pail of that water today! Not the chlorinated, brown stuff that comes out of my tap. And for which I have to buy bottled water from the store so I just feel safe enough to take a drink.

We had a horse named Ginger and a bull named Ben. Ginger was gentle, a work horse that didn't have much to do. Because we had an old blue Ford tractor that did the work. Ben didn't have any "work" to do either, but he was always waiting at the fence by the watering trough when we came home from church. Once in a while a neighbor would want to "borrow" ol'Ben, and Mom and my brother, Doug were responsible to get him where he was to go. Sometimes this required a long walk... One day, we came home and he had lost his nose ring. What a mystery considering how well that ring was connected in his nose. Noone found it until years later. My brother had cows, but they were not for milking or breeding, they were his FFA project. I remember watching them over the fence as they walked under the oil cloth to keep the flies off them and then got a big drink and a lick off of the salt block. When my brother grew up and got married, he kept cows for a while and butchered them. Black Angus is so delicious.

We had a big barn and hayfields that sloped down. Mom and Daddy and Doug would spend hours putting up hay. They didn't bale it, it was forked onto a flat bed pulled behind the tractor and then forked up into the haymow. The big barn was always cool and dark, and I wasn't allowed to play there b/c it was so old. Parts of this old barn are now being lovingly fashioned into a counter/bar/cupboard and bench in my kitchen by my fiance. He is so patient with my memories and things I ask him to do so I can be surrounded by them. My memories are so precious to me, just as each of my family members are.

We always had two big gardens. One was pretty much all corn, and the other had tomatoes, peppers, green beans, squash, cucumbers and all matter of delicious produce. I learned to count when I was two by carrying tomatoes one or two at a time from the garden and putting them on the big table by the cellar house to ripen. Then after all that goodness was harvested, Mom and I would count the lids on the canning jars as they popped. The pops were always followed by my Mom saying "Thank you, Jesus!" Then in the winter, I remember the joy on my Daddy's face as he opened up a big quart of those red tomatoes and sprinkled them with salt and pepper.

There were blackberry bushes that delivered quart upon quart of those delicious juicy berries that Mom and my Grandma Freeman made into cobblers and jellies and canned. Those berries were delicious with milk and sugar, ate from little pale green melamine bowls. There were peach trees on the hill and a big pear tree in the front yard that I would climb up and get my long hair all tangled in it's branches, always just a few feet above where my Mom could reach. And she would have to climb up to get me loose.

In all of this, I was NEVER left out. There wasn't day care, or play dates, just a small loving family that made me into the secure, comfortable, happy person I am today. Being blessed with a foundation for life that is as solid as that has made the difference for me as a person. And everyday, there, big as life itself, was Mom. She got Daddy off to work, my brother off to school, and then tackled all the work that the farm required with me right there with her. Asking questions and learning and taking it all in, and forming in that tender thirsty mind all the principles I live by today. She taught me all I could learn as soon as I was ready. Counting all the way to 100 at age 2, reading and sewing at age 3, and common sense by the bucket full all the time. And if everyone could experience this childhood, what a world it would be! I am so blessed and priviledged beyond anything money could buy by this precious gift my Mom and Daddy gave me just by being the wonderful parents they were and are. I miss Daddy so much and I deeply appreciate every day the Lord has blessed me with having my Mom! Thanks Mom (and Daddy) for this priceless gift you have given me!! Happy Mother's Day!!