Mom was a woman of determination, full of grit, stamina and drive. Learning that perception of life early, through the years I’ve discovered I’m my mother’s girl, taking after her in many ways.
She was always busy, always constructive and very seldom do I remember her being still, other than taking one of her “power naps.” I recall after clearing the dinner table (and I mean the noon meal; what town folks called dinner, we’d call supper), she’d sit for a spell, fold her arms on the tabletop, elbows out, and lay her head on her forearm, face down. Within minutes she’d be breathing evenly and even snoring quietly, she fell asleep that fast.
With no alarm clock or any rousing on our part, she’d be up and going again within 10 or 15 minutes. As a youngster, I’d marvel at her ability to fall asleep at the table! No pillow, no blanket, not even lying down. As I was raising my own children, working on the farm and tending to everything that us women cover, I completely understood those power naps!
One time I recall Mom had come down with a bad case of heat stroke. She simply had pushed too much. Thereafter she’d always slather her face with a cold cream, don a wide-brimmed straw hat and slip into a collared, long-sleeved white cotton shirt to protect herself from the sun. She’d hop up on the tractor, ready to go.
Mom always gave us advice, and I’d store it somewhere in my brain, (don’t know how God provides that little luxury but isn’t it a marvel?) and the advice would swim back into my consciousness at just the right time.
For example, she’d tell me, “Kay, be careful what you learn, because those jobs turn into your job.” I have never, not once milked the cows, ever mindful of my sweet momma’s words. To this day, I do not get under a cow. Way back at the first request my response was an innocent face, eyebrows raised, shoulders to my ears, palms up, head cocked to one side: “But honey! I don’t know how!” My husband never pushed.
I do, however, have no problem with fieldwork. I have never disliked hopping up on a tractor and heading down the road with whatever piece of equipment my husband hooks me up to. Plowing and planting was something I never had to do. My husband always started a field, I’d do the cleanup work and he’d come back and plant.
These days find us busy finishing corn planting. As husband is planting on one end of the farm, I disk the fields he didn’t plant yet, head back home, get on the tractor hooked up to the drag and go back out to that field to drag. After dragging each piece, I always make a “victory lap,” as I call it, once around the perimeter to be sure I covered the whole field. It feels so good to make that lap as usually by that time I am sick of the field, tired, dirty, hungry and have to go to the bathroom.
Getting home one late afternoon, I said to my husband, “Don’t those fields look pretty?” He had no comment, just looked at me as he does, patient with my analysis of just about anything. I don’t think ever in his life did he find a field to be pretty. Ready to go? Yes. Potential for a good growing season? Yes. Pretty? Nope.
As for me, I look back on my work with awe. The fields to me are pretty, organized and prepared, ready to receive the seed. It’s satisfying to partner with my husband and work the land we have on loan from the good Lord.
Mom felt the same way, I know it, although we didn’t discuss it much. I just watched her labor side by side with my dad, working wholeheartedly at the jobs she chose to learn. I had a wonderful teacher and through the years, I’ve found myself becoming more and more like her. A little determination, a little grit, mixed in with some stamina and drive, complete with a power nap or two. Yup, I’m my mother’s girl.
(“Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6)
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