Far Beyond Pearls

“How’d you sleep?” Davey asked when he got up.

“Not so well,” I answered. “I couldn’t fall asleep and then, when I did, I woke up thinking it was hours later only to find it was 11:30!”

“I know,” he said. “Sleeping with you was like sleeping with a bag of raccoons.”

I grinned sheepishly. “So I guess you didn’t sleep too well, either?”

Then the sun came up and I stumbled through my day, exhausted and achy and smelling sickly in my nose, and I milked the cows and taught the kids and fed the family and washed the laundry and finally, it was nearing the end of the day. We sat down to dinner. We talked. About sleep, mostly, because we both needed some. Finally, I said, “I can’t sleep in there tonight. I’m sleeping somewhere else.” The room just wasn’t restful. It was messy and cluttered and the furniture is just a hodgepodge of repurposed stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else in the house. Once I said all that out loud, though, there wasn’t really any reason to fix it. So I milked the cows while the kids cleaned up the dinner dishes and I rearranged and removed furniture while the kids got ready for bed. They fell asleep to the sound of the vacuum cleaner and I decided that I could sleep in my own bed after all.

But lying there in bed that night, we agreed that the room really needs to be painted. And we really need nightstands. And I’ve only hung up one picture in the almost-two years that we’ve lived here. (I haven’t hung pictures or curtains anywhere yet.) So I picked up paint swatches at the local hardware store and I’ve narrowed it down to three. I’ll go down to the Peddler’s Mall tomorrow or the next day and see if I can’t scrounge up some old windows to add some interest to this big blank basement wall and a small but solid table to use for a nightstand. Target ought to yield us a new lamp and a less brilliant alarm clock. Michael’s sells some wide white frames I love and I have enough of my own photographic art to decorate the walls.

Looks like this will be our Labor Day weekend project. (And about time, too!)

It was years and years and years ago that I first read Peace Like a River.  It was incredible! It managed to be spiritual without ever even mentioning God.  Miracles were handled in such a casual way that there was no disbelief to suspend.  And the storyline, about love and betrayal and just how far people will go for someone they love, well, there is nothing about this novel that I don’t love.  Nothing.  It’s one of the handful that I’ve carried in my heart through the years.

It came to my attention about two years ago that the author had finally written a second novel.  I waffled.  I mean, his first book was powerful, wonderful.  Could his second measure up?  Would it be as captivating?  I mean, Peace Like a River was going to be a tough act to follow!  I never could bring myself to purchase it.  I loved his first book too much to risk it.  Then I found a second hand copy and I bit the bullet and read So Brave, Young, and Handsome.

The narrator is an author who wrote a wildly successful first book and, under pressure to duplicate his success with another best seller, is now having trouble coming up with a second story.  (That part made me laugh; So Brave, Young, and Handsome was a LONG time coming.)  The rest of it, though?  No miracles.  No wonder.  No characters to fall in love with or even, really, to root for.

Like the narrator of his second novel, Leif Enger couldn’t pull off the second novel.  It is utterly forgettable.

So now I have a hard cover copy of So Brave, Young, and Handsome in great condition, but I do not feel it is worthy of a spot on the bookshelf beside my beloved Peace Like a River If you haven’t read Peace Like a River, please do.  You won’t be sorry.  If you have and you, too, have been afraid to commit to this second, lesser novel, leave a comment. If I get more than one, we’ll have a drawing. If not, you’ll be the automatic winner.

We had a jolly good weekend here on the farm.  We made a gravity feeder for our chickens out of a feed pan, a bucket and its lid, a bolt and a scrap of two-by-four.  Ready made – and without a lid – it would have cost over $40 dollars.  A farmer better stocked with miscellaneous junk probably could have done it for free.  We purchased the raw materials for $11 and spent about 15 minutes on the actual work.  Times two feeders, we netted a $60 savings.  Not bad!  Next week, we’ll make five-gallon water tanks for the slightly greater cost of $16, because I can’t figure out how to do it without the fairly expensive sealed and air-tight gamma lid, but we’ll still save about $25 per unit.

David was working under his truck Saturday and discovered that his universal joint was in desperate need of replacement.  He knew it was a cheap part, but he figured the work would best be hired out to a local mechanic…until he started googling instructions.  Sunday morning before Mass, he purchase the part and borrowed the tool he needed.  (Auto Zone loans out tools.  How cool is that?)  Sunday afternoon, he rolled his truck up on ramps and did the job in less than two hours himself, saving two billable hours of our mechanic’s time.

(We saved quite a bit of cash this weekend, didn’t we?)

Here’s our most exciting news, though, and I’ve been waiting a long time to mention it, just to make sure.  Two of our three female cows were in heat this weekend, which makes for a noisy farm as the ladies are not shy about bellowing for a fella when they’re in the mood.  It’s Ellie’s first heat since T-bone was born and we’ll be sure to have her bred at her next cycle in three weeks.  It’s Daisy’s third heat, but she’s only eight months old and can’t be bred till she’s fifteen months.  We’ll be waiting till she’s 18 months so we don’t have a winter calf.  The last cow, my beloved Maybelle, has not been in heat since we had her inseminated June 16, so we can probably assume she’s an expectant mama.  We’re very excited about that.  This will be our first start-to-finish calf out of our favorite cow.  If all goes well, we’re expecting it to be born around April 1.  Here’s hoping it’s another heifer!

The homily this morning was pretty predictable. It focused on the Gospel, of course, the tale of the poor man who embarrassed himself by sitting down near the head of the table at a wedding banquet. Alas, when a more distinguished guest arrived, the man was asked to give up his seat and ended up reclining way, way down at the far end of the hall, at the lowest place of all. “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Lk 14:11)

The second reading, though, from the twelfth chapter of St. Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews, was pretty powerful stuff. I had to read the whole chapter.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so close, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb 12:1)

I wonder how fast I could run, unburdened by sin, free and light, with eyes only for my Lord and God.  I appreciate Paul’s passion.

Lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fail to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” spring up and cause trouble, and by it the many become defiled. (Heb 12:12-15)

Good advice to a fallen world in which we are more inclined to tear each other down than lift each other up. And that “root of bitterness”. How much strife is caused in our own families by that deep-rooted weed, causing “the many to become defiled” by our angry words and begrudging actions.

For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearer entreat that no further messages be spoken to them. You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel. (Heb 12 18-19, 22-24)

Such a word-picture he paints, of storms and war and burning destruction and a terrible voice thundering commandments from heaven, contrasting so vividly with a vision of angels and saints, a golden city, a just God, our risen Savior.  I think of the words of our beloved Pope John Paul II: “Be not afraid!” We were made for heaven, for joy, for light, for love.

Saint Paul makes it sound almost easy.  So why is it so hard?

I don’t always get to make it to the grocery store when I plan to anymore. Stuff happens, you know? Like just last week, David had surgery on his knee and I drove him to his morning doctor’s appointment on Friday, but that meant that I didn’t have time to go shopping, too. I’ve got Friday morning. That’s it. So when something comes up on Friday morning and I can’t make it to the grocery store, we just eat out of the pantry and the freezer for the week. (Milk and eggs are not a problem around here.)

This week, when I ran out of food for the cows, I drove over to the neighbor’s feed shop to resupply. He had chicken feed and rabbit feed and sheep feed, but he was all out of the all important cow feed. Some fella had just wiped him out. And it occurred to me, right there in the feed barn, that I ought to have a pantry for the animals, too. I ought to be able to go a month on whatever we have stored, even for the animals, because stuff happens and we can’t rely on being able to get to the store, or on him being able to deliver.

So I started an animal pantry. It’s only got three extra sacks of cow-and-calf grain, but it’s a start, however small, and a pleasant insurance policy against unforeseen circumstances. Why didn’t I think of this sooner?!

(In my neighbor’s defense, I was a few days early for my first-of-the-month visit, but he had my grain the following day. He takes really good care of his customers. He always knows when I’m coming and he knows what I’ll be buying. Better still, I can count him as a friend, too. )

They have a category at the fair called Best Collective Hobby – Three Items. It can be any sort of thing you collect – rocks, stamps, squished pennies – whatever. I didn’t enter that category this year because I don’t really collect anything, but the week after the fair, I found a large, dead cicada hanging in the window of the chicken coop. I brought it in and declared to the children, “Here you go! This is the beginning of my collection for the fair next year.” Davey found me another cicada. Rosie found me a whole bucket of cicada shells. Delaney found two butterflies. And a friend brought me a large rhinoceros beetle she’d found at church. My desk is quite literally covered with bugs.

Yesterday, Davey might have gone a little over the top, though. I found him sitting at the kitchen table with an index card, a bottle of crazy glue, a can of spray shellac, and…

A BLACK WIDOW SPIDER!!!

She’s the largest black widow I’ve ever seen and was found living contentedly beside the school room door in an old tire. I’m not terribly pleased at having such a specimen in my collection, but it was sweet of him to think of me, wasn’t it?

She was crying when I put her to bed.  “Mommy?  I want to sleep with you,”  she said in trembling voice.  Ordinarily, I’d just have scooped her up and taken her back down with me, but I was hesitant because David had surgery on his knee and children move and if she bumped into him, he would hurt.

So I said instead, “Would you like me to sing you your baby song?”  She smiled and I sang her song six times over and kissed her and told her I had to go to bed now, too.

Her lip quivered.

“I’m not your baby.”

My heart broke and I remembered all the times during the day that she’d climbed into my lap and then hopped out again when her little brother toddled over to claim that seat for herself.  He gets first dibs on this most coveted of all spots and all she gets are the leftovers.  She is still a baby and she is always and forever my baby, but this growing up business still hurts, her and me both.

I whispered that I’d be right back and hurried downstairs to help husband to bed.  In the lamplight, listening, he seemed resigned that there would be a three year old in bed, and I smiled and hurried back to gather my heart-sore child to myself.  She giggled when I took her hand.

Together, we slipped into bed, me in the middle, and she whispered silliness into the space between our faces and I whispered, “hush,” and I stroked her hair and she curled up as small as she could into the bend of my body.  Sometimes she pretended to sleep and then she really was and she really was my baby, all soft and warm and melty in the bed beside me.

I lay there staring at the curve of her nose and lips and forehead and cheeks and I know that she is my baby now and for always, though she won’t know it for herself for many, many years.  I know it because no matter how old my children grow, when I look at them, I see, always, the baby they once were.

Jonny’s birthday is coming up and, since I always give each child a new book as a gift, I asked him if there was any particular title he was interested in.  “No,” he said, “you can pick out my book.  You always pick really good books.”  Quite a compliment, if you ask me.

It’s been probably two months since it rained here. The fields are dry and brown and the ponds have dried up – or will soon. Yesterday, we found out the neighbors have been feeding hay already. They have a lot more livestock than we do and their animals are starving on forage. I honestly haven’t paid much attention to the state of our fields, except to note that David bush-hogged the pasture the sheep are in when nothing is growing. The cows come into the barn with an algae line about halfway up their sides, so I know the pond is okay, and I just assumed they were still grazing. But last night, I checked.

I walked out into the pasture to evaluate the amount of grass left. Most of it is brown and dormant, but there were two green and growing spots down in the hollows. It’s mostly grass, with one area being weedier than the other, but it looks like we’ve got a couple more weeks of forage out there. We only have two cows out on (I’m guessing) five acres. Still, as I walked back up to the barn to finish up my milking chores, I prayed my daily prayer for rain. I closed the back gate to the barn to keep the cows out, gathered up my milk pails, and walked back to the house, praying some more under the clear, blue, sweltering sky.

Hours later, I was awakened by a kaboom! Thunderstorm! I jumped out of bed, pulled on some shorts, and dashed out the door to open the gate so the cows could get under cover. I have dashed out into many a storm for the benefit of my animals, but the lightening was coming too close and too fast and I did not feel comfortable covering the distance between house and barn and then laying hands on a metal gate. So I waited. In the brilliant flashes of light, I could see my cows waiting it out alongside the fence near the trees. It was forty five minutes before the lightening slowed enough that I felt it was reasonably safe to make the journey. I felt badly for making my poor girls stand out in that weather, but it was wonderful to finally have weather to stand out in.

When I finally climbed back into bed, I laughed, and I prayed again, “Thank you, Lord, for the rain, but I’m going to complain now. I always complain. We could have done with a little less lightening.”

We’ll take the lightening, though, if that’s what it takes to get the rain, so keep it coming. I’ll try to remember to leave the barn open at night from now on.