Family Ties

Today is my dad's 86th birthday. He died 25 years ago from leukemia exactly one month after he turned 61 years old. It was a rip-off that he died so young, because he and my mother were just getting to a point in their lives where they had begun to experience a little leisure. They were married about 36 years and the first 29 of those were notable for the unrelenting labor they performed to turn their little dirt-patch into a prosperous farm. And, the prosperity may have been a mirage, for all I know, because I didn't notice any particular up-tick in their life-style. However, because there no longer were any tiny children living at home, occasionally my dad and mom would go off on a weekend to watch one of my brothers at an "away" wrestling match. Of course, my dad drove the team bus usually, and so he could get paid to be a fan. There were a couple of children still at home who were old enough to milk the cows for one night, and my sister lived next door to help keep an eye on things. These little pleasures (an over-night trip periodically) were a big deal to a dairy farmer.

Mostly I remember my parents working relentlessly. As a child, I didn't recognize how much they did. It was just normal life. They got up early--he milked, she fed the chickens, then fed us. He drove the bus, she washed the milkers and washed the dishes. He came home and fed the animals, she stayed home and cooked his dinner and washed our clothes and baked bread. In the fall, we were likely to come home from school to an empty house, with our mother up in the fields driving the grain truck, or bailing straw. However, there was always something baked awaiting our hungry bellies when we got off the bus, even if the cook was now farming. Daddy worked ridiculous hours. If there was a full moon, he just baled hay until the job was finished. If it was his water turn (irrigation canals were shared property) then he stayed out there moving the canvas dams until the turn ended days later. When he owned ewes, lambing was a 24 hour job. Farmers don't punch in and out on the clock. It turns out to be excellent career training for motherhood, I found: you're never off-duty in that field either.

Farming had benefits. When I went to college, one of my roommates came to visit for a weekend, and she marvelled on our way back to school that we'd eaten every meal with my dad. Her dad was out of town a lot. She barely saw him as a teen. My dad taught me lots of things: how to drive, how to milk, how to work, how to make up silly words to songs, how to saddle a horse, how to stack hay, how to treat people who were in need--strangers or friends, how to dance (he was great, I was a poor learner), how to clean a barn, how to lift a hay bale, how to show your wife you love her, how to harrow, how to carve a whistle out of a green willow stick, how to fish (even though I didn't like it) how to start a fire, how to put gas in a car, how to treat new born calves.

He showed me how to be a good in-law, and a good family member. He lost his family when he was a little kid, but he was invited to live with another family and he treated them well all of his life. He even went out of his way to maintain ties with his brother and sister although they didn't get to live together since they were small. He made dear friends with his in-laws, and his step-family, and I never noticed any distinctions between his own blood and all those family members he acquired over the years. He was genuine with all of them. It was the same when we began to marry and added even more people to the family web.

I guess the biggest sorrow of having him die young is that he didn't get to enjoy the harvest. You don't know if you're any good as a parent until your own children begin to be parents. Then, you can see if your influence was positive. My dad had a large group of tiny grandchildren before he passed on, and he loved being Grandpa. It brought out his better nature: he actually cleaned up his barnyard vocabulary for the grandchildren. He'd been working on that for years, but the little kids really motivated him. Plus, he just loved little kids. He was a school bus driver for 30 years--he really loved kids. Grandchildren were just fabulous to him. But, he would have loved that parade of Eagle Scouts and missionaries and brides and graduations. He would have been the proudest great-grandpa of all. He and my mom would have been to every event to mark every occasion. Well, come to think of it, lots of times--he was. We knew it...someone always knew it.