There are lots of things I enjoy about writing agricultural profiles: meeting new people, hearing interesting stories, learning new things about agriculture. Today was something a little special, though.
I visited the Molodich family in Connecticut. The women in the family run a produce operation and sell mostly direct-to-consumer. The men are dairy farmers. I realized walking around the dairy operation that I hadn't really talked dairy in a long time . . . probably not since I milked my last cow before leaving for college twenty-plus years ago.
The little black and white Holstein calves were even cuter than I remembered . . . and it was funny how quickly some random memories came. There was one cow with a backwards 7 on her face. From somewhere in my mind came "7-Up," a cow we had with a true "7" marking.
The smells, which I talked about in an earlier post, were almost overwhelming, laden as they were with decades-old associations. I can't remember another farm visit that evoked such powerful emotions--pleasure, sadness, youth, and age.
Perhaps it was the unexpected connections, finding we knew several of the same people. Perhaps it was the similarity in backgrounds: multi-generational farm family navigating transition plans. Maybe it was just the surprise of finding an old, but still operating, sawmill on the farm and thinking of our little sawmill at home and the hours of use it has seen.
Most probably, all of those things slowly wove themselves around and into my heart and mind. All I know is that I was unprepared for what happened within me as the cows began their methodical trek into the milking parlor, unerringly finding their way to their stanchions. I noticed how the fragrance of the barn altered as they filled the formerly-vacant space.
There is a scent that is a dairy barn. It is not just cow. It is not just manure. It is not just feed. It is not just bedding. It is not just milk. It is all of them combined with an undertone of iodine dip.
As the cows came in, letting down their milk in anticipation of the milking machines, that aroma washed over me, filling my nostrils, my clothing, my very pores.
I was immediately transported in time. I was no longer a responsible 40-year-old divorced mother of two. I was 17: imaginative, living with a soul filled with music, dancing toward a future I was convinced would be brilliant . . . at least more brilliant than milking cows.
Suddenly, it was all I could do to keep a tight grip on my notebook and camera and not slide up beside one of these stranger-bovines, clean off her udder, and pop a machine on those full teats.
I suspect Mike noticed. "If you're ever in need of a job . . ." he joked.
"Be careful," I teased back. "I just might take you up on that!" Then reality struck and I amended, "But after 20 minutes I'd probably be saying . . ."
"Your legs would be hurting some then!" he finished for me. We both laughed.
It was a moment of beautiful camaraderie. And it was a moment of poignancy. For I am no longer 17. Age has taken things away from that bright-eyed, all-knowing, all-ignorant child.
But age has given me things as well. Two beautiful children. A deeper understanding of life . . . and the realization that even now I am only scratching the surface of what there is to be understood. Heartbreak. Loss. Joy. Hope.
And even as I longed to crouch between those cows once again, I knew that I would want a moment only, not an hour or a week or a lifetime. For the life I have, even with its unexpectedness and its trials, is where I belong. And it is good.
A beautiful look at the struggle of nostalgia.
ReplyDeleteHard to suddenly feel so old! Wasn't it just yesterday we were freshmen at Wheaton, catching snowflakes on our tongues, and swinging on the playground?!
DeleteA beautiful look at the struggle of nostalgia.
ReplyDeleteYou may consider that memory, as it is unfailingly preserved by the Almighty, is often a reminder of who we really are, because He holds our yesterdays as much as our todays and tomorrows. Not only does he hold our tears in a wineskin so that not one teardrop is unaccounted for, but he also preserves the sunny dew drops of our youth, a dew which will be renewed for both Christ and his holy ones per Psalm 110.
ReplyDeleteYou are who you are, not as if wearing away, but as being unveiled and renewed. Who you are is not a matter of time, but of the God who formed you with your identity in Christ, so that time is merely a pulling away of the curtain to reveal who you are in Christ: symbolized by the name on the little white stone.
That you is somehow constant between 17, now, and the future, so that nothing He has given you will be lost: "the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable." The beauty of who you have been, are now, and will be ever present and vibrant, growing ever brighter till the breaking of day's fullness. You are being inwardly renewed while the temporary outward fading mask veils you to those who do not have eyes to see.
You are still bright eyed and beautifully expressive, and you still revel in the earth from which He formed us all. You are made to be grounded in it, not insulated by shod feet, and whether you walk bare foot in the grass or lay down in it, there is a beauty in humbly abiding in God's creation--in flora, fauna, animalia; in labor, reading, writing, and meditation. Look at the research, and you will find your humility to be a rare thing--most Americans spend 98% of their time inside artificial environs, and walk less than a mile a week.
The advantage of advancing through trial, frustration, and suffering is that God uses these to teach us who we have always been in Him. He does so by throwing off the encumbering thoughts, habits, toxic people, and worldly objects which have only distracted us from who we truly are. Yet what is good not only remains, but grows more refulgent as He continues His work in us, and we work out our salvation and fear and trembling.
Do not look to the world for maturity. The present shadowy world of men and their “wisdom” is passing away very quickly, and the dawn will soon break, when we will be singing those Psalms of Ascent--songs which tie our storms among the violence of Meshech and Kedar, to a journey to our true home in the City of the vision of peace.
All the prophecies point to the palpable world from which you came and still remember with fondness: a world of pastures and livestock and good work among the living creation rather than the dead towers of confusion. No more lawless eminent domain or property taxes to squeeze farmers and shepherds (see Lev 25:23, Ezk 45, & Isa 33), but days when work is joy because shared in vibrant fellowship: like the harvesting and winepressing in the book of Ruth, and similar scenes pictured by Tolstoy and Hardy.
Seeing the revival of your animated expressions and mischievous antics in your penlight videos brings great delight to me--a reminder of unspoiled an unfading beauty--evidence that the God who instilled such beauty in you, preserves it still, and is clearly perfecting it.
Some of us will need you to teach us the way of milking, and one hopes there are plenty of tomatoes, so that a certain sporting woman may continue a time-honored tradition of pitching them at friends and family. If one might take liberty in adding a beatitude, "blessed is a one baptized by tomatoes at Kristen's hand." Given the prophecies about abundant flocks and herds, there should be plenty of goats to clean up afterwards ;)