family

The Family has been here for a short visit, just my brother in-law and niece. My family’s gotten small in the last 6 years with the death of my aunt, then my mom and finally my sister from cancer, and then there is myself and another niece who’ve moved away to other states and other lives. The ones back in Seattle maintain a scrappy hold on things keeping the family somewhat in resemblance of what we’re all used too. All my great nieces and nephews are now teenagers. I’ve been gone for so long I hardly know them. This is the hard side of choosing to leave the nest to fly the distance.

I picked the fam up at the Tulsa airport and our first stop was to pick up some goats on our way home so 30 minutes after coming to Oklahoma they were loading four goats into the back of my caged truck. What a welcome.

It was a wonderful short visit and a chance for my niece to get away from her world for a little while. Being the city girl she is I wasn’t sure how she would take the heat (80’s) or the bugs, and dirt. She did well. Honestly the girl would be fine to wake up on a farm for the rest of her life. We unloaded alfalfa, did chores, she helped with the farm table dinner. Both of them were a great help.

The night of the farm table dinner I was up in the cabin getting dinner prepared and a guest notified me that he had witnessed a break in to the corral that is next to the milk barn. Oh, great! If they get in the milking parlor that could be trouble, that’s where the grain is…… So Lester (bro-in-law) headed down to take care of business and when he was gone for what I thought might be too long I sent Marnelle (niece) for re-enforcement! They managed to get all of the goats and a couple of sheep out of the milk barn and repair the fence that had given up the ghost! Now that’s team work.

I envy families that farm together. Mom, Dad, maybe the grandparents, the kids. What must it be like? I love my life and I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but when you don’t have a TV your mind can go to some interesting places. And I wonder, what would life be like if I had stayed in Seattle? Sometimes I have dreams where I’m back at the restaurant and I’m cooking for a full house and this great sadness comes over me in my dream and I think what happened to the farm?

So it’s nice to have family come and visit, it’s nice to be able to share my life with them for a little while. It’s nice when I can wake up from those dreams and go hug the goats.