“I don’t get it.”  Ula’s flops across the couch, letting the heat of the fire melt away the chill of her day at the farm while she recounts her adventures.  “Jenn accidentally poked herself with the needle while I was showing her how to do injections,” she continues,  “and  Pop Pop says, ‘you better go inside and clean that with alcohol.’  And then I look at Pop Pop, and his hand is slashed open, and there’s a gash on his forehead, and he’s dripping blood, and not stopping to take care of it!”

The shearer came this week, so while the sheep were down in the barn, they had to vaccinate.  It’s an intense two days of livestock handling, and my Dad is heavily involved with it.

We need him there.  The sheep are his enterprise, and part of keeping Sap Bush a farm is making sure he transitions his skills to the next generation.  

Trouble is, Dad tunnels.  He fixates on everyone else’s safety, but he doesn’t stop to consider his own.  He doesn’t recognize the limits that age imposes on his body.  He climbs in with the sows when they’re in heat when no one’s around; he tries to wrestle sheep out of the pasture and into the mule without help.  One time he even drove it while restraining the ewe in the cab…and succeeded.  — Although he was nearly killed when she stepped on the gas pedal and sent them careening down the steep hillside.  He’s forever getting cut, banged, knocked, and trampled.

It’s a problem.  But he’s been that way for 74 years.  In nearly five decades of knowing him, I’ve learned to laugh about it.  I have to.  Screaming doesn’t work.  Lectures don’t work.  Quiet conversations don’t work. Trips to the emergency room don’t work.  Eye rolling and having a laugh at the end of the day is the only way I can release steam about my father’s problematic behavior. 

All in all he’s far better than he used to be.  He’s learning to communicate (a little) and ask for help (sometimes).  But in general, his preference is to throw his body into the farm work and keep going, then throw himself down in his chair at the end of the day, proclaiming himself exhausted as mom screams at him to clean his wounds.

He’s supposed to be slowing down.  And at the same time he’s supposed to be slowing down, Mom yells at me about slowing down.  The stresses of 2020 left me with a case of Plantar’s Fasciitis and a dislocated fibula.  When Covid numbers surged at Thanksgiving, it was a perfect time for Bob and me to lock the doors of the cafe and go home for a long winter’s nap.  

Growing up with my dad often left me pining for the experience of prolonged idle time.  So as a special adventure for our Covid Winter, we decided to try it out.  I had no books to write or publicize.  We had no cafe to operate, no podcasting, no social media.  Our only task was schooling the kids and quietly holding the farm in maintenance mode until the snows receded, the lambs were ready to be born and the cafe could be re-opened.  

In a true rebellion to my dad’s example, we went dormant.  I napped for hours, we caught up on Netflix.  We spent hours in the woods, played music and cross-country skied. …Until Bob broke his hand colliding with some brush while coming around a steep turn.  We spent Valentines’ day in the emergency room and tried to find ways to bide the time until spring came and the cast was off.  We took an online class in U.S. Government, another in wine tasting, another in world religions.  We conducted a rigorous independent study of Irish whiskey.  I tried some new recipes, then fretted that I was so domineering in the kitchen, my kids would never be able to feed themselves in my absence.  So all three kids took turns cooking dinner and washing up…which led to further study of Irish whiskey on Bob’s and my part.

I took to meditation, read up on spiritual channeling, finished every book on my bedside stand.  Unable to play his guitar or mandolin with a broken hand, Bob started reading Facebook.

With a messed up leg, messed up hand and messed up feet, we were largely confined indoors aside from the most rudimentary of hikes. And our kids’ growing competence in cooking and cleaning left us even more useless.

We got bored.  

By March 1st, we were counting down the days until we could re-open, in spite of our limps and pains.  And now here we are, in a glorious week where the sheep are shorn, and Bob and I find ourselves in the cafe kitchen every afternoon, starting it up again – Moving furniture, cleaning, making pie dough, laminating croissants.  There is a happiness that ripples through our bodies.  His doctor finally removes his cast, I get fitted for orthotics and we push aside our aches and pains.  Between cleaning counters and washing dishes, I find my arms around his waist, his fingers pressed into my back, our lips locked together.  It is an embrace filled with love for each other, but equally an expression of love for what we do, for the labors and pains before us.

There is joy and exhilaration in feeling useful, in having purpose.  And I understand why Dad keeps going, keeps climbing, scraping, falling.  

Because in the fullness of the labor, the afflictions recede.  Age vanishes.  Worry disappears.  The body and mind are in service to the animals, to the family, to the land, to the community.  And the high that comes from that raises the pain threshold considerably.  

Moreover, pain is the salt of life.  We shouldn’t over-do it, but without it, we fail to relish all the other flavors:  the scrumptious feeling of a soft pillow, the deliciousness of drifting off to sleep, the sweet tenderness of a comforting hug.

Working through injury is not a substitute for stopping to heal.  And I still fret about what calamity Dad will stumble into next.  And Mom still worries about how long my legs will hold out before my new orthotics arrive.  And I worry that Bob’s hand will become arthritic and he won’t be able to play his music.

But calamity and physical pain are the prices we pay to engage in what we do, to feel fully immersed in this life we’ve chosen.  We wouldn’t trade it for anything.  We work to heal, we heal to work, and we are reminded by the bruises and stings to remember this day, remember these moments, remember to be a little smarter (hopefully) next time, but always always always to be thankful for the way of life that causes them.