Ode to the American Farmer

I am stepping aside from the Fragile x world for this post.  It is in honor of my father who celebrated his birthday a few days ago. He is a retired farmer, the true personification of 'salt of the earth'.  He wrestled a living from the earth, enough for a family of 12.  He remembers life before electricity and plowing a field with horses.  He attended a one room school house until the 8th grade, and not beyond.  He knows what it is like to rely on neighbors to sustain your existance.

Today he has ears that can't hear after years of working around old tractors, skin like an old baseball mitt with a permanent farmer's tan, and a determination to keep going no matter what, not retirement, cancer, or bad hips can slow him down.

I was so fortunate to grow up on a farm, a lifestyle that is disappearing. I remember a dinner table covered with food gathered within 150 feet of our front door and recycling everything before it was 'fashionable'. Dad was always a bike ride away in the fields if he wasn't in the barn or the sheds.  I grew up with 2 stay at home hard working parents. Our farm was a perpetual play extravaganza. There were 10 of us kids and any number of dogs, cats, and other animals, not to mention neighbors and cousins. We all survived with arms and legs intact, although a few got broken along the way. We may have been lacking in material things, but definetely not in imagination, or morals, values and work ethic.  

I have so many vivid images of my father: the day our barn burned down when I was 3 or 4,  showing me how to use the table saw so I could make my own Barbie furniture, teaching me to drive the old station wagon. The strongest one occured almost 7 years ago.  My father had taken up the harmonica and he played it everywhere, anytime. The sound in the background was becoming quite familiar, and we thought little of it.  I am standing in a crowded room, hundreds of people actually, most of them friends and family, a few strangers, and I hear it.  My Mom's favorite song, the one he played for her every night before bed. For a while, I thought nothing of it - just background noise, but then I saw him in the corner of my eye. He was leaning over my Mom's casket, giving her one last seranade. I wish I was a better writer so I could give you an idea of what this moment was. The eventual, absolute stillness of the room, the streams of tears on all the faces.  My Mom and Dad had been marreid for almost 50 years, and he was saying his final fairwell.  He was her caregiver for the 15 years she suffered from Parkinson's, and he was with her when she died. All of us got a little glimpse of what their life was like, a glimpse of his tenderness and devotion. My Dad was always a caregiver and still is.  He cares for his family, he cares for the land and the animals on it and he cares for God.  Thank you for all of this.

I love you Dad.