About a week an a half ago, my Mom's farm help was hurt in a ski accident - he ran into a tree while skiing at night. He's on the mend, but in the meantime, someone had to fill in and pick up the slack at the farm. My family has 10 horses at the farm right now - and that means mucking 2x a day, putting the horses out in the turnout, bringing them in, feeding them, putting hay out (when it's snowy or wintery), throwing down and stacking hay, filling and hauling water buckets (and the troughs and pumps are frozen, so you need to haul it out to the field too) and so much more. It is wonderful spending time with the animals, but you can imagine, spending day after day caring for them, it can be tiring, not just mentally, but physically.
My mom has severe tendinitis and carpal tunnel in her wrists that make even simple tasks painful. Add on that each horse produces upwards of 500 lbs of poop a day and you've got a lot of lifting! To be honest, I should have been helping my mom more often. We all are spoiled with the help she has. Paul and his Dad are great and they help out most mornings, of course, that doesn't mean my mom ever has the day off. She's there before 7 AM and then back at 12 to bring them in and then back at 5 to feed and do afternoon chores. The few times my parents have gone on vacation I've house-sat and done chores. Trying to be my mom for a day is exhausting - doing it for a week gives me a whole new appreciation of what she handles. Not only does she manage her own work, life and my Dad's work - along with the rest of us (A wedding, a house being sold, a house being bought, a new apartment, new boyfriends) - she also manages to take care of all these horses and dogs and make it look easy.
The point of all this rambling is, that when my mom called me last week to tell me about Paul, I didn't wait for her to ask me to help her. For just about 2 weeks now, I've been doing chores with her. Yea, it means early mornings and about 3 extra hours of exercise, but I love it and it means spending extra time with her. My Mom never asks for anything in return for taking care of my Dog and horses while I'm in Spain. She never asks for anything in return when she stays up nights talking with me about races, wall colors or life. I owe her a lot - a lot more than a few hours on a snowy morning. Truth is, a lot of people dread turning into their mothers and I could only be so lucky as to be anything like her.
Happy Snow Day, y'all!
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1 comment:
happy snow day! i LOVE this post! i feel so fortunate, as well, to not only have a mother i respect, admire and someday hope to be like - but i have a mother in law (mum) i very much look up to, as well. i just LOVE when young women are lucky and mature enough to see their mothers in this light...what a great feeling! i'm sure your mom is really loving the extra time spent with you, as well! she's lucky to have you as a daughter! ;)
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