Walking Through Life Together

Today, the footwear will be just a tad more utilitarian than it was 38 years ago.

Wedding photos by Stan Reimer

It was on March 28, 1981, that we walked out of the sanctuary at the Pratt United Methodist Church and into a life together. That day, I was wearing uncustomary-for-me white heels and Randy was wearing rented white dress shoes. We were just a couple of farm kids, walking into a new life as husband and wife.

And, 38 years later, we're still walking through life together.

Life hasn't been without its share of muck and mire (and droughts, too). But it certainly helps to have someone there to help you get unstuck from the places and things that bog you down or parch your soul.

Today, we'll spend a lot of the day like we've spent the last two days - rounding up baby calves and their mamas, sorting them, then running the babies through the working chute.

Instead of a fancy dress and veil, I will wear jeans with fragrant "adornments" ... and I don't mean spring flowers. The only tie involved for Randy will be the rope used to hold the bull calves' legs in place for a quick bit of life-changing surgery. 

Instead of wearing my own pearl earrings, the calves will get their ear "jewelry" in the form of an ear tag.

I think I'll always have a special fondness for Calf No. 938.

It took Randy a little while to figure it out. Finally, I covered up the "9" and asked, "Do you get it now?"

To be fair, he was a little bit busy at the time. His jobs during calf-working time are certainly more labor intensive (and numerous) than my roles.

The ear tag got used on Tuesday, so I'm sure our anniversary wasn't uppermost in his mind at the time. But as I spy No. 938 in the pasture, it will remind me of a long-ago day when this farm daughter became a farm wife.

 

I'm sure glad I traded my old address for one on the County Line. 

If we get done in time, we may go look for a new refrigerator before we go out to eat. Oh, the excitement!

 I wouldn't trade it for anything. And, to Randy, I Choose You - every day.



There will be more on this spring ritual at another time - when I'm not so busy helping to separate mamas from babies and then slapping syringes into the "health care provider's" hand.