January 29, 2010

• A FORTY-YEAR MARATHON

  This is a good day to blog, for more than one reason. It’s snowing like crazy outside,

                   

                     (the view from my front door, right now)

  and since I twisted my knee yesterday, I can hardly hobble. AND… I have plenty to blog about today…are you ready for a long one?

  First, what about that title? What is a marathon? The first thing that comes to mind, since I have daughters who run in them, (and no, they didn’t get that from me!) is the 26.1 mi foot race. Then, it seems like there is some reference to ancient Greece? Can’t remember that one exactly. But today I’m thinking of a third definition, the one that says a marathon is a test of endurance over a long period of time or space. Remember the dance marathons during the Great Depression? People danced until they could no longer stay upright, hoping to be the last ones standing, to win a bit of money to see them through the hard times. That seems a bit negative so I’m going to segue to a positive spin on a personal marathon of sorts.

                        

                                 January 29, 1970

  Today is our anniversary. We wed on January 29, 1970, so that makes today a forty-year milestone for my farmboy and me! Should I add a few more exclamation points? FORTY YEARS!!!!! That means we got married when we were twelve….just kidding, but not much older than that. In essence, we were basically children and grew up together. And looking back on those two score, it feels somewhat like we’ve been running a marathon.

  Children, indeed. We were in college, and by the time we graduated three years later, we had added two assorted children to the mix. Those years are a blur, with school, work, family-building, surviving….not sure how we came through it, but we did, with a sense of accomplishment, if not much sanity.

  The next stretch of the marathon was a move to Mississippi. Stan (who worked since the time he could toddle, literally) and his dad had built a nice ranch out of the rugged Ozark hills but had always dreamed together of farming someplace where the soil was deep and the land flat. At that time, the Black Belt (referring to the stretch of prairie with rich, black loamy soil) of Mississippi was priced better than more popular farming areas in the Midwest. So, we went south….into the Deep South. Moved onto a farm and went to work. That first year, Stan, who had zero experience in crop farming, planted and harvested a successful soybean crop. We made friends who are still precious to us today, learned to understand and speak the local dialect (Shuqualak is pronounced Suga-lock, and you “carry” someone to the doctor, not “take” them), added a third child to our family, and after a few years, began to feel like we’d come home to stay. But it was not to be.

  Twelve years later, we moved back to the Ozarks to milk cows, the next leg of our journey. Stan and his dad decided that the dairy Curtis had built here should be our next big focus…and focus, we did. You have to, when you milk cows like we did, almost 24 hours a day. Stan, who had no experience at all milking cows, learned the dairy business inside and out, and we spent the next 12 years doing that. It’s a demanding, consuming lifestyle, but we were able to do some growing of our place and got it to the point where we could enter the next phase….

  Beef cattle. We’ve always had beef cattle, even while in Mississippi, but now it’s our sole focus, business-wise. We have a cow-calf operation, Black Angus with some cross-breeding thrown in for good measure (that’s called adding hybrid vigor, and it’s a good thing.) We think this home stretch of our marathon will find us continuing to raise good quality calves, which is what we market.

  That’s our exterior life, in a nutshell. But what about the inside story? What has made it work? How have we managed to stick together when so many marriages fail (and we’ve sadly seen many of our friends succumb to that malady.) Our marriage has not been perfect, and sometimes it hasn’t been easy or even good. I daresay any couple who share a home and family this long will say the same thing. The road we’ve been running over has had its share of potholes, curves and steep hills to navigate, and even some deep chasms to cross.

  If we have had one single thing going for us, it is commitment. When we said “I do,” we meant it. We meant that we would stick it out, no matter what. If we weren’t going to do that, we’d never have married in the first place. That commitment has been challenged, but it has held firm, thanks to a certain toughness on the part of each of us, a family that supported that commitment, and the knowledge that it was RIGHT to stick it out.

  We were married by a very dear man, Wiley McGhee, who is still living…and ministering sometimes…at the age of 97 years. He told us, when we counseled with him before the wedding, that we would face some tough times, but that God would see us through if we’d do our part. Dear Wiley was so right. God has seen us through, when we were too blinded by our own issues or problems to see the way. We trusted Him to do that, and He has not failed us. Our commitment, bound by a promise made before God and entrusted to Him when we didn’t have the answers, has held us together. It has helped us learn to build bridges across the chasms in the road of this marathon we’re in, and we walk across them together.

  Where are we, forty years later, besides in the cattle business? We’ve grown up considerably, but in many ways we still feel just like those two kids who stepped out on blind faith in 1970. We look older but we still look good to each other. We spend most of our days in constant contact (farmboys and farmgirls work closely together) and we still enjoy each other’s company (most of the time.) We appreciate the good qualities in each other and have learned to divide up the responsibilites, based on each other’s strengths. I’d say we complement each other.

                        

                                        (September, 2009)

  Where are we going, then? I hope we have forty more years to find out! We’ve had surprises already, and who knows? There may be more in store for us. But wherever it is we’re headed, one thing I know…with God’s continued blessing, we’re going together.

  P.S. I hope we go to ALASKA this year! That’s my wish for our 40th anniversary! Not a shabby wish, eh? I’ll keep you posted….

  • 12:44 pm
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