A New Day

How do you celebrate Father's Day when you've been unchilded?

When your own father and both your fathers-in-law are deceased?

There's still one father you can turn to, and that's what the Good Rancher did.

He cast himself into the care of his heavenly father, asking Him to show His love to him on this yet another sad day.

And he was not left unfathered.

The rain sputtered and spattered indecisively throughout the day; nonetheless, the gauge Sunday morning showed 9/10ths of an inch ... 

And by the evening it had quietly crept up to 1.4". 

(I have learnt that tenths matter.) 

He went to check the calf who should have died after having been attacked a couple of weeks ago by what the GR assumes was a coyote: he is recovering slowly but steadily each day, and this Father's day he seemed to have taken a giant leap forward. 

To push his heart to capacity, a beautiful foal was presented to him by Chopper, a horse others had written off as too small and not horse enough. 

Trooper is one of the most spectacular little colts in recent memory. His legs are long - almost as long as his mummy's - and yardstick  straight. He is silky to the touch, like all newborn babies are. His temperament is calm. He loves his mother, who reciprocates one hundredfold.

After church we went out to lunch with a couple of couples, both of whose kids were not close by. The three men talked of ranching and the fathers from the Bible Pastor Walter had mentioned in his Father's Day Quiz just before the sermon. Some of them had had quite a time of it!

After the Church @ Endiang service that evening we had an ice cream social: floats, banana splits, sundaes, waffle cones. Coffee and chatting. Celebrating Dads. 

It's not always easy being a dad these days, Pastor Allan had commented. And yet kids of all ages need good dads more than ever. 

So to the GR and to all those men out there who are dads or who are about to become dads, don't be discouraged; don't lose heart. Your job is to love your kids and trust God for the rest. Keep letting your light shine... 

And happy Father's Day! 

It's Raining, It's Pouring!

I spent Wednesday away from the ranch; when I left, the sky was overcast but there was not so much as a spatter of raindrops.

I checked in by phone periodically. Any rain?

No. 

What about now?

No. 

And then at 11:34 I received this picture from DJ, along with the words "Finally getting some rain!"

As my friend and I went about our tasks in Calgary we were almost blown over by some of the wind gusts. We heard of the tornado warnings and thought about the Good Rancher, who was making his way back from Lethbridge.

Finally, at about 8 pm, I was home. The first thing I did was check the rain gauge:

Half an inch! 

I was so excited. The air smelled clean. As I hauled groceries into the house the three cats clawed at the door, wanting to get into the brisk outdoors. Olivia decided that discretion was the better part of valour in this unknown weather pattern. 

Jack and Charlie, however, swooped out and hurtled around the corner, to be brought up short by the overflowing rainwater tank - I must confess that I was brought up short by it too. How does a mere half an inch fill a bone-dry water trough like that?!

When the excitement subsided, we all went back indoors. The GR joined us shortly thereafter; as he started to eat his belated dinner, he heard the first pattering on the roof.  Food was forgotten as he jumped up and peered out of the window.

That half inch earlier was merely a teaser. The rain had arrived in earnest now!

All through that evening and into the night it tapped out its persistent percussion on the tin roof drum above our heads.

I was getting ready to settle The Nine in for the night, and I didn't see the GR at one of his regular evening dozing spots in the living room. But as I went down the hall the light showed me a glimpse of that man lying relaxed for the first time in many months.

"I'm just listening to the beautiful music," he murmured.

I thought about the time I took him to a performance of Handel's Messiah by the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus. I never sensed in him the depth of awe and joy I experience when I hear the magnificent old masterpiece. 

But this night, I finally got it. 

This was the GR's Hallelujah Chorus.

Finally the household occupants were all tucked in for the night. I filled the electric kettle and flicked on the switch. As the water started to shift and heat in preparation for my hot water bottle, I was propelled toward the front door. Opening it, I stepped onto the top step and felt the immediate impact of water and wind.

And in it I heard the still, small voice, a whisper, a caress in my ear:

This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. (Matthew 5:45, the Message) 

I stayed there for long moments trying to take it all in - the wind weaving through the rain, the scorched grass tentatively stretching its blades upward again, the certain knowledge that God loves us all.

And finally, I could breathe. 

Listen to the rain with me! 

I went inside to enjoy the deepest sleep I have had in a long time.

But the next morning I was awakened by a shout: "Check out the rain gauge!"

(This includes the half inch from the previous day's afternoon showers.) 

The wonder of it all!

A Cloud the Size of a Man's Hand

 It's past time to get to bed. 

Now I lay me down to sleep - I pray the Lord my soul to keep...

This evening I was watering the scant flowers I had bothered to plant in the Round-up Corral, some of them so scorched by another brutally hot day that as the spray from the watering can touched their petals they spat at me like water hitting a hot frying pan.

As I lugged watering can after watering can around this beautiful, desolate place, I couldn't stop thinking about Elijah. Elijah was the prophet of the Lord who took on the most evil of the kings of Israel to date, Ahab: the Old Testament book of 1 Kings chapter 16, verse 33 actually says, "... Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the Kings of Israel who were before him." In desperation for his nation to turn back to God, Elijah had declared that there would be no rain until he gave the word.

And now it had been three years.

All of that backstory to get to the part I was pondering, the part where God gave the word to Elijah that it was going to rain.

After some other pretty dramatic moments, recorded in chapter 18, Elijah sent his servant to study the sky and see if there was any cloud in it.

No. 

Check again. 

No. 

Check again. 

No. 

Again. 

No. 

On the seventh trip outside, the assistant reported that he saw a small cloud the size of a man's hand in the sky.

That was enough for Elijah! He sent his servant to tell the King to hasten home or he would be caught in the deluge that was about to hit.

And it was so. 

Dear Lord, tonight we have clouds in the sky over the Round-up Corral - angry, roiling clouds reluctant to release their contents, ready to punch anyone who dares challenge their authority.

Clouds bigger than a man's hand. 

The wind is throwing small objects up into the air in a blustering show of false bravado. 

The miniature pond in Jane's Nook has a waterfall that is clattering onto the rocks below, and the beautiful old stained glass window above it trembles slightly between its sturdy chain supports. The Good Rancher does his best to secure it. 

We have had 2/10ths of an inch so far this year. We have been hauling water for a month already. The livestock is hot and thirsty, looking for reprieve from this relentless heat. 

The forecast holds out hope for tomorrow; but it's been teasing us like a shiny object jerked repeatedly out of our grasp so many times in the past 30 days.

The GR waits and so I must go. 

If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord that He will make the clouds to shed a tear ...

Amen.

Remembrance Day

Today the Hanna Lodge hymn sing was canceled. It was a stat, I was told. No activities were scheduled. 

I attended no service. Driving by myself to Hanna last night in the cold and the dark and the unknown had wrung me out.

At exactly 11:00 a.m. this morning I stood at attention for two minutes, a silence broken only by the stertorous breathing of Gunpowder, the dog born with misaligned hips, who dozed at peace on the sofa.

And I thought about Maynard, as I often do on this day. His birthday is November 16; I remember him on the 11th, and I think of those who never quite made it to serve their country.

Maynard went to high school with me. We became friends in standard 8, and he was unfailingly kind to me. I was short, stout and self-righteous. I earned some nicknames. Maynard never called me them. He called me Tinhead, a play on Ironside. He chose "head", he said, because my head was smart and pretty and could hear the music. He told me to listen just to the music.

As happens when you go to boarding school in another country, we graduated and went our separate ways. I enrolled in university; he enrolled in his Uncle S's navy.

It wasn't a good match for him. He was a TCK - a Third Culture Kid - a strong, gentle, young man who was somewhat adrift and was looking for a place to call home, for people to call family.

The navy proved not to be that place.

And one day he just showed up at my university.

I was attending a spiritually and socially conservative university, and this was in the early '80s. Visits from friends of the opposite sex had to be pre-arranged and approved in writing by parents. My parents and his parents were in India.

With trepidation we approached the Dean of Women. We explained the circumstances to her, and she kindly gave Maynard a permission slip for meals and a place to stay in the men's dorm for five days. He attended classes with me, lunches and dinners, and he walked me back to my dorm in the evenings. We got caught up on the two-plus years we had not seen each other since graduation. He told me how tough the navy was for him, how he had made a mistake, how he was afraid to go back.

On the fourth evening we attended a basketball game, and the team I was cheering for won. In his exuberance, he flung his arms around me and hugged me.

Hugged me at a no-physical-contact-between-men-and-women university, in front of everyone I knew there.

We were summoned by the Dean of Women that very night.

I was given a stern lecture and put on social probation. No talking to boys for a month.

Then she turned to Maynard. She asked him more about his leave of absence from the navy; to my shock, he confessed that he had gone AWOL. He told her something of his childhood, of his experience as a frightened cadet. Something had snapped in his brain and the only thought he had was if he could reach a friend, maybe he would be able to get his bearings again.

The Dean of Women was silent for a long time. When she spoke, her voice was husky. "Young man, this school takes loyalty to our military very seriously. Your duty is to report back to your base and to bear your punishment like a man. You will need to leave here now. May God give you strength."

He threw his arms around me again and we clung together for a moment while she gazed at a painting on the wall.

And then he was gone into the night and I crept back to my room. Everyone was silent; but Michelle squeezed my hand.

I heard from him a few years later. He had indeed returned. He had been courtmartialled and thrown in the brig. What happened there was so awful for him that he spoke of it to me only once. And then he was dishonourably discharged.

He had spent time as a day labourer, picking up odd jobs. He had spent time on the streets. His arsenal of alcohol and drugs helped combat the pain. 

And so his story went. A couple of marriages, a pretty little kid. She had his eyes. 

Jail time.

Rehab.

Still searching to belong.

He checked in with me every so often. 

We saw each other for an afternoon in the late '80s when a friend and I were driving me back to Canada from the States. And he came to visit me once for a fortnight in Calgary in the mid '90s in the bleak midwinter. 

In 2005 I got the email from his brother. He had been found in a cheap motel room, the kind you pay for by the day. Apparent overdose.

Two days earlier he had called me and said he had completed the latest stint at rehab and had saved some money and was wondering if he could get on a Greyhound to Alberta for a visit. He was desperate to see a friend from a time when life was easier. 

I demurred. Things were tough right now. It wasn't a good time. Besides, he should go see his family, his little girl, his pregnant wife. They needed him. Maybe another time? 

"Maybe another time," he echoed, and his voice caught in his throat. 

"Always your friend, Tinhead."

https://youtu.be/tsX7Gv1GhTc

The Girl with the Vaseline Glass Eyes

The Good Rancher is usually very deliberate in purchasing for his operation. So when he bought a large new bag of milk replacer, I raised my eyebrows.

"You just finished weaning Silver and Dominion and Mighty Mouse and Dougie! What's this about?" 

"It's for the barn cats," he explained. And you never know when you might need milk replacer... "

So, knowing how the GR and God are in cahoots many times, it came as no real surprise to me when I got this message the following Tuesday:

"How you doing ? Hope well. I don't know if you are interested in this, but we have a calf that was born blind last week. It is sadly enough no good for us and I'd like to give it away. I am not sure if you can do anything with it, but if you want to give it a try you can."

Remember Mabel and her triplets, Wynken, Blynken and Nod? Remember the kind hearts of their first caregivers, Elize and Theo? 

Elize was the one who wrote me. In further chatting, she had been bottle feeding this week-old little mite for a week — despite the fact that they run an extremely busy dairy operation!  

But it was Elize with the tender heart who could not bear the thought of disposing of this sweet little calf without giving her a fighting chance. 

I had met this woman only once, but I love her. I saw her pragmatism and compassion woven together and also manifesting in her daughters.

I see them in an uphill battle with formidable odds in their sector of the Ag industry, but they don't give up.

Of course she would not give up on this baby! 

I told her how the GR had just finished weaning for the year, but that I would ask him.

(You already know what the answer would be, don't you?) 

So on the Wednesday evening, after all the work of the day was done, we drove the almost two hours to the dairy farm. We were greeted by Elize and her daughter Aimee, and together we went to see the baby calf. 

It turned out this baby had worked her way into Aimee's heart too.

I had not expected to see eyes like this little calf had. Aimee commented, "I bet if you put her under a black light, her eyes would glow!" 

Each pupil — if pupils there even were — was completely covered by an eerily glowing disc, almost like a cataract. 

They reminded me of Vaseline glass, otherworldly beautiful. 

Yet they couldn't see a thing.

This baby was going to have to depend on her ears and her nose and her intelligence if she had a hope of making it. 

I had planned on calling the calf "October" for the month in which she had been born. Now, after meeting Aimee and the calf, I asked her if she thought Liesl would be a good name.

Liesl. Because of The Sound of Music. 

Because of "I'll take care of you." 

Aimee thought it was a good name, and so it was settled. The GR loaded up Liesl into the calf warmer strapped into the truck box and off we set, back through the dark night but with a slight detour for a DQ dipped cone. 

We went straight to the shop. You know this shop by now. The GR got Ironside Contracting Inc. to renovate Ken Keibel's old shop; and when they were done we had an addition big enough to house two tractors attached to feeding equipment. 

We also had enough room, it seemed, to house a little calf named Angel, born in February, the first in a series of Shop Calves. 

The next winter there was Gabriel, born December 23 ... 

Then Jean and Grace and Brownie ... 

Then Blind Bartimaeus ... 

The GR has said on occasion, rolling his eyes, "Why don't we just take the tractors out so the calves will have more room?!"

The GR carried Liesl into the shop and set her down. I stood close to her and held her lightly while he quickly assembled pallets into a little pen, and got her situated. 

She was shaking and panting a little. I gave her her milk, which she gulped down; right then the shop heater clattered loudly to life, and Liesl started gasping and shuddering, throwing her head from side to side. 

One of the things I was taught in therapy was tapping to try to still my anxiety. I used it on my dog Musket after he was temporarily blinded as a result of a hit-and-run accident. It would always stop him from shaking. 

Prince Harry has been a vocal proponent of it. And if it works for Haz, surely it might work for Liesl, I thought. 

I whispered "Shhhh," over and over, and tapped slowly, rhythmically, on her right shoulder and her brisket. And in a few minutes she calmed down. 

The GR was watching all of this and then he said, "Call them and see if they have any calves for sale. This one needs a friend if she's going to make it." 

The next morning Liesl started to take tentative steps around her new home. Don and Ivy came over to check her out and gave me some pointers, along with the loan of a halter.

My heart was full when she even managed a little skip! 

Over the next few days she calmed down and started to relax in her  new freedom. The GR made a bigger, more open pen with gates at both ends. She always gravitated toward the white door at the end of the shop. If it looked like she was about to hit her head anywhere I would call out, "Oh, oh, oh!" and she would stop immediately. 

And then Gretyl and Marta (the younger sisters of Liesl, natch) came home on Sunday evening. The Right Hand and the GifT were over at the shop when we arrived back. "I have a surprise!" the GR called out to the RH. "Actually, two surprises. Can you give me a hand?!" 

The next day Liesl was stressed and I was distressed as these two much stronger little heifers galloped around her, adding to her disoriented confusion. 

Two days in she was more calm. Now the three calves nuzzle each other when they are resting and squabble for rights to the first bottle at each feeding. Liesl had been left out, bewildered, as the two younger ones ripped from one end of the shop to the other... but this morning I do believe she is starting to hold her own! 

Liesl has other troubles besides her eyes, I fear. One of her front legs is a bit off kilter. Her stomach is not strong. She is the smallest of the three, and she was born over a week earlier. 

But she's still with us! She loves her bottle and reaches her neck toward me, telling me it's time for a scratch along her jawline. She comes toward the sound of my voice. 

And every now and then, I think she sees a shadow — something — out of her left eye. 

Her beautiful eyes. 

Maybe it's going to be okay.