It started with a picture.
We were out for dinner to celebrate the Good Rancher's birthday, and also for one last hurrah before calving started and all that entails.
On the wall in the restaurant just above our heads was a picture of a horse, with his rider holding an apple behind his back.
"That sums up what I want to see in a ranch hand," the GR mused. "Someone who loves their animals and who treats them — horses, cows, dogs, cats — with affection and respect."
We had gone through a series of hands since the GR's son had made his move to the Yukon, but none really fit the bill.
One had to leave because of a family situation.
One returned to the rigs.
One returned to his wife!
One was a butterfly, flitting from job to job.
One left to have a baby.
One had a driver's abstract that made him uninsurable.
One moved in and then never quite started working.
One started working but never quite moved in.
One even threatened the GR's life; the RCMP got involved.
Each time the GR got more and more discouraged. "I never want to hire anyone again!" he finally exclaimed after interviewing someone who had been the manager of his family's ranch before parting ways with the family, and who wanted the same position, accommodations and paycheque he had made while stating that he needed to work half as many hours as he had been working at home.
The GR had not spent a night away from this place in over three years. He had missed weddings and funerals, holiday celebrations, cattle sales.
He had pretty much missed Covid! Apart from the times he helped me deliver treats in the neighbourhood, he worked and went to church. (Even there, he was invariably late, poor guy ...)
And when the last hand — a Fine Hand, who had seemed fairly promising — suddenly quit with no notice for a Finer Opportunity and left us in a Fine Mess, the GR found himself stuck with me as his sidekick.
Oh. My. Word.
Things took twice as long in the field, and nothing was done in the house. McDonalds and Joyce at the Byemoor Bar fed us 60 per cent of the time. Tempers and blood pressures rose.
Friends and neighbours gave us a hand, often without even being asked — Don and Ivy, Bud, Brian, Jenelle and Cliff, Kiersten, Luke, BethAnne, Caite, Jean, Ben, Maureen and Jim, Kody, Stephen, Rhonda, Deanna, Kyle, Winnie and Eldon, Shalene, Kevin, Marv and Dianne, Walter, Marilyn, Hudson - and their help seemed to come right when we needed a little boost to keep us going another day. Hank and Mabel were always there with a listening ear and a caring heart.
But when evening fell, we fell — asleep at the supper table, more often than not!
I was so grateful we had had that dinner at the Ranch House on April 7th. I ordered him a print of the picture for his birthday and got it framed for him for Father's day, something new crowning our "new" piano.
And then, on his lowest day, a phone call.
He didn't know what to think; when he shared the conversation with me, neither did I.
The GR's son had phoned. They wanted to come back to Alberta.
They wanted to come to the ranch.
They had been here last year during calving season, which happened to coincide with job losses due to the start of the pandemic, so it was a win-win — on a temporary basis.
But before that, before they moved away, things had been, well, a bit tense.
It is no easy thing to lose a spouse, to lose a mother.
When two grieving men are left to work things out, to figure out a new normal, to bridge the years-long habits of pain and distance and misunderstanding suddenly exposed in the wake of the departure of their beloved, it is a balancing act requiring more dexterity than a tightrope walker possesses.
Then when a widower takes a new spouse, it does not replace the prior one. And no one can ever replace a mother.
So it was that there came a parting of the ways: the younger left to explore his options and the elder was left to carry on. Both took stock, separately. Both came to different conclusions.
I wrote my farewell letter to the younger here. My heart ached for each of them. For both of them.
And then, in 2018, the younger took a spouse himself. She seemed like the antithesis of the ranch.
But she had ambition and determination. She was hard working and creative. And she had a smile like no other.
Like one other.
All these strong traits could be found in his mother, from all reports. The day we witnessed their wedding and I saw him looking at his new bride I thought of the old Bible story of Abraham's son Isaac. His mother had passed away when he was still quite young and he grieved her desperately. Back in those days, marriages were often arranged, and so it was for Isaac.
But when Isaac saw Rebekah and they were married, this is what it says, in Genesis chapter 24 and verse 67:
Then Isaac brought her into his mother's tent; and he took Rebekah and she became his wife, and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother's death.
And then they went north. True North. Communication was sparse as they carved out a new life for themselves. They blossomed and grew, two already gorgeous people truly coming into their own.
We missed them but rejoiced for them.
Until the phone call. "What do you think?" the GR asked.
"Well, let's see if they really do show," I suggested. "They still have a couple of months to change their minds ..."
In the next weeks I often found myself gazing at a picture I have always kept on my piano. It captures three riders: the GR and his mother, Alice, and his tiny son, obviously sitting on his own mother's horse. I have no doubt it was she who took the picture.
It is one of my favourites. Dear God, please undertake. Please let this work, if it is Your will, I prayed several times a day. Please prepare each of our hearts ...
On August 31 their vehicles pulled in, and on September 1 he reported for work.
On September 2 evening, the four of us sat down together at our kitchen table to chat.
They seemed different somehow, settled, happy. Together.
They seemed to have grown up.
And maybe we had too? Because it was pretty easy, that first visit. There was laughter. Questions asked and answered. Each person had a seat at the table, had a voice in the conversation.
Finally the GR asked The Question. "How long?"
The son looked the father straight in the eyes. "I want to keep this place going. We're here. We have no Plan B. We're here."
My heart just leapt. I thought of my dad, who once was on an ordination committee that had just finished interviewing the candidate, David, on his suitability to be a pastor. Everyone seemed to have run out of questions.
Then Dad spoke up. "I have just one more question. If we deny you ordination, what will you do with your life?"
There was silence. Then David responded, passionately, "I have no Plan B! I HAVE to preach!"
"That was the answer I wanted to hear," replied Dad. And David was ordained.
That evening, I had the answer I wanted to hear.
Sometimes a person has a calling too insistent for a Plan B.
And every day since then the two men have answered the dawn, going their separate ways while feeding the herd and then coming together to move cattle, sort, wean, vaccinate, talk.
"There's so much I don't know," he had said to his Dad that first evening. "So much I need to learn from you."
And so they discuss and plan and grow together, grow the operation and the relationship.
The ranch's brand is TTT, an enduring tribute to father, mother and son. After one left this world, and after one left the ranch, it seemed like the remaining T, left to carry the triple load, would collapse under the weight of it. I did my best; but I will never be able to ride out and work cattle with anything except a quad or a side-by-side and a pack of semi-unruly dogs. I am the furthest thing from athletic — I can fill a gap, and I can coax baby cows up the chute; but I would never be a match against feisty heifers, arrogant bulls, knowing cows, hollering yearlings.
But he's back!
And often she joins them, the golden girl on a golden horse.
I think of her as the "GifT" (Girl Inhabiting the Final T) to this place at this time, the person who has all the makings of being able to pick up and carry forward the third T in the brand.
One day the two of us had a short electronic exchange:
My heart was full.
On days that she is occupied at her own job, I try to get out to help as best I can.
I watch the two of them, these two men whom I love more than all the cattle on all those hills, and I see how they work the field, work a herd, without any words needed.
They both know this land and they know their herd, generational cows who also know the rancher and the hand and know the routine. It is a dance of synchronicity that brings tears to my eyes.
And when the cattle work is done, they ride home together, the father with the son close by on his right hand. They chat quietly together about what went well, what could be improved on, what is up next for the afternoon and the week.
They laugh together. They lead their horses in and out of the barn together. They ride out together and no one returns alone, one of the mantras of TTT.
And I have seen both of them sneak a little treat into an equine mouth when they think no one is looking ...
They discuss feed and cattle rotation; they train horses (the son, a farrier by trade, is taking the lead on this part of the operation right now); they check water and herd health; they direct / put up with my Six Pack, who gambol around in attempts at being helpful while moving cattle; they feed the bottle calves; and the younger has taken over the care and feeding of old Ripper, the horse the GR and Debbie got the same year their son was born 29 years ago.
He has his Class 1, and so the two of them haul feed bales together after all the chores are done. They strategise about next year, about the future.
They truly are the man in the picture.
There is a saying that a load shared is a load halved. I am here to tell you that this is TRUE! The hours are still long; but the GR and I often eat supper together and sometimes he even makes it to bed before he falls asleep these days. We just celebrated the wedding of one of my nephews. The GR was able to leave the ranch, for the first time since I have known him, with not a worry in his mind. "No — I know he can handle everything," was his response when I asked him if he had any apprehension.
This year we invited them to come for Thanksgiving dinner on Monday evening, and they accepted. The GifT brought roasted vegetables, dressing and homemade buns. She helped me in the kitchen and with the washing up. It felt so easy. So right.
As I was laying the table in preparation for dinner, I thought back through the difficulties of the past couple of years; and I contrasted those troubled times with comments the GR has been making fairly often over the past month and a half:
"It was another great day ... Everything just seems so right ... He knows how things work around here ... That girl is gold. She is always in the right place at the right time ... I feel good. Things just feel right these days ... I hope I never have to hire anyone again ...
"We can finally start thinking about the future, and it feels so right with him here."
And as I set the place cards on top of the napkins, the napkins that his son had given me for my second Christmas out here, I got it.
I know what his name is.
Thinking back to the list of hands that started this piece and finishing up with the GR's prayers of thanksgiving for the gift of his son, of his new reliance on him, there can be only one name.
The Right Hand.
In every sense of the words.
Welcome Home.
