Cow Tales

Perhaps in every age, in every culture, in every nation, people have repeated the legend of the young farmer who leaves home to become an accountant.

Or maybe not.

But for me, the story is not legend, but family history. My father was the youngest child in a large farming family. As a young man, he made the decision to attend college. A few years later, he had a wife, a new baby, and a bachelors degree in accounting.

My father as a young boy, with his father.

Obviously, my father's choice to leave the small town where he was born would have an immeasurable effect on my life. Instead of growing up doing farm chores on the land my great-grandparents had worked, I was loading a dishwasher in a suburb 800 miles away. I'll never know for sure but I'm guessing this was a good thing -- I've never been the Sunnybrook Farm type.

Because of his farming background, my father's advice to us kids tended to come in the form of folksy one-liners : if you chase two pigs, they'll both get away; don't look a gift horse in the mouth; and my favorite, milk the meanest cow first, which I think about often when I'm tempted to put off an unpleasant task.

My father has a natural talent for fixing things. All my life I have taken broken things to him, from toys to tape players, curling irons to cars. Always resourceful and persistent, he has rarely failed me.

But perhaps his greatest gift is his ability to connect with the elderly. As long as I can remember, he has visited his senior friends in their homes or in hospitals. listening with interest to their stories, laughing at jokes he's hearing for the eighth time, strumming along on his guitar while he sings "You Are My Sunshine" or "Old Mill Stream." Crinkled eyes light up when he comes in the room.

I have often said that when my father dies, he will be met at the gate by all those people he loved and served here. With minds and eyes at last clear, they will line up to thank him for loving them when they weren't very lovable, for lifting them when they were weak, for sorrowing for their losses.

I think I'd better get in line.

Happy Father's Day.