If life seems sort of hard right now, don’t lose heart. County Fair is just around the corner and that means there’s bound to be a caramel apple or elephant ear with your name on it; small containers of joy that, for me, are just a glimpse of the goodness of an uncontainable God. So make tracks to the Crook County Fair, partake in the old-fashioned-ness of it all, and remember: that which is sacred dwells in the midst of the common, the daily and sometimes the messy things of life.
Now that summer is finally here I’ve been soaking up every long, warm day by making sun tea and beds for a steady stream of houseguests and tending to the laundry and chaos that farm animals and kids are known to stir up as they rehearse for their County Fair debut.
Most recently some relatives from the in-law’s side of the family tree were traveling through our neck-of-the-woods and fixing to stop for a visit. When I suggested meeting them somewhere for lunch, they politely asked if they could just come directly to the farm because they’d heard all the fantastic tales about our menagerie and wanted to experience the mayhem for themselves! What a delightful reunion we had, even though I'd never met them and My Man hadn't seen them since he was a youngster. It was a bittersweet visit because Papa and The Grammy should have been here cooking ribs on the smoker but, in a way, it sort of felt like they were because our new best friends narrated us through all the old family photo albums - fragile and yellowed containers of happy memories that still smell like the house that Papa built.
Next we gave our guests a tour of the farm, including the burned-out pig shelter, which is still a pile of ashes after the pigs’ recent reenactment of Animal House. Seems as though one of the little wieners decided to live up to her name and Destiny Freezer took a gigantic bite out of the big red apple that was, much to her surprise, a heat lamp! So even though our pyromaniac porcine wonders all survived the fire, they have her to blame for losing their heat lamp privileges.
As we strolled around the farm, finally settling around the picnic table, our long-lost kin shared stories from back-in-the-day and we were instantly best friends who hadn't seen each other in an age, and the sting of being too young to have lost two parents was soothed for a moment by the reminder that we will all be together again in heaven one day…where I plan on sitting The Grammy down with a fresh pot of coffee, an elephant ear, maybe some cotton candy, and three snow cones. Then I will hand her a pen with the stack of photo albums and tell her to fill in all the dates, names and places on every last page!
