Number Two Son is home! I/we/us have all been missing him. As The Teen was playing the White Rabbit in the school play, it was a good reason to bring him home. The fact that he’d just been through a hurricane and his work was closed made it even better. With the Newlyweds here, all my chicks were in the nest, which makes for one happy Mama.
My boys (now officially men) had not yet had the chance to ‘work’ on the farm together. Number One Son was anxious to share with his brother all the wonderful things they got to do as an adult in the country, things that had been strictly forbidden when they were boys in the city. Burning the slash pile was top on the list. I was ecstatic to have the large, large pile of debris, that had been growing since July and measured roughly 10x4x40 feet finally meet its match. They were happy that they got to play with fire. They worked out a shared system in figuring out who got to put the gasoline on the structure and who got to light the match.
With the bonfire in control under the watchful eye of The Bride and a few cats, chain saws were gathered. As our main fuel for heat in our home is a wood burning stove, we try to take any opportunity to fill the wood shed with ‘good’ wood. The field next to us had downed trees that we were welcomed to procure as fire wood, all we needed were a few strong men and some chain saws. The ‘boys’ worked on the wood procurement, chainsaw fun, until they declared it lunch time. At some part in the day, I saw Number One and Number Two Sons with rifles in their arms headed to the hay barn to hunt down the last of the dirty, nasty, stinky pigeons.
Axes, sledge hammers and wedges, I mustn’t leave out, that there were ample opportunities to swing axes, as a cord of wood needing to be split was added to the mix. I only said, “Be careful” once, because as Moms know, really just saying it out loud, somehow relieves a bit of the responsibility and somehow makes them ‘safer’, even if they are wired to no longer hear us. However, it was a good day and no blood was shed or band aids needed.
Stunned and happy, today was just one of those days. There are a LOT of days we work hard and at the end of the day we end up with progress that takes the form of a bigger mess, aching muscles and a huge pile of laundry. Today was different. Today we are exhausted (really tired), our muscles are aching and we’ve got a huge pile of laundry, but the mess for today is tamed and it felt like progress was made. We gathered to have a drink and toast the end of the enormous slash pile.
We watched with happiness as the White Rabbit took the stage and we collapsed at the end of the evening on each end of the couch, but not the ‘boys’. Off they went with The Bride as designated driver for Number One Son to help his brother, Number Two Son celebrate his recent 21st birthday. Oh, to be young.
Oh, I would have loved to have seen Laura in the play! Bravo, Laura!