Time Ticks On

I’ve been finding myself thinking a lot about the passage of time lately. Especially around this time of the year I find myself looking back at everything that has happened in my life. Specifically yesterday I was thinking about how by the end of next month it’ll have been six years since the worst day of my entire life. Other random times I’ll find myself thinking about how old some of my first cows are getting, and about how much we’ve been through together.

Today specifically I find myself thinking about all that, plus one thing more. One year ago today I went home from college for the weekend and heard the news that my ag teacher, the one who throughout all of high school I referred to as my favorite teacher, was arrested for possession of child pornography. A year ago I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know how to handle it. Today I find myself a lot different.

A year ago I was still trying to defend him, to wrap my head around it. Here was this gentle, kind man that I had known for what seemed like my whole life. He wasn’t a criminal, he wasn’t a monster. So many other people were so quick to jump up and say he was disgusting and why can’t I just see that. And I know I couldn’t have been the only one feeling that way.

Today I feel different. Today it has sadly become a fact of life. I couldn’t stop crying for days after that last year. But today my feelings are different. I no longer cry about it. Honestly today I feel a mix of things. I feel anger, angry at him a little bit, but more so at the world and whatever could’ve happened in his life that I wasn’t a part of after I graduated to make him decide that he needed to do this. But mostly I feel pity. Pity that something did in fact happen, and that whatever happened it made him feel that he needed to turn to this. I don’t know if I forgive him or not, because he didn’t actually do anything to me, so it feels weird to think that I actually have to forgive him for anything. Except what he did, it affected everyone he knew. When a person who is so well liked and respected does something like that, it affects the whole community, whether they realize it or not.

Another thing that I have been thinking about lately is my cows. Specifically my older ones, and during this time of year I’m always thinking about one in particular, and one night in particular. October 30, 2013. I was fourteen years old. I was a child, still learning how to be a decent person and how to speak up and defend myself. I had just recently gotten my cows, around a year before to be exact, and they were teaching me things that I could never have noticed at the time. Well that night was the night that I always say I grew up, and I became an adult before I needed to or was expected to.

No one expected it to happen. Hazelnut was my first Jersey. She was nine months old, she was meant to live for many years later. Until suddenly she wasn’t.

The one thing I’ve learned from farming is to always be ready for anything. Expect the unexpected. Except sometimes there’s no way to expect or prepare for something like this.

The last time I saw Hazelnut she was a bloated mess laying on the floor. That sounds disgusting, but that’s the only way I can describe it. And even now I can still picture her so clearly in my mind on that last day that it’s even caused me to have a panic attack in the middle of a college classroom one time last year. Even now I find myself thinking about it and shaking a little bit.

I never know how to explain myself to my friends here at college. They all know how much I love my cows, and what they mean to me. But every year I find myself saying how much I hate Halloween, and having to just say it’s for personal reasons because I don’t know how to explain it, and because honestly sometimes I think I might start sobbing still when I try to explain it.

I’ve been thinking about this, because as it is September Halloween is on it’s way. A lot of my friends are all excited for “spooky season” but I can’t get on that boat anymore. It might’ve happened on the 30th, but she died the next morning, Halloween morning. And so I hate Halloween, and probably will for the rest of my life.

This year it’ll have been six years since that terrible night. If it hadn’t happened, and it really shouldn’t have happened, she would’ve been six years old this upcoming February. I can’t even imagine that. In my head she will always be the little nine month old Jersey, taken way too soon.

I can’t help but think of this and everything else I’ve been through when I hear people saying that dairy farming is wrong or bad in any way. It’s accidents like this that make people more likely to think that, but what a lot of people don’t get is how dangerous this job actually is. They don’t get that there are some things that just can’t be prepared for. Farmers are not around their cows every single moment, and sometimes things happen in those moments. And then people say well it’s just for profit, and farmers don’t give a crap if a cow dies, except that they’re sad that they lost money. This has never been about money. And if you don’t believe me, well you must not have been reading this blog post very carefully.

Things happen, and sometimes those things serve to define who you are as a person. Life is hard, and sometimes it’s extremely hard. Sometimes you’re left to question how you move on, and what could possibly come next. But those things that happen, I fully believe it is God sending a message, or making you stronger. The hardest moments in life are the things that you come out of on the other side as a stronger, wiser, and more beautiful person than you were before.

I don’t know who I would be today if I didn’t farm and I didn’t write. Those are the two things that I feel that I was always meant to do, no matter how many people tried to tell me not to. I say this all the time, but I mean it. If it wasn’t for my cows I wouldn’t be the person I am today. And if I didn’t write, I don’t know if I actually would’ve made it through some of the things that I’ve been through. If it wasn’t for those two things, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I might not even be in college, or if I was, it wouldn’t be studying creative writing.

But after everything, the number one thing I’ve learned is that time ticks on. And sometimes things just hurt, and they hurt so much that at the time you can’t help but think that there’s absolutely no way you could ever get through this. And yet time ticks on. And sometimes the best and only thing you can do is to tick on right along with it.

2018

As we have arrived at the last day of 2018, we have reached the day where people take time to reflect back on the year they had. My year has been a mix of good and bad; a lot more bad then I would’ve liked. The bad go something like this: my dog died, Flopsy the barn cat died, Eclipse died (see previous blog posts), my cat died, the events of September happened that everyone in my town and surrounding communities know about (once again see previous post), both of my grandmas fell and ended up in the hospital, and a friend of mine that I made last semester died of cancer.

Now the good things; my new dog, Dickens came, then our new cat, Mannix came. Our other cat got really depressed but she stayed around and got happier when the two new kids came. I finished my second semester of my freshman year, and my first semester of sophomore year. I joined my college newspaper, I started this blog, I met so many great new people and made many new friends. I published my first (and second) book. My grandmas recovered. Lunar Eclipse was born. I have two Jersey calves coming any day now.

Altogether the good definitely outnumber the bad, even though there were times in these last few months that it felt like the bad would never end. And of course there were some things that don’t fit in either category and are more nostalgic, my last year at the fair and two of my friends from the last five or six years moved to Michigan and onto a new future.

So here we are at the end of what was probably the weirdest year of my life. Things are looking up all the time and I feel more ready to move into the new year and the next semester of my college experience than I have in a long time. I probably felt the same at the beginning of this last year. It’s typical for one to say something like bring it on when going into a new year, and I probably did around this time last year. All I’m gonna say to 2019 is please be nice to me, and don’t be so weird. Into the next year we go.

Chautauqua County Fair 2018 Day 7: Saturday

Well as I sit here and write this it is finally the last night of the week. I was very tempted to walk around singing “Last Midnight” from Into the Woods but I didn’t think anyone would get it, so I restrained myself. It still hasn’t really seemed to hit me yet that when I go home tomorrow I will never show cows with 4-H or sleep in this barn again. It could be because I’m not really gonna let it until Monday, or try to anyway, we’ll see what happens tomorrow. It’s probably just cause I’m tired and ready to go home. There’s also the fact that one can never really know what the future will bring, and I could very well come back and show in the Open Class again. And be back to visit like every year until I no longer know anyone here.

So events of the day; there was a Holstein show and a fun show in the arena which we watched for a bit. Then we played a few games on the Midway and I won a pig, a cow, and a Gizmo, (the one from Gremlins for those who don’t know what that is). The showers were clogged for a bit but they’re fixed now I think. There was also the last big meeting of the week and I had to go up and be recognized for aging out. And then we had the barnyard olympics for the kids which actually went pretty well and wasn’t a huge mess for the first time in three years. I also got to give a kid a prize for being the most enthusiastic first year which was kind of fun.

Well with that we head into the final night of the fair and into my final day of my final year in the 4-H Dairy Program.