Dan comes home after meeting with the other partners of Cutts Brothers. It’s not an unheard-of thing, but they see each other at work every day, so I am unsure why they need an extra huddle. His face is grim and he’s not sure how to have this conversation with me. I tremble a little at his seriousness.
Our crop is harvested. The bogs are underwater for the cold weather. We’re hunkering in the harshest of winter months. My children are three and six. Life is good, but I have worries about several things lately—worries I turn into prayers: prayers for our daughter in kindergarten while she is away from me, prayers for our church, of which Dan is treasurer, to make up a short-fall in the budget each month, and prayers for wisdom and discernment in our own finances. I resigned from teaching after my children came, and Dan is . . . well, he’s a farmer, and that’s not often a road-to-riches, so yes, I pray for our finances. We do all we can to economize. We freeze and can food in the summer. I sew for the home and make some of our clothes, like Emelyn’s first day of school dress all covered in apples and her matching lunch bag. I take on work as an editor of technical manuals in the hours after my children go to bed. We have enough and are content; there’s just not much of a cushion. However, the scenario Dan draws for me never once threatened to worry me before.
I think I am strong, but when he explains the situation we are in, our family is in, I am not strong. I am a blubbering bowl of jelly—on steroids.
The cranberry market crashed. The payments we should be getting for our previous year’s crop are non-existent. There’s no income.
“What are we going to do?” I suck in enough air to get the question out.
“We are getting jobs off the farm.” He doesn’t want to ask me to find employment, but when we talk about health insurance, we know our best bet is for me to return to the classroom.
In the days that follow, an overwhelming sense of thankfulness blankets me. I experience a new kind of awareness when I open our coat closet and find warm layers to wrap around my babies. Simple blessings I took for granted last week are now acknowledged with awe and wonder.
I think back to the words of my college lab partner when she learned of my engagement. “You think you’re cut out to be a farmer’s wife?” Her family’s rice operation wasn’t dissimilar to Dan’s cranberries. Shelley knew vagaries in commodity growing. The fat years were few and the slim ones plenty. She was not being unkind; she knew me well and was truly concerned about my ability to withstand exactly what I am facing right now.
In a few days Dan is working double shifts at a local manufacturing plant. In a few weeks I get a call from my former school district. I walk back into the same classroom I left six years earlier and fill a maternity leave for the woman who filled mine. I open closet doors and pull-out bulletin boards I left for my replacement. Awe and thankfulness.
There won’t be time to sew, can, freeze, or take my babies out to play in the snow as often. But interestingly, we are the answer to our own prayer. The gap in the church budget is filled by our own increase in income. My children have special time with their grandparents when I am working—lovely memories being built—many at the farm.
Yes, Shelley. I am cut out to be a farmer’s wife. At least this farmer’s wife.
Your turn: Reflect on an unexpected turn of events that you never saw coming. Can you see any good that came from it?
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