Cushions and Buffers

The other day I was getting a test done at a hospital lab. It was an early  Saturday morning and the lab was deserted except for an older gentleman who was waiting at the window.  I noticed that he had hobbled as he walked across the room in front of me.  We struck up a conversation about the weather.  It seems we mostly talk about the weather here in Vermont, probably because every other person you meet is a farmer.  Okay, not true, but one in a hundred are farmers (and that keeps our dress code farmer-friendly anywhere you go:)

He said that he hadn’t been able to do any haying at all last year because he had lost a few toes, but he was going to start haying again that very day, as soon as he got home from the hospital.  “And when I finish the haying at the end of the week, I’ve got to build two stalls for my daughter’s steer.  They’re just out in the open now, with no shelter,” he explained, with a weary and worried voice, as he glanced at his watch.  I wished him well before he left, hoping that all went according to plan.

When I was about to leave the lab, I walked through the waiting room again and saw a woman who appeared to be in distress.  She was very obese, and she was on oxygen with labored breathing.  A nurse was with her, and just as I walked by her my farmer friend reappeared.  He told her he would go to get the car and pick her up.  This woman was obviously his wife, and was going home with him in that condition.

I’ve pictured this farmer riding the fields many times this week, making hay while the sun shines.  I’m rooting for him and his wife, as they attempt to hold their farm and their lives together.  They have their work cut out for them.  I do too, and maybe you do as well.  But my brief encounter with them helped me to remember that my life is filled with cushions and buffers.  Maybe theirs is too, I don’t know.  But I do know I haven’t had the urge to complain much this week.  May the weather gods keep shining on our farmers and their fields.