Unless There Is Blood

I’ve seen many houses with “Family Rules” signs hanging on their walls. Some of those family rules are things such as:

Always tell the truth

Pay with hugs and kisses

Do your best

Keep your promises

I have yet to see one that reads, 

Don’t bother me on the lawn mower 

unless there is blood

and that was probably the number one family rule we lived by growing up. 

I never understood why my mother was so weird about her weekly time on the lawn mower, but I rest in full understanding now that I’m a mom. 

Besides the day-to-day lessons and laughter in raising two kids, the absolute highlight of my week is mowing our yard. It is the hour and a half that I have a task in front of me that doesn’t require cleaning maple syrup off a TV remote or disposal of any bodily fluids. It doesn’t require muck boots or fly spray, proofreading or editing in red pen. It is an hour and a half of me time. During a phase of life where I don’t remember the last time I went to the bathroom without an audience, an hour and a half of me time is quite significant. 

While I mow the yard, 
I play questionable music from college, way too loud through my ear buds. 
My mind drifts between travel and children and memories and places and people. 

My goodness, I love people. 

By the end of my lawn mowing chore, I have the world’s problems solved, though no one has asked my opinion. But since you’re curious, I’d start with major jail time for people caught littering. Because while I do love mowing the yard, I do not enjoy picking up endless amounts of trash along our ditches. To the person who threw out a single black sock, two rubber gloves, three Bud Light bottles and a lint roller: Please tell me what the rest of your life is like. 

On the lawn mower I develop my grocery list, but I have no place to record it. 
I mentally add on to my to-do list and cross things off, too. 
I rarely take phone calls on the mower, because I figure that if I cannot disconnect from the world for an hour and a half one time a week, I probably have bigger problems than tall grass. 

I generally pay no mind to the passing cars and trucks, but I will say it’s astonishing how many people go by our house on Thursday afternoons when I get the mower stuck in the fence. And the honking rate really spikes when they see Cody come pull me out with the Kubota. There is something about that activity that really gets people motivated to lay on the horn while passing Sankey Angus (and it also gets Cody’s blood pressure elevated).

I sincerely enjoy mowing the yard, having one task in front of me that I can complete without interruption. 

I remember well one weekend circa 1995 that my brother had his best friend, Ben Warner, over. Ben’s joints were very….fluid. I don’t know if he was double jointed or triple jointed, but he was able to bend things in directions that would have easily qualified him for the circus, had he not other aspirations. In fact, quit scrolling and try this: Bend your wrist down so your fingertips touch your elbow. Try it. You can’t do it, can you? Ben Warner could do it in 1995. 

Anyway, Luke and I came up with a grand plan to frighten our mother: We’d send Ben over to stop her on the mower and tell her he fell out of a tree and broke his wrists. Ben would then demonstrate two “broken” wrists. 

As we watched from afar (because we weren’t stupid), Ben ran over to mom and pulled his stunt. And Mom proceeded to jump off the lawnmower, as mortified as we expected her to be. 

I think Ben’s dad came and picked him up not long after that.   

I look back now and I realize that wasn’t nice of us, at all. She was likely extremely deep in thought, perhaps in middle of writing her grocery list or trying to figure out how to get George H. W. Bush back into office. 

Farm Auction

On Saturday the kids and I went to a farm auction. It was just south of where I laid my head for 18 years, at a farm that I closely associate with my childhood, as I spent many days there playing with the granddaughter of the occupants. 

I paused while pushing the double stroller up the winding driveway, and stood in awe of the home itself. The place was a mansion when I was eight years old, and in my mid-thirties it was still as big and beautiful. I wondered if the main stairwell banister was still sturdy as a rock and polished perfectly. I wondered if the light switches upstairs were still the push-button kind. It was my dream home growing up, and that has never changed. 

I reached the auction site and navigated through the barn lot, looking at the many (I mean, tons) of things laid out for the public to view then eventually bid on. Vases, sewing machines, Pyrex bowls, quilts, washing machines, wagons, cars, lamps, cowboy boots and hats, framed art, mixed tapes, tools…the variety of things for sale on Saturday was endless. I was drawn to the Angus memorabilia. 

Dick and Ruthanna Kinsinger were avid Angus breeders and Dick’s love for the breed dated back to 1941 when he bought his first heifer. Ruthanna, if you can believe it, was a Shorthorn gal from Union County. At the auction was a table of trophies, plaques and ribbons, all relics of the success the Kinsinger family had in the 1940’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. A sadness came over me to see them all for sale. I can only imagine the years of blood, sweat and tears that went into winning those grand prizes. I stood in front of the table considered the pride behind each one and the animals that rested in the barn along Washington Road. And on this day, generations later, the awards would go home with the highest bidder. It was at that moment that I became certain that I don’t have the emotional stability to attend farm auctions.

Farm auctions are interesting things. A person passes away all of their things are moved to the yard and then sorted through by strangers and sent to new homes. Things that once filled a single-family home are dispersed throughout the land, to unrecognizable people and places. I truly understand that the family can't keep everything; and I think that is what makes it so tough. What do you choose to pass on to someone else? There were a few times that during the auction I stood by members of the Kinsinger family. I heard phrases such as, “We played with that when I was a child” or “Do you remember that from Christmas?”

Those are emotional triggers for a walking time capsule such as myself. I heard the detail about Christmas and I almost bought everything on the table simply because I think I would have really loved Christmas in 1965. I saw a lift chair for sale and considered buying it, not because I needed it or had space for it, but because I knew that is where Dick loved to watch Purdue basketball…I went to Purdue for four years…and went to one basketball game during that time…I would only be pure destiny that I buy the lift chair. 

I have got to quit going to farm auctions. 

Old cattle clippers, show boxes, show halters, boots. There were so many things at the farm auction that I would love to own, simply because I admire so the much people that once wore, used or held them. But I kept my checkbook close and memories of Dick and Ruthanna closer. I’m so fortunate to have grown up with such neighbors. Let me put it this way: In the 1980’s they gave out Halloween treat bags with our names on them. Before Pinterest. That’s all I need to say. 

I left the farm auction with an antique metal Tonka Truck livestock hauler that I’ll clean up and give to Cyrus on his first birthday next month. I am also now the proud owner of a hand-tooled wallet with an Angus bull painted on it. I’m thankful to have a bit of the Kinsinger family in our home. I also left with two exhausted, hungry, sweaty kids. Which is very normal anytime past 10:00 AM, daily.

I didn’t buy a single Angus trophy, ribbon or plaque, and I’m kicking myself now. Cody asked me where we would have put them, and I didn’t have an answer. It would have been odd to display the prizes from someone else’s work. We aren’t the kind of people who believe in participation trophies. But dang, I love a blue ribbon (say’s the gal who never got many growing up). 

Dick and Ruthanna Kinsinger were incredible neighbors during my formative years. Ruthanna could cook and sew far beyond anyone I knew, and Dick mowed the yard and barn lot three times a week, which kept my competitive mother busy. 

And in the last six months, 

Dick taught me a lesson far beyond farm auctions. 

But that is a story for another week.    

Camel Ride at the County Fair

It's been a while since I've sat down to write. But I'm back in the saddle, now...

I took our two small children to the Wayne County Fair last week. The county fair always feels like going home. Except we don’t keep our fat rabbits in cages; ours apparently like to set up camp in the garden. 

When I was in 4-H, a week at the fair was spent exhibiting our livestock and drinking approximately ten Mt. Dews a day from a cooler which we packed from home. We only knew there was a carnival side to the event because we could see the bright lights as we left every night; I always thought the place was on fire. But nope, we’d return at 5:30 the next morning to find everything intact. Very confusing for a 10-year-old. We always stayed in the cattle barn and tended to our stock. 

With this in mind, it becomes fuzzy about how I got to this stage of parenting. 

We arrived at the fair Monday evening to watch the hog show and the first thing I fed my children was chocolate ice cream from the Dairy Bar. That was never my intention as I walked into the situation, but I saw someone I knew, we began visiting, and the next thing you know I’m at the window and Caroline requests a chocolate cone. At this point, I’ve lost all sense of my surroundings and I hand over a sweaty dollar bill. 

Seven minutes later, Caroline is handing me a soggy cone, Cyrus is crying because he is eating a veggie straw, realizing he is the obvious second child and I’m trying to get chocolate ice cream that I didn’t even consume out of my white t-shirt. 

That’s right. 

I wore a white t-shirt to the county fair, which is a sure sign that I’ve lost all ability to think critically in the last three years. Everyone knows that the only justifiable reason to wear white to the county fair is if you have a Holstein heifer at the end of a halter. 

Moments later, Caroline spotted the camel in a small pen over near the antique tractors. We were there to watch the hogs; camels weren’t even on my radar. But there we went, over to the camel pen. Moments later I found myself on the said camel, with Caroline sitting in front of me, waving like she was a queen riding through the desert. I must say, she is a real natural at camel riding. Let us hope this is not indicative of a future with the circus.

I’ve played many roles throughout the years at the county fair, including first-year exhibitor who cried in the show ring, fair queen, post-4-H-age-show-ring-poop-scooper and Wayne County Cattleman’s ribeye booth order taker. I had no idea I’d eventually become a camel riding mother who broke her last five-dollar bill to saddle up on a single hump. 

From somewhere in the distance Tim McGraw’s song, “Something Like That” began playing. This song is about a guy who goes to the county fair, falls in love and eventually gets a barbeque stain on his white t-shirt. Bump…Bump…Bump…Bump. While still riding the camel and wondering if my hips were now disjointed, I thought back to when that song came out on KICKS 96. I was a freshman in high school and didn’t have a care in the world. I sure didn’t know then that I’d hear it again twenty years later ironically at the county fair, wearing a white t-shirt with chocolate ice cream down the front. Motherhood is so humbling. 

We dismounted the camel and Caroline was quite happy, so that made the shaggy, shedding camel hair stuck to the inside of my legs almost worth it. She asked for another ice cream cone, but I told her I wasn’t falling for that trick again. She wasn’t having anymore ice cream until she got something healthy in her belly, like a Sugar Grove Church lemonade shake-up. She obliged. 

By the end of fair week, we’d had our share of ice cream, lemonade shake-ups, walking tacos, tenderloins, ribeyes, french fries, camels, and even Ferris wheels. In (another) moment of weakness I said yes to a single ride on the Ferris wheel, despite being absolutely terrified of heights. Caroline was only tall enough to board the ride because of the extra three inches her giant hair bow added. Safety first!

I think we spent more money on fun displays as a visiting family this year than we ever did growing up as 4-H exhibitors. I look forward to the days when we have livestock at the county fair and I can instruct my children to not leave the show box unless they need to go the restroom, and if they’re hungry or thirsty they can eat what I packed in the cooler. 

Ahhh, the good old days in the 1990’s when the county fair didn’t rob me of all my cash or leave camel hair in my dryer vent. 

 

Alexa: Earmuffs

My niece, nine-years-old and pretty as the day is long, emerged from my old bedroom at Mom and Dad’s farmhouse not long ago. 

“Alexa, what time is it?” she asked. Not a sound followed, except my mom shuffling through cattle registration papers downstairs. Marlee stretched and raised her voice. “Alexa, what time is it?” Again, no response. She tried another question. “Alexa, what’s the weather?”

My mother, extremely confused, stood at the bottom of the steps and asked, “Who are you talking to, Marlee?”

“Your Alexa, Grandma. Where is she?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t even know anyone named Alexa. If you need to know what time it is, there is a clock in the bathroom. It’s about twenty minutes behind. If you need to know the weather, there are four windows in that bedroom. Look outside.” 

Marlee became quite confused, as the generational gap widened. 

For those who might not be familiar with Marlee’s friend, Alexa, she is Amazon’s virtual assistant. She (it) can sit on a table or kitchen counter and pick up simple voice commands, such as turn on the lights, give a weather report, turn down the thermostat, play desired music or add something to the grocery list. She is constantly listening to your household commands. In my opinion, Alexa is much like the super creepy cousin at reunions who doesn’t talk but only observes. 

Recent reports have come out revealing that Amazon is recording conversations with Alexa, on the basis of determining sound quality and interpretation. Anyone who understands modern marketing probably knows that Amazon is likely using these recorded conversations to understand buying trends to better market to certain lifestyles. 

I can be in the same room with my husband and ask him what he’d like for dinner, and he may respond with, “Rain the next three days.” I can ask my toddler if she needs to go to the bathroom and she may respond with, “Mommy. Do you need go to bathroom?” I can tell my 10-month-old baby I love him, and he then bites my shoulder. I don’t need to invest in a nosey robot to misunderstand me in the unbelievable way my family can. 

I think if we did have an Alexa, and she began listening to our family conversations, she’d probably need a vacation. 

Typical day: 

Cody: “Don’t forget. The Brazilians are in the high plains next week, so I fly out Sunday night to Bozeman. East to North Dakota. I’ll fly out of Sioux Falls on Saturday morning. 701 and 3601 may cycle into heat so take the kids out and check them before you guys go to bed if you can. Feed comes Wednesday. Those papers need to be signed by Tuesday, but you can do an electronic signature and just email them.”

Me: “Got it. I need to check my email. I haven’t in days. Do you need dry cleaning done before then? I thought 3601 was bred? Will you be home for supper Saturday? We still need to talk about if I’m flying with the kids or driving to Kansas for the sale. I can do it….If they sleep for twelve hours of daylight. When will you take the cattle?”

Cody: “Not sure yet. Still a way off. About dinner: I’m flying Southwest, so yes, probably.”

Or this:

Caroline: “Mom what’s check heat. Cows hot?”

Me: “No, honey. Cows are in heat when they give piggyback rides. It means they need to be bred.”

Caroline: “Old bread, Mom? Green bread? Like our bread?”

Me: “No, bred means they’re going to have a baby.”

Caroline: “Brother or sister?”
Me: “You mean bull or heifer…….We’re getting into the weeds. You’re only two.”

Caroline: “Weeds itch. Yuck. I don’t like weeds. I am two. Good job, Mom.”

I think sweet, simple Alexa would probably ask to have her batteries removed in order to be put out of her misery. 

We live in such a strange time when people would actually buy something like this to make their life easier. As if taking 37 seconds to turn on the stereo (do those still exist? They do outside Economy, Indiana) and adding toilet paper to the grocery list hanging on the refrigerator was too much work. And perhaps I’m old school. I have, in fact, been wearing mom jeans since I was fifteen. 

Regarding privacy and technology: You all know how I feel about Alexa listening to your dinner table chats - don’t even get me started on Apple watches. The only difference between an Apple watch and a probation bracelet is the watch doesn't alert authorities when you take the trash out. And DNA heritage tests....Nope. Nope. Nope. I'll keep my DNA to myself, thank you. 

I guess if I wanted strangers to know the dirty details of my family, where I am every week or what goes on within the confines of our family home….I’d write a weekly blog.

Raising Them Rich

During Sunday’s sermon, our minister invited us to get out our devices and visit the website www.globalrichlist.com. This site allows you to type in your annual income and it then calculates where you rank in terms of wealth in comparison to the rest of the world.

I encourage you to visit the site and see for yourself. It is quite eye-opening; I noticed many folks shifting in their seat (or, pew) as they typed in their income and saw the result. I’ll admit, I did the same. 

I left the sermon with this thought: Regardless of my global rank in terms of wealth, I think it’s important to raise our children with the understanding that they’re rich.

I hope Caroline will look back and remember she grew up rich because one of her doll babies got a new bracelet each time mom took the rubber band off a new head of broccoli. 

Just this week Caroline wanted more plastic hay bales for her farm set. I let her know that’s all we had (or rather, all I’d buy). That night I was pulling the living room together and saw that she had improvised: She had taken the orange peels from snack time and disposed of them in all of her feed bunks. Her cows may not have all the hay they want, but they had a citrus by-product that should get them by. 

 How many kids these days can say their parents fill their dressers with a new set of clothes every six months or so? Our “rich” children can. Only because we have cousins and neighbors who are kind enough to deliver bags and boxes of hand-me-downs at the conclusion of every growth spurt. Caroline proudly marched up to a daycare instructor the other morning and told her, while twirling, “Mommy got me a new coat.” She didn’t know it still has her cousin, Georgia’s, name in Sharpie on the inside tag. 

I hope they’ll both look back and remember they grew up rich because we had a garden where you could pick the best tomato in the world, pluck a pepper and prepare it for dinner or watch a zucchini double in size overnight. 

We live in a natural watershed area, making us mud rich. And when you’re 2 ½ and not afraid of a little dirt, mud rich is the best rich of all. We can be in the middle of an August drought and Caroline can find a standing body of water to roll in. I can only assume her little brother will emulate her example once he gets mobile. 

I hope they’ll both look back and remember they grew up rich because we could take hour-long (that’s about as long as ol’ mom lasts) wagon rides and never walk in the same place twice. We always had fresh air to breathe to make us sleep better and never once had to come home and worry about finding a place to park. 

I hope they’ll both look back and remember they grew up rich because they had a castle right in their own back yard. It has a front entry and a back entry, but the middle gets a bit tough to navigate. In the spring it blooms the most fragrant lilacs. Earlier this winter Caroline got hung up in her lilac-bush-castle and I had to set Cyrus down in the yard to untangle her. While waiting on me to get her bibs off a branch, she did find a bone from a pot roast I disposed of six months ago. It is a very fancy castle, one which the barn cats apparently also enjoy. 

This is when she tripped coming in the back entrance of

the castle and got stuck. 

I hope they’ll both look back and remember they grew up rich because we never took a vacation without bringing along friends and paying all of their expenses. Each time we vacation west, we load the stock trailer with cattle that we know by name or number. We take our friends – Naughty 702, Big Blackie or even Sterling the Bull – on vacation so they can reside at their new home, Grammie and Grampie Sankey’s ranch in Kansas. Lucky for us, these friends never ask for snacks when we stop to fill up on diesel. 

I guess I don’t care if our children move off to college and wish they had a newer car, better wardrobe or faster computer. I hope they move off college and realize they grew up rich in ways that have absolutely nothing to money, income or social status.

I guess, if we’re being honest with one another today, I also hope that by the time they get to college this old farm will be paid off, I can loosen the straps on this budget and they won’t have to go to their first day of collegiate class wearing a coat with their cousin’s name on the tag. 

But if they do, it builds character. 

936

When you realize how little time you get, 

you do more with the time you have. 

Beside a layer of dust, relics of our late (incredibly admirable) granddads and an ancient photo of our homestead, there is a jar of rocks sitting on a side table in our living room. 

Frankly, I don't pay much attention to the jar, until I hear Caroline moving it around and then I move quickly. A jar of that size and weight could surely hurt a girl so small. 

But when Caroline's activity forces me over to that area of our home,  the jar - and all that it represents - tends to hit me square on the chin. 

You guys. I need stitches.

The glass jar is filled with 936 rocks.

936 rocks represent the number of weekends you have with your child before they go to college. 

Our church gave us this jar and asked us to remove a stone each weekend, so that we can recognize the number of weekends we have left to teach and guide our daughter before she frequents a space where we aren't always around.

When you realize how little time you get, 

you do more with the time you have. 

I thank you for reading this blog right now.  Sincerely. 

You are supporting me in more ways than you know. 

But I want you to put down your phone, close your iPad or shut down your computer and look around you. 

(but not until you read this next part!!)

Time is so limited. 

Time is so, so, so, so, so limited. 

With those we love, and those we need, and those we miss in a way we didn't know we could. 

If we have 936 weekends with Caroline between birth and when she moves to college, and we received this jar less than two months before her first birthday, and I'm writing this more than a month later................I think we basically have 3 weeks left together as a family before I have to do her first college visit. 

But I'm not good at math, so that may be off a bit. 

The point is: time moves really quickly. 

And I know that days are long and you dread the Mondays and you crave the weekends but each minute of those long hours comprise your life and the time you have left with the really amazing people that make up your story. 

I haven't taken a single stone out of Caroline's jar. 

Honestly, I think it would give me anxiety to see the bottom of the barrel. 

I cry when the I see the bottom of the Rocky Road tub - add babies to this deal and I'm DONE. 

Instead, I skip blogs, I skip sleep and I use more dry shampoo than a 32-year-old mother should ---- it saves me time, darn it. 

But I don't miss first words and first touches and first bruises (we have a lot of those these days). 

Today I want you to put down your phone, close your iPad or shut down your computer and look around. 

Nothing on this screen is comparable to those around you. 

936. 

When you realize how little time you get, 

you do more with the time you have.

Quit lookin' at my rocks. 

Go love your own. 

The Farmhouse Register

The older I get, the more hurriedly time tries to dodge past and the more I appreciate the value in a farmhouse register. I have a long history with the old metal grate that blows slow, warm air to heat a homestead. 

If you've ever wondered why I resembled Hattie the Witch growing up, wonder no longer. 

When we were young, mom would instruct my sister and I to "go lay on the register" to dry our hair. So, without question or objection, we did. 
No blow dryer. 
No brush. 
Just two girls reporting to our individual registers, lying flat and waiting for the heat to kick on. This wasn't anything odd to me, as it was better than mom using a brush and No More Tangles (I call BS) to work through the knots in my hair. It also allowed me to slow down for a while and get my mind right. Trust me: you don't want to be rough housing when your sensitive scalp is lying against a metal grid. Years passed and styling products, blow dryers, hot rollers and (unfortunately) flat irons entered the picture, and the days of simply lying on the register as our beauty regiment were no more. I learned to miss the ease and quiet of laying on the register. 

But the register was more than a hair dryer; it was also a crystal ball. 

Want to set fire to an already-worn-out homemaker? Get off the bus and immediately ask her what's for dinner. Not that I have experience. I learned early that I could just go the dining room register, check the writing on the white butcher paper of the piece of meat being thawed on the low heat and determine quickly if tonight was a cube steak with gravy, beef and noodles or rump roast kind of night. We always ate well. That's why we could never put our jeans in the dryer. 

There are particular things that are not in my life's Standard Operating Procedure, nor will they be, ever:
Starting the day without making the bed. 
Buying low-fat ice-cream. Or low-fat sour cream. Or low-fat anything, really.
Putting my jeans in the dryer. 

I've never trusted gals who can get their jeans out of the dryer and zip them in the same day. How does that work? Don't you have to do the step-and-squat-step-and-squat for three mornings straight before wearing them in public?  Also, how do the jeans not became denim capris after one dryer session? So many questions directed towards those who don't rely heavily on farmhouse registers. 

From my teenage years to now, my jeans have never been in a dryer but always found a place on the farmhouse register for drying. It is a slow, low heat (think of smoking a 10-pound prime rib) that takes two days to fully complete the duty. But it saves trouble when I consider that I didn't have to lie flat on my bed and use a coat hanger to jack up the zipper. 
Alone. Not that I have experience. 

It was two weekends ago when I really began to consider, and appreciate, the simple service of a farmhouse register. With Cody in Denver for eight days, Caroline and I came in from the farm after choring in -2º temperatures. I considered dipping her in a warm bathtub, but then remembered that we didn't have one. So I unbundled her and sat her tiny body on the register while I removed my layers. 

She was as content as they come, 

feeling the warm air move 

through her footie pajamas. 

It reminded me of a childhood lying flat, looking at the ceiling and waiting for my hair to dry. Or even coming in from the farm twenty years ago and warming up on the register. It's amazing what comfort warm, dry air can bring to a person when they don't truly need anything else in that moment. 

Do you have a register in your life?

Maybe not a metal heat vent that blows as much dust as it does air, but rather a quiet, calm place to focus on one thing, only. 

Maybe yourself. 
Maybe your faith. 
Maybe your family.
Maybe your business plan. 
Maybe just your life's general direction. 

Go there as soon as you can. 
Refocus. Regroup. Recharge. 

And don't forget to lay out a cut of beef for dinner. 

You'll think me come 5:30 when you're trying to carry in five grocery bags, a computer bag and a baby and your husband asks, 

"What's for dinner?"

Not that I have experience. 

Scientific Name: Platanus occidentalis

It’s taken me a long time to get back to a place in my life where I entirely appreciate fall foliage. 

There was a period when I saw a beautiful leaf and had visions of wax paper, encyclopedias, Platanus occidentalis and an adhesive sheet scrapbook flash through my head. Of all the memories I have of grades K-12, the leaf collection in Mr. Lewis’ class is probably the worst.

First of all, Lewis’ enthusiasm for the project was just a tick over the top. He’d been assigning the project from hell for at least a decade when I was in his class; I would have thought he could have curbed the smile in year three. He got some sort of sweet satisfaction passing out the assignment specifics, which actually contained more qualifiers and ridiculous instructions than a building permit application:

When you find (what you believe to be) the perfect leaf, you may touch the leaf, but not with your hands. You must use American-made metal tongs with black rubber end grippers to gently pick up the perfect leaf and place it into a plastic, dry, gallon size Ziplock brand freezer bag. Do not touch the bag with your hands. You must hang the bag on a low-hanging limb of a Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) and drop the perfect leaf inside so only the sweet autumn breeze touches the bag. Then you must review the check list:

No holes

No bugs

No moisture

No tears

No mold

No folds

It gives you a happy feeling like a puppy in a parade.

If you gently swoop it through the air, east to west only, it sounds like angels singing a William Clark Green song.

If you gently swoop it through the air, north to south, you can hear Elton John singing Candle in the Wind.

It has at least 35 individual CMYK colors on the left side of the midrib.

If (what you believe to be) the perfect leaf, still suspended in a bag hanging from a Robinia pseudoacacia, appears to meet the above requirements, you must find two more just like it.

By the time we got to the end of the characteristic requirements for each leaf I was convinced I would have better luck finding the lost city of Atlantis, and would have enjoyed that more, also. I'm not even a good swimmer.  

So I spent a weekend wandering aimlessly around a local forest and using a pocket field guide (this was the bag phone era) to identify the difference between a White Oak, Red Oak, Bur Oak, Chestnut Oak, English oak, Pin Oak and Black Oak. By the time I got home I was so sick of oak that I was ready to rip all of the woodwork off the walls.

Then we had to transport 4,327 leaves home in $88 worth of plastic Ziplock bags, then use 4 rolls of wax paper to individually press every single leaf. Once positioned in the wax paper, we pulled 17 cookbooks and 13 encyclopedias off the shelf and tucked the leaves deep into the pages. To this day if Momma gets itchy hands we don't pass her the corn husker's lotion; we just assume she found another pressed poison sumac leaf in the pie section of her Southern Living cookbook.

There are likely 17 leaves still tucked in those shelves.  

But which part of the project was worse: Finding the perfect leaves, pressing them or labeling each? We had a home printer but Dad wouldn’t let us use it because he thought ink was too expensive. So with a Producers pen (that Dad obviously snagged from the Tuesday market) I hand wrote every intricate detail of every delicate leaf:

Common Name of Leaf: American Sycamore

Scientific Name of Leaf: Platanus occidentalis

Where & when you found it: Hayes Arboretum, about 18 feet off of trail 4, 39°50'24.6"N 84°50'43.9"W. October 1.

Simple or Compound Leaf: Simple

Venation Pattern: Palmate

Write an interesting fact about this leaf: The red splatters are actually blood from tripping over a log and having a stick puncture my left thigh. Mom wants to know if the school has good insurance?  

And lastly, the monumental question:

What have you learned from this leaf collection assignment?:

I’ll tell ya what I learned from this assignment. It ranks right up there with Science Fair projects regarding all the ways public education can initiate a second Civil War within the confines of the family home.

To wrap up the academic charade, we’d get our graded leaf collections back with holes punched in every single page so another student - or younger sibling - couldn’t reuse them.

That really stuck in my craw.

Last week I was walking into work and a leaf on the ground caught my eye. Having an affinity for pretty and free things, I scooped it up as my computer bag fell off my shoulder. I got inside and unpacked for the day and studied the little leaf.

Though proportional and colorful, it had 6 noticeable imperfections and was tossed in the trash seconds later.

I think the leaf collection of 1999 ruined me.

Note: In my thirties I see Mr. Lewis every so often at a mutual friend's house. He's a super nice guy and has acquired many more human attributes than he had while teaching my class. And I'm somewhat terrified he's going to read this.