With all the moisture that came this spring and a little over a hundred acres of rained on hay, the humidity will not let it dry, and thus we have an interminable first cutting. The only breaks that remind us days are actually passing are the entries into rodeos and the excitement that the morning of the rodeo brings. The beginning of summer brings hay season and the rodeo season. Though in the midst of coordinating these events with raising children, their individual excitements diminish into another string of events that eventually blend into one another, passing imperceptibly through the summer and right into the fall where begins the next season without notice. Bringing little ones on the field or to the rodeo has its novelty at first, but eventually it all melts back to mornings with oatmeal on tee shirts, wiping little hineys, and looking for a single lost cowboy boot.
In the routine that is the morning, tidying up toys and clothes from the night before, a belt, buckle, and pair of jeans lay across my grandparents’ trunk. Without scale, one would assume it was the first of a summer full of times my husband would leave his clothes out after a rodeo. Shining in the morning sun, it sat stately in its small size and age. It was indeed the father’s buckle, but on the son’s belt. Mutton Busting, 1991.
The first buckle he ever won is now proudly worn by a pint-sized cowboy. Our son wears his dad’s childhood hat, misshapen from taking it off and on and pulling it down around his ears like he’s getting ready for a rough 8 seconds. At gatherings, he pulls his shirt all the way out to show off the buckle, and his boots are louder than he is. He rides a stick horse and climbs on the back of anyone lying on the floor. At the rodeos or implement stores, he is beyond hand-holding because he really thinks he is all grown up; even though, he can’t yet say “all grown up.” Pants get folded and returned to the dresser, boots go back to the mudroom, and I carefully roll the belt for safe keeping until the next rodeo which might be tomorrow or a week from now as the days are all the same. Even in the spurts of activity on the farm or at the rodeo, no event distinguishes itself from the one before or the one after, and a little boy seems to stay little but so much wants to be grown up. Such is life with little ones; days are long, but the years are short.
Yet at one time, in 1991, there was a little boy winning that buckle. He turns 30 this year. Now with a little boy of his own, he doesn’t notice the years passing by, but perhaps his dad does. Coming home from the same first summer rodeo of the year, there were three generations of cowboys with blue eyes and jeans in the truck, day after day and year after year. In 1991 there were also three generations riding to and from rodeos in different trucks and wearing different styles of jeans, but still three generations of cowboys. Then each day inched by. Each of the cowboys grew older, some grew taller and some shrunk, but those days somehow turned into years. Eventually death and birth backed against each other, and again three generations of cowboys go to and from the rodeo together.
One day this little boy is going to surpass his own dad the way his dad did his. “Papa” was once a young father climbing the rodeo ranks while his little son trotted along with Grandpa. Grandpa has passed, and that little son turns thirty this year. One day this little boy is going to get bucked off a bull and tear his shirt on the horn of a steer the way his dad does and grandad once did. One day this little boy will be thirty with a little boy of his own.
How that one day will arrive is beyond the comprehension of any of us now, but today and probably tomorrow too, this little boy just needs a hug from his daddy after tripping on his own boots. And the thirty year old father, he still needs the advice of his own older, wiser dad. Such is life when the days are slow, but the years go fast.
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