Writings From Blackberry Hill

Home Alone

The most perfect of days and also the most rare.
Living on a large working farm you really do bring your work home with you. There is always somebody around. Farmers stomping in and out in muddy boots. Other farmers stopping by. Grain trucks, milk trucks, in and out. People coming from the city to get manure for their gardens (this is mostly a springtime event) at times the line up of cars almost looks like we are having a party.

But today circumstances have aligned themselves so that I am the only one here.

Well, me and one son who will be so busy doing the chores normally shared by 3 men that he will work a 17 hour day - if everything goes well, more if it doesn't.

As if that wasn't enough, the weather has stacked the odds in my favor. The hot dry temperatures of last week have given way to rain and wind. What started as gently falling spring showers a couple of days ago, has now turned into a torrent of water and gale force winds. Not only is this my favorite kind of weather, all wild and chaotic and gray, it is also practically a guarantee that there will be no one seeking manure for their garden, or anything else for that matter.

In the farming world this is the kind of day where everyone just waits out the weather. A kind of down day which will be followed by long days of planting to utilize the moisture as soon as the storms pass. Normally this day would have everyone in the house doing the kind of annoying guy things that men do when they are in the house on what would normally be a workday. But an unexpected business trip has come up instead.

So I am locked down in my cozy quiet house looking out at the world all blurred and beautiful in shades of silver beyond my window.

I am alone.

I feel a frisson of excitement shimmer up my spine.

What to do first?

Run with scissors? Turn on every light in the house? Jump on the bed? Maybe listen to Credence Clearwater while I jump on the bed?

One thing is for sure. That is what I will not do...
I will not be cooking a prodigious farm lunch for hard working hungry mouths.
I will not be running to the door to check on what/who the dogs are barking at now. Even my phone seems to be in on the conspiracy as it hasn't chirped at me once.

This combination of circumstances and mother nature have created a perfect storm of opportunity for my inner child to have the liquid equivalent of a snow day.
Perhaps it wont be so much what I do or don't do with this gift of a day, as it is that utterly wonderful feeling of the freedom to do anything I want. The knowledge that I am completely unburdened by the regular routine of every day.

Now that? I can almost taste on my tongue!