A little backstory

Hello! 

     Welcome to the farm!  Thanks for deciding to stop by.  Come on in!  Excuse the mess, please.  We’ve been here almost a year, and we’re still not unpacked.  Don’t know if we ever will be, come to that.  Making a home is always a work in progress, isn’t it?  Sometimes I look around myself and I wonder what the heck I’ve been doing.  To be fair, it’s been one heck of a ride these past few years, and the last one in particular, but I’ll get to that in a minute.  Sit a spell, and I’ll tell you a little bit about us. 

     I’m Ma Bell.  Ha!  Ma Bell?  Get it?  I reckon some remember.  Anyway, it does kind of suit.  I can talk a blue streak if someone ever cares to get me started, which is one of the reasons why I thought I might try blogging.  I don’t actually have a whole lot of folks to talk to around here.  It’s just me, Pa Bell, Little Bell, and the dog for the time being.  We’ve got plans.  Grand dreams!  Some folks laugh at us, but I reckon that’s okay.  We might not make all of them come true, but we’re going to do our best.

     Five years ago, I was a deputy sheriff in a county in Georgia, winding up a master’s in forensic psychology, eye on the prize, aiming for a career, retirement, 401(k), and all that jazz.  I was still married to my mistake.  Everyone has a mistake or two in their past.  Some of us marry them, some of us wise up before we go that far.  Anyway, it was on the outs.  I had moved back with my folks, and once I finished school and (hopefully) got a better paying job, I was going to build a little house out on my Daddy’s acreage, maybe have a garden and some chickens if I had time. 

     My now husband, life-long friend, had joined the Army the previous year.  He called me to tell me that they were sending him to Fort Hood and he was going to be deploying for Afghanistan soon.  What?!  I couldn’t just let him go to war without actually seeing him in person again.  I hadn’t seen him since before he enlisted.  We’d been friends over half our lives.  So that weekend I drove the nearly 1,000 miles to hang out, have a few drinks, reminisce, and wish him well. 

     While we were catching up, I told him I had finally left my mistake.  He said it was about time and that he’d been waiting for 15 years to ask me out, but I just wasn’t single.  Apparently everyone knew but me.  I can be thick on occasion.  Anyway, he said he didn’t want to start anything with deployment imminent, but asked me to wait till he came home before I got into any more stupid relationships.  I told him I would.  About 15 days into his deployment, he asked me if I’d marry him when he got home.  No, we didn’t date.  We didn’t much need to.  We’d been friends forever, seen each other at our very worst and our very best.  Told each other all our relationship woes, asked for advice, gave unsolicited advice.  There were no secrets or surprises lurking in either of our closets. 

     So I married my soldier when he got home for R&R, and when he came home from war, I quit my job, moved to Texas, and became a rather reluctant housewife.  I have always worked.  I got my first job shoveling horse stalls when I was 13, and from there I held a job all the way up until I was 31.  I still work as a scopist, but it’s spotty, catch-as-catch-can.  Pa Bell and I talked it over and crunched the numbers, and I was actually saving us more money than I would make us by staying home.  And he liked the added bonus of having dinner waiting, laundry always done, and never having to do housework.  (Of course he did LOL)  Some of that’s changed, but, I’m getting there.  Can’t put the cart before the horse, you know.

     Pa Bell had to have bi-lateral knee surgeries in rather rapid succession.  Then our son was born just before our second anniversary.  Shortly after that, Pa Bell had a pretty severe back injury that rendered him unfit for duty.  In a whirlwind faster than anything I’ve ever seen in a government-run agency, my husband was medically retired with a disability rating of 100%.  The process was supposed to take nearly a year and a half, and it took 4 months for us.  We lost our home, because you can’t live in post housing if you’re not in the military, obviously, and wound up living in temporary living facilities for a brief time until we could close on our farm. 

     It had to be a farm, and it had to be in Texas.  We both were adamant that we did not want to live in suburbia or want our son to grow up in suburbia.  Why not go back to Georgia?  Both of our families were back in Georgia.  We had a support network, places to stay temporarily until we could find our feet again.  Texas is one of those take it or leave it places.  We love it.  Some people hate it.  I personally don’t care for the weather, but I believe in Texas:  the ideals, the feel, the way folks here still remember what it means to be American, proud of it, and to believe in earning your way and paying for what you keep.  It rings with the ideals I was raised with. 

     Speaking of ideals, I am not PC.  I don’t hold with “words hurt” or “everyone gets a trophy.”  That’s not how life works.  I believe in an armed populace, law is law and illegal aliens are breaking it, and I think everyone needs to earn their way.  Just a fair warning. 

     Anyways, we found it:  Our little white farmhouse on a few acres of land in East Texas.  Far enough north to still remember what winter might feel like, far enough east to have streams, lakes, and a good chance of growing things living through the hellacious summers, and close enough to some decent-sized towns where if we really need it, we can find it. 

     In idle pillow-talk -- you know how married folks do when they’re winding down after a day, just chatting before going to sleep.  Maybe they talk about their day, or their plans for tomorrow, but I think this is the time when most people talk about their dreams.  It’s dark, so you don’t have to worry about seeing any of those “looks” on your spouse’s face, and you can just talk about whatever your heart wants right that moment.  When we talked like that, it was always a farm, a little garden, some chickens, maybe some goats, rabbits possibly.  Maybe we’d have a roadside produce stand, or sell fresh eggs.  Maybe I’d finally start selling the lotions, soaps, scrubs, and such that I’ve been making for us for the past few years.  Maybe Pa Bell would start turning bowls again on his daddy’s lathe, or start making woodcrafts to sell. 

     Dreams...

     When Pa Bell’s back got hurt, we really thought our dreams were done.  I had no retirement, and his Army career had been shot down.  We were fortunate in the severity of it, in one way, because he was able to retire with full pay and benefits.  So now, he can work around the farm when he’s able, I can work from home as work is available, and we can still make ends meet.  We’re not living high on the hog, that’s for dang sure, but we have a roof over our heads, food on the table, air conditioning in the summer and heat in the winter.  I can take care of Pa Bell when he needs it, because with my part-time income, we make do, and I don’t have to find full-time work outside the home.  I can take care of our little boy, too, who just had his third birthday in our new house this past winter.  Pa Bell isn’t supposed to lift him, but that doesn’t always work out.  Little boys who love their daddies inevitably want to be picked up. 

     And we’re still working on those dreams.  Pa Bell got his daddy’s lathe over the holidays.  He turned a bowl for me for my fifth anniversary present.  It’s made from a section of branch from the huge red oak that we had to have cut down.  I’ve been reading and learning and planning.  We’re going to get there.  Our dream of a homestead will happen, and if you’d like, you can come along with us. 

     I reckon I’ve about talked your ear off by now.  And it’s time I got dinner started, too!  Come again sometime, and I’ll have more to tell.