8 Days/88 Acres Day 6 "What are you not?"

 I now have only 2 days left here, and have mastered the coffee making. It has been hot, like 90's hot with high humidity. The skies this morning are gray and there is a bit of morning fog out on the prairie.  

After my breakfast I head out to check on the puppies. All of them now have their eyes open and have started to try to walk. It is adorable and amusing at the same time. You realize how vulnerable these little creatures are as they begin to navigate the world now that they can see. The goal is still to find their mother and nurse as much as she will allow. Their bellies are getting rounder and more pronounced. I take turns picking them up and nuzzling them. This is one of my responsibilities, to socialize the pups. However, what I have also discovered is that holding puppies is a good kind of therapy. They smell like sweetness, their fur soft as flower petals, they are warm and enjoy being held.
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It is a fairly uneventful day so far, chores done and after lunch we head out to the pool with taquitos and water bottles in tow we're set to cool off and hang out. After about an hour or so there, the winds pick up and clouds roll in and the skies blacken; lightning happens. They clear the pool and we leave. Storms roll in as we pull up to one of the girl’s friend’s house. We hang out there while things subside. Back in the car we make the trek back to the farm. Everything looks intact. The girls and their friend are busy playing, while I am cleaning eggs and preparing for dinner.

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As I prep dinner, I start to think about what I have learned each day that I have been here: more acceptance, trying and learning something new everyday, letting go of control, letting go of outcomes, learning from kids, learning from the animals.

After dinner my friend who owns the farm calls and checks in on me. "So has the novelty worn off yet?" I start laughing and tell her "I have never thought of this as a novelty, this is a lot of work and I knew it would be and I am still enjoying it."

Later in the evening after the girl’s friend has left, the rains came in again and we decided to do more painting. We had an enjoyable evening of pop music and painting while in the solarium room, that is until the next song on the playlist came on and it started out with a sentence full of expletives! Both the girls looked at me and I was caught off guard and they were waiting for my reaction. I skipped the song and started laughing saying their mom would probably not let me care for them again. Then we all started laughing hysterically which made the one girl decide to do yoga. 

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As younger girl started doing yoga she told me "this is cow and this is cat." My uncle taught us how to do yoga." Nice, I said, "but the first one you did is cat, and the second one you did is cow." No it is not she insisted. I tried explaining to her the difference, then I finally said "here's the thing, I am a certified yoga instructor and I know the difference between cat and cow." They both stopped and looked at me, and older girl says "What are you not!?" We all busted out laughing and I told her that that was the best question I have ever been asked in my life! The evening continued to be enjoyable and silly.

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​As I lay in bed that night, I thought a lot about what older girl said to me. There was so much I wanted to tell this eleven year old. I wanted to tell her that "I am everything, and so are you”. I wanted her to know that by the time she was my age there would be little she wasn't and that she will have done and tried a thousand more things in her life. That there will be times that she will feel this is the happiest time, or this is the worst time. She will think she knows herself only to change and evolve into someone she doesn't yet recognize. Hopefully she will also experience a heart filled with love, and learn how to heal her heart when a relationship ends. That life is an ongoing learning and growing process if you allow yourself to trust yourself and believe in yourself.  I want to shout, stay true to you, don't try to become anyone else other than you, because only you can be you, and you are already amazing by virtue of the fact that you exist. Lastly I want to tell her what other people think of her is none of her business. At the end of the day, it is you who you come home to. ​​
I  start to fall asleep and my thoughts trail off to wondering if my eleven year old self would have benefited from these words. I don't know, but it is likely that I may not have believed any of it, or even listened. I would have been my eleven year old self just beginning to wake up to the world ahead of me.

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