This morning as I sit here, after what seems an age since I last wrote a blog story, I remember one I wrote back in October 2015 about Trust. For some reason I have the urge to once again share that story with you. Today more than ever we need Trust… trust in our country, trust in those who make decisions we have no say in yet affect us greatly, but most of all, trust in each other. What has transpired over the past year or so has broken so many things we have faithfully trusted in the past. Now more than ever we need to remember what it is to Trust, which to me is so often synonymous with Truth…
10/25/2015
Trust. What a simple little word that can mean so very many different things to each of us. As I was out milking Lass yesterday morning I thought about trust and how important this unassuming little word is in our lives. Where would we be without it?
This time of year can find it pitch black outside when I make my way down to the milking barn for my first farm chore of the day. Sometimes I wait until the sky lightens with the glorious colours of dawn promising a sunny day ahead but more often than not, since the clocks will soon turn back to daylight savings time, I head off in the dark and invariably witness dawn while squatting beside my cow. It was that squatting besides one’s cow that brought the subject of trust to mind.
Yesterday morning I went through the usual routine of heading off to milk. As Lass sees the four wheeler coming down the hill to the milk house she will rise up from her bed and slowly head to the paddock gate where she patiently waits for me to open it. A pre-requisite ceremony precedes her entrance into the milking parlour as she hears me hook up and briefly turn on milker followed by that delicious sound of a couple tins of grain being dumped into her manger. It is no wonder as soon as the gate is wide enough for her passage she breaks into a lumbering trot the few yards to the milk house door, stepping carefully over the sill then maneuvering her body around so as to place her head in the stanchion and positioning herself just perfectly for me to get cracking milking.
As the milker is placed on the ground at her side I squat down to thoroughly wash and dry her udder before attaching the milker’s cups on her teats. Occasionally there will be a stubborn bit of dirt right on the end of a teat which needs a tad more attention with the washing cloth before it is dried and a steady stream of milk squirted out prior to the placement of the teat cup. Such was the case yesterday morning and as I had my head totally under Lass’s belly inspecting her far hind teat end, that innocuous word “Trust” popped into my mind. I trust this cow and she totally trusts me. Where I was located at that precise moment put me in a very delicate position as one lash out with a hind foot would find me flat on my back and out like a light. Yet as I scrubbed away at her teat end I had no worries about such an event happening, already the other teats were starting to drip milk, for in her eyes her “second calf” was here for breakfast! What a girl she is! I really do love this cow.
So as the milker started its rhythmic “tick, tick, tick, tick”, the steady stream of milk heading down the tubes into the belly of the stainless steel milker at her side, I rested my head on her flank as I rubbed her udder and contemplated this great word Trust.
Trust. To me a word synonymous with marriage, friends, milk cows, dogs and yes, sometimes people you do not even know. How many times have I sent off a package of soaps and lotions or even sausages and cheese to a total stranger with an invoice in the box, trusting they will pop a cheque in the post to me when the box is received? Numerous times and I have yet to have anyone renege on paying me.
What would a marriage be without implicit trust? Not much of a marriage at all really. How about that little girl standing on the edge of a swimming pool with her colourful inflated arm bands making her look like a mini imitation of the Michelin Man while her daddy, with his arms outstretched and up to his waist in water, encourages her to take that leap of faith into the pool. The look in a patient’s eyes as you are about to start an IV in their arm as the ambulance sways yet again around another corner on a bumpy road. The trust you place in the surgeon and nurses as you or a loved one are wheeled through those doors into the operating theatre. Yes, where indeed would we be without trust?
All of us, I am sure, have had their trust in a person or an animal broken at one time or another and yet it seems human nature just begs us to trust one more time and thank goodness for that! Has a milk cow ever kicked me? Oh yes indeed … although after a couple of major life discussions and she never kicked me again … that was Bea by the way, not Lass. Without trust what sort of life would we have one wonders.
Gosh I am feeling a tad maudlin here! I had better make another cup of tea, which always makes me feel better but before I end this early morning blog post, it is just past four o’clock in the morning, let me leave you with my definition of trust: Tolerance … Respect … Understanding … Support … Thoughtfulness. Yes, Trust embodies all these things and so many more. How wonderful and precious it is my friends to have Trust.
