Our lives are busy with the livestock, not as much as when the boys are showing but we still have enough animals to feed. Until recently, our local Livestock Auction Barn was closed. Finally, a buyer bought it after several years of it standing still. The sadness in a small town is when a business closes everyone misses it. We have strangers that stop us at the gas station asking about a café that is no longer there. One day it was empty and the next day they tore it down.

Since the auction barn has opened we as a family have done our best to support it. Shipping cattle over an hour is not good for the cattle before being sold. A local barn allows your cattle to be rested and hydrated before selling. Dunk is now working on his off days at the barn. He loved the auction barn before it closed. As a tiny boy he would walk the catwalk and beg to work at it. W on a very busy day almost jumped into a holding pen, I grabbed him at the last second. S is the only child that doesn’t have weekly memories of the barn. Dunk used to ask me why they had to attend school on the sale day. To him it was the time you saw the ranchers, friends and the men you truly know are the backbone of this country. They usually would get a soda and a hamburger and sit a spell while the cattle came through. Most of them are gone now, but a few remain like my father-in-law.

This ritual is something in Dallas I did not see growing up, the generational support of families. We knew our cousins. We did not have this group of people that wanted to know how we were doing and all our plans. You have that in a church but not in a community of a city. You only acquire that in a small town. It is one of the blessings I am thrilled to watch happen each time a person comes up to me and tells me they knew my Hubby as a boy and his sons are a fine measure of him as man. Dunk is consistently coming home telling his dad about a man that knows him and knew the moment he saw Dunk he was his son. I did have that love from my great aunts and the people at church but my community was not a generational support place. I was raised in a way that I could mess up and start anew. This town you mess up and everyone knows it. The ironic part about it is if you do mess up the people that love you will not change their opinion at all, and those that do were never truly attached to you in the first place.

As my boys grow big and move into environments that do not have the comfort that home has, I sometimes think about how insulated they have been. How loved by so many they have felt. Then I realize they have worked so hard to maintain that connection with their family. As I know life will change them, they will always look back and have no doubt they are loved. To me that is the legacy I want them to remember, being loved.

Tweet This Post  Ping This Post