Happy Fathers Day

I sat this morning as everyone else slept and wondered what photo I would attach to my Father's Day wishes but I was a little stumped.  I have so many fathers in my life but then I knew just the photo.  Some of you will know how this photo show many of my Father's. 
One took great effort to care for this place and taught me to work hard, one married me here and become the father of our children, one shared the word of God here and strengthened my faith and one I can feel closer to here than any other place I've ever been.

To all the fathers, how ever you define them in your life, Happy Father's Day.

Familiar Things

 

This week brought the return of the Biking Sherpa.  Oh how I wish I could have her with me on all my runs.  She would make a great drill sergeant.  And I mean that in the most complimentary way.  She pulled me through some very hilly runs that I had forgotten I used to mindlessly cruise through on a daily basis.  I'm going to blame the energy dip on the Whole30 but I can't hide the fact that my hamstrings were both very sore after our first run of my favorite loop.  I can also use the excuse that she did pull us around at slightly over an 8 min pace which is fast for me these days.

 

 

It has been a week of hard runs but some of the most enjoyable I've had in quite awhile.  Everything is just so green and the flowers are everywhere. 

 

 

LBM and I have enjoyed our runs together after my run is over.  With my sore hamstrings he could actually out sprint me, a fact that made he giddy.  He told me that he was just so full of "energies" he had to run super fast.





 





We walked through the cemetery for our cool down.  LBM was interested in the old tombstones and how long people had lived and who they were to one another. 

Tonight will be another run, hopefully in the rain again, with Biking Sherpa around our favorite loop to complete another wonderful double day.  Nothing beats returning to familiar things to make everything seem to hold a kind of beauty that you overlooked before. 
 

I don't know about you but I'm off to run...
 

Cove Creek Farm ~ Memories

This post has little to do with running but everything to do with the person I am.

Memories are like fingerprints. Tiny bits of information that are so unique no two people actually share ones that are perfectly the same. While some may enjoy a cinematic ability to stroll through their lives and revisit the days in their past, others struggle to bring into focus the aged Polaroid-like snapshots hiding in our minds. Unfortunately my memories are the latter but the the memories I can bring into focus often contain moments of growing up on my grandfather's farm.

With the help of photographs I can find those memories that have become blurry in my mind.  I can clearly see the hay elevator sitting in front of the haymow doors.  I can hear the hum of the tractors as they bring in wagons of hay.  I can remember the smells in the air.  I can see my grandfather as sweat drips from his forehead.

As I look at photos I can remember days spent in the barn hiding away from chores.  Sitting in the grain stores painting with water colors stolen from my older sister.  I can remember hushed conversations with girl friends and stolen kisses with boyfriends.  I can remember my grandparent's voices as I remember my grandmother calling me in for lunch and my grandfather scolding me when he caught me building another fort in the barn.

But most importantly I can envision things that I never got to see. I can imagine how my great-grandfather worked along side my grandfather in this barn. The thought that their very hands touched the same doors as I did. Knowing that although I never knew my mother as a child, I have shared the same playground with her in growing up in this barn makes me feel as though I am somehow closer to her. Thinking that she might have stolen kisses in this barn from my father when they were dating makes me grieve even more for the loss of this place and the moments that it held

Even in the loss of a piece of my history, I am beyond grateful for every moment I was blessed to live within it.  I remind myself that it is only in the looking back that we can clearly see how to move forward.  So I will share my fleeting memories with my family and friends to help a small piece of my past to live on in each of them.  Then soon there will be so many people holding those fragmented bits of family history that it will never be forgotten. 

Cove Creek Farm

Doris June Barrack Diehl and Max Robert Diehl

Tearing Down

This post has little to do with running but everything to do with who I am and the kind of people I am raising my children to be. 

It's been a constant in my life.  Although my view of it has changed over the years my Pappy Max's barn has always been there as a symbol of some many things I believe my grandfather and father stood for.  It was about a way of life.  A kind of integrity not often found.

The boards and beams of our barn will be used by others and in that way they live on.

Our barn stood for hard work. The kind of work that few people do any more. The work that starts before the sun rises, blisters your hands, wearies your back, ends after the sun sets but fills your soul. 

That barn represented an escape. It housed days and days of youthful adventures. Within it's wooden walls I created worlds and lives and escaped the youthful boredom of rural living.

It represented a source of pride.  Although I would grumble at every chore my sisters and I were charged with doing, I found a sense of pride in doing them well.  I was proud to be a part of something that had stood for so long.  The sense of neighborhood and community with all the farmers gathered in our barn yard as the auctioneer sing-songed the bids as we held a cattle auction in the spring.
 

The barn represented history and family.  Being a creative child I would linger in the thoughts of my grandfather and his father's hands at work on the very boards of that barn.  I enjoyed imagining that my hand lay where theirs had been.  I felt connected to a history of my family that I would never know in this life.

The barn represented taking chances.  I remember climbing into the rafters and jumping into grain filled gravity bins below with my heart pounding in exhilaration.  My heart was also pounding the day my mother caught me with a boy in the haymile.

It's probably the same for many family farmers.  The barn is a central part of family life and takes on a life of it's own.  That life, the life of our family barn is coming to an end.  It's hard to imagine what my view will look like without it.  Tearing down walls is rarely an easy thing to do.  I am thankful for all the time I had growing up on the rural farm.  I am hopeful as I look to see what reality lays beyond those comfortable walls of my past.  But I won't forget the lessons I learned and I will share those memories with my children so that in the retelling of them, they will live on in our family always.

Cove Creek Farm

Doris June Barrack Diehl and Max Robert Diehl

gone but never forgotten

may I live to make them proud.