Are you all as tired as I am? I can’t believe we are starting to think about Christmas shopping again! This life is going a little too fast forward for my taste, the none-stop running is wearing on my usually pleasant disposition.

Here’s one theory: we got more rain this Spring and Summer than we normally do, at least we got a little bit every now and then, somewhat consistently. I find that I am still mowing my lawn like it’s Spring time, when I usually let it dry up and go dormant by mid July; to me that’s just easier. My thought is that having to perpetually keep up with the constantly growing grass all summer long, has robbed me of time I might have used to reflect, cogitate and slow down so that I might come up with more viable reasons as to why life is spinning out of control.

No? Oh well, I’m a simple, small town girl with simple theories. I did have a chance one beautiful morning, a few weeks ago, to nap in style and I never pass up a chance to nap, I liken it to winning the lottery.

My Dad enjoys taking advantage of his crew of offspring every now and then. Our numbers are a blessing at Christmas; when the house is full and you can see the pride and sheer contentment in our folks’ faces with all of us and all of our children there to surround them with joy and noise. It must be similar to that feeling when the farm yields a bumper crop for the year, only we keep bumping the numbers higher and higher.

We also, as a group, tend to have a certain amount of buying power, now that we are older; when it comes to buying gifts. Think about it….when you split it nine ways…..you have so many more options.

The team effort I enjoy the most though, would have to be the annual laying out and loading back up of the irrigation pipe. I was called upon to join again this year, out of desperation on my father’s part; I work Saturdays and have sadly missed a couple of years. This year he “needed” me, so I made it work and after I put in a half day at my job I was out to the farm by 0900 with my leather gloves on, raring for action…well, I was present and accounted for anyway. In the past, he has been able to round up several spry, teen-agers with not a care in the world as to the condition of their rotator cuffs but this year he had a motley crew at best. My youngest brother, me and my daughter, my sister, her husband and their two boys and we were all kind of looking at each other like; “Okay.  Let’s just do this.”

We split into two groups and after loading one trailer with my brother; he got in the driver’s seat and my daughter, my nephew and I precariously hopped up on top of the pipe to ride back to the farm the old fashioned way. The kids loved it once the pipe settled and we got up onto the road. They laid down on the pipe, looked up at the clouds and let out an “aaaahhhhhh..” as the bumps and shimmies made their voices jump around until they were giggling uncontrollably at themselves. Remember when you did things like that? Back in the day before all of those “Farm Safety Gods” bore down from above and swiped away the adventure, the spontaneity, and the “I dare you” aspect that makes farm life fun. There aren’t any seat belts on the top of the pipe, in the loader bucket, or in the bed of the truck, therefore taboo these days.

My favorite part of the irrigation experience is always the loading and unloading of the pipe and not because I totally love to lift these 10 inch, aluminum beasts over my head, one after the other, onto the pile or the trailer, depending on the season, but because of where the storage area is located. Every year I’m allowed to venture up there, I’m surprised by the beauty of this small clearing at the top of the bluff. There’s this open area, surrounded by trees where I’m not sure if the prairie grasses were planted or if they remain there from times long past but this view always takes my breath away. I prefer to think the grasses ancestral rather than planned out and machine seeded; but I think we’ve all come to the conclusion that I’m a bit of a romantic about almost everything.

The wheat grass flows and shines as the breezes blow through. There are patches of wild rye, switch grass and Indian grass peppered in and throughout. As I walk through; I search for the wild asters who come out of their low-to-the-ground hiding spots and show off their tiny, tough, daisy-like flowers. The round-headed bush clovers stand proudly, singly, dotting the prairie scene with their blue leaves and ball shaped grouping of white and red petals, and I can also always count on bright, sunny yellow goldenrod and sunflowers to greet me like old friends without fail.

I have to admit I was tired that day after rising in the middle of the night to go into work and I think the “the crew” knew it so they left me up there, in paradise, to wait and unload as the full trailers came back. I didn’t argue and I took the opportunity, between loads, to reacquaint myself with that feeling of how life used to be before there were pipe and the occasional tractor coming up to that clearing. One could possibly imagine themselves standing atop this hill in order to predict the timing of a storm seen coming from many many miles away, where the buffalo herd was, or if the rival tribe was headed in this direction.

I couldn’t tell you if all of that is even true to this area but I was prairie dreaming and that would be an example of my imagination at work. When the wait between loads got to be more than 10 minutes, I couldn’t resist the temptation to lie down in the middle of those soft, flowing grasses, feeling the  grasshoppers curiously investigating my foreign body, placing my leather gloves on my forehead to shield my eyes but not block out the unending blue Nebraska sky. I listened and heard the cicadas, the crickets with their never-ending songs, often signifying unrequited love, and I even had a Monarch land on my knee for a second until she realized she had mistakened my blue jeans for possibly some purple prairie clover;  and she was quickly off to find the real thing.

The whooshing of the grasses moving together in rhythm and that crispy, burnt smell of September carried my heart to a calmer place, enabling me to forget about the crazy work place I had left a couple hours ago, the deadlines, the commitments, and the hustle that is required of every one of us because life is racing  by a little “too fast forward”. For a moment, for 20 minutes, I was allowed to sleep in this wonderful Nebraska dream scape until I heard the old Ford coming into the yard below, I turned over and saw the puff of black smoke rise above the trees as my brother shoved it into low, in order to begin his ascent, pulling his full trailer and more work behind him, requiring me to break out of my grassland fantasy and get back to work.

I have that memory from that fun, break-in-my-monotony kind of day and I take it out to use it whenever I’m waiting at the railroad, driving slowly behind a combine, or when I’m taking a personal moment to briefly crumble under the pressure, at my desk in the afternoons. I’m able to find that peace again and slow it all down if not just for a flash of time; I find it really helps me.

It’s still all rushing by and time seems to take on a life of it’s own, there’s really no way to control it. I  think it’s important that we all make good use of that one calming memory and take selfish micro-breaks during our busy days because we deserve better and more than this treadmill that life seems to have become. Oscar Wilde describes a dreamer as thus:  “One who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”   A dreamer can dream at any time during the day in order to re-orient himself and find his way once again; so give it a try, the sunrise that accompanies the dawn reminds us that every day is a new opportunity to start fresh, and I can’t imagine a more inspiring sort of “punishment”.