Girls Trip

   Really it has only been in the last few years that Rachel and I have hung out much together.  The twenty year age gap means that it took some time  before we had enough common interests and free time at the same times to really do fun things together without one of us being the grown up and one of being the kid. We have gone to my grandparents' farm for a sisters' visit a few times and had toyed with a fall trip but other family things intervened.  This past weekend, I had a long weekend and Rachel finagled days off to match mine, so off to Bluejacket we went. Jack can't really leave his parents now and I have a few hundred baby plants to tend, so he graciously opted to stay home to let me have a getaway with Ra.
     I think this was the most carefree and relaxed I have felt since our stolen day of hiking at New Years. Bluejacket is like going home for me.  It hasn't been in years and years, but my roots are there . . . holidays were spent there until fairly recently, summers sweated there . . It just feels like coming home when I round that curve coming out of Timber Hill and descend into town.  The rail road crossing, the sad little football field, the final curve before their farm is nestled in gentle slopes and held in by creeks at the edge of town.    When I pull up before that old brick house and the shabby barns, I can just feel all the weights of the world slide off my shoulders as I exhale.
     My grandparents are in their  eighties so it isn't as if this was a vacation where we were pampered and spoiled, though my Grandmother made some wonderful brisket and chicken stew and dumplings.  Instead, bright and early Saturday, Grandpa hit us up to fix up the fence around the chicken coop.  Several years ago, Jack, Dad and my brothers built this fabulous, huge chicken coop and yard for them, but eventually, they quit keeping chickens and it fell into disrepair . The coop became became a storage shed and cows invaded the yard. A friend recently gifted them with 9 fat red hens, and it was time to give that coop a face lift. We drove posts, put up cow panels (at Grandpa's decree though I felt like the chickens would escape)(and after we cut them out of wild rose bushes and green briars and  Grandpa  drug them through several acres of mud puddles and cow pies), scavenged old wire . . . It is the ugliest chicken yard ever but it is not going to fall down in a wind storm or be pushed over by a cow.  Those hens were so happy to be out of the coop and scratching in the grass and muck.
      Of course, the next day those wily hens did escape.  As fast as my cousin would grab a chicken and put it in the pen, two more would find freedom. We had to string the chicken wire I   suspected from the beginning that we'd need.  And of course, just like the old panels and old wire we  had to beat into shape, the chicken wire was bent and had tree roots frowning into it. I appreciate not having to buy materials, but it takes a lot more work to reuse old things that have been allowed to rust away. Ra and I spent the better part of the weekend wading around in cow and chicken poo while we made repairs, but oddly, that is the most content I have been in weeks.  Other than our hike, it is the most at peace I have been in months.  We chatted and joked whole we worked really well as a team despite the age and personality differences. There was something deeply satisfying about menial labor on the family farm, labor that might make my grandparents'  chores a bit easier, and doing the work with someone I love.
     It wasn't all chicken mess.  We helped my grandmother clear limbs out of the yard - so many had fallen over the winter from those trees that are getting old.  Grandma told us the stories behind them - the one that had been a seedling in her mother's yard, the one that was my grandpa's favorite, the ones that they planted when they first bought that farm. At one point I looked up to see my long legged sis scrambling up a tree.  Grandma says she is the only grandkid to have climbed that one. I was delighted that this girl who can make boys drool can still be a kid when she needs to be.
      We heard about the time my grandpa hitchiked to California and became a forestry service fire fighter and then joined the marines.  We heard a man sing Amazing Grace in Cherokee at church. We  got stuck in the truck when the doors jammed.  We went for a run together. We cooked together.
      We laughed, we ate, we hugged long lost cousins, we teased - we  just soaked up the spring like  weather and love that we always find on that farm.