An Odd and Satisfying Inheritance

A few weeks back I went to the store and came home with a giant bag of horse manure and sack of bird seed. Only the essentials, of course, the manure for the compost bin we had started and the bird seed for the feeder we had hung. I've spent the weeks following with a bit of a complex, convinced I am the only 29-year-old on earth thinking about manure and bird seed. I've worried about how I will spend my time in retirement if I cover all the most exciting options so early on in life. I've wondered how in the world this has happened to me, this fascination with compost and ornithology.

But I'm familiar with the world of compost piles and bird feeders, it's the world of my childhood, where Tuesdays were my dad's day off and a day off meant a long day of hard manual labor outside, clearing dirt and mowing grass and planting flowers and harvesting vegetables. If this was a day off, I've worried that he'll spend retirement by working 60 hour weeks outside. I've wondered how in the world this has happened to him, this superhuman drive to work hard at cultivating the earth around him.

I got some unexpected answers this evening.

I felt an inexplicable urge to head out to the back yard to finish a digging job I had started. Nothing major, just clearing a small strip of grass to make way for an iris bed in hopes to spruce up an otherwise dilapidated terrace. It didn't take long for my boys to spot me out the back window, and before I knew it, the older one was pushing his way out the back door, sweatshirt half on, bare feet, and his brother was trying to make the escape right behind.

After getting some shoes and putting the sweatshirt all the way on, I handed him the spade and put him on root, rock, and worm duty while I kept hacking away at the grass with the hoe. We found a 12-inch long nightcrawler and he jumped up and down shouting, "Throw it in the compost!" The sun had set and it was getting dark quickly. "This is hard work," he told me with a tone of satisfaction. He liked my tool better than the one he had and begged for a turn, watching in admiration. We quickly finished the job and wiped the mud off our shoes before dinner.

And I told him again about Great Grandpa and how much he liked this sort of thing.

I quickly realized that, with a solid tool in one's hand, with a bit of mud under the fingernails, with the crisp air at dusk, with the pride of cultivation, and with the regard for one's father who models it all, if this kid is starting this young, there's a good chance he will succumb too.

I feel the need to have my own compost pile because I helped my father maintain his. And my father feels the need to spend his day off gardening because he helped his father do the same. And so if my boys happen to grow up to plant flowers and sow gardens and feed birds and enjoy every minute of it, it will be because they had a Great Grandpa with a tenacious Pennsylvania Dutch work ethic who did just the same and passed it on down the line.

In the past couple of years I've had to entertain the question of whether or not I prefer to live in the city or the country. I've always thought it was a difficult question, especially because of the way my pulse quickens when I walk through the city. But something tells me, as I drive through 30 minutes of beautiful vast farmland before finally arriving at our new house, that the country is really where I'm meant to be. It's where I feel at home. A genetic inclination to buy horse manure at just 29 years of age only confirms the matter.

Grandpa won't get to see my humble plantation and the strong boys who have been helping me tend to it. But if he could, I have a feeling he'd smile wide and affirm our work with a phrase in Pennsylvania Dutch, then burst out laughing at himself and our looks of confusion.

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men -- Colossians 3:23