by Ree Drummond
I married Ladd about twelve years after Todd’s death, and over the following years, as grandchildren came and her family grew, I got to witness the beauty of real joy slowly entering a grieving woman’s life again. Sure, the pain was always close to the surface and could be triggered by a song or a memory. But she’d also laugh, tell jokes, go to dinner, take the grandkids shopping—and I would occasionally watch her and marvel. She has lost a child, I’d think, and look at her over there enjoying life. I was always grateful to her for demonstrating to me what that kind of strength really looks like.
From all our phone calls and car rides and other one-on-one conversations, I knew that Nan was very interested in the subject of Heaven. After Todd was killed, she began collecting books written by people who’d reported near-death experiences and, by their account, had seen a glimpse of Heaven. She explained to me that she wasn’t sure if she believed everything the authors wrote, but she read the books because she wanted to know where Todd was—she wanted to be able to close her eyes and picture it. And besides that, she couldn’t wait to go there one day. I like to imagine where she is now, and most of the time, I can’t stretch my mind enough to picture it. So I live in a state of gratitude that my life was touched by Nan, and I honor her by revisiting all the crazy, goofy, lovely things that made her unique.
(And I continue to crack up every time I see an electric back massager.)
Country Life
Anything for a Date
My strapping husband and I had been married for a year and a half, and one Saturday in late March, I was dying to go out on a date. Our baby girl, Alex, was a few months old, and I was still neck deep in the adjustment phase that had included (in no particular order) marriage, motherhood, and moving to the middle of nowhere. For the first eighteen months of our newlywed stage, Ladd and I (and now, our child) had been in you-and-me-against-the-world mode, living in our little house on the prairie and trying to weather the various storms (financial stress and my parents’ divorce, to name a couple) that had befallen us during that time. We hadn’t had much social interaction with others, as it seemed like we were just trying to get our bearings all the time. But by golly, on that particular night we’d been officially invited out to dinner with some couples in Pawhuska—and I was ready.
Ladd, on the other hand, was not. He was exhausted, having had a backbreaking week of work on the ranch, and all he wanted to do was strip off his muddy clothes, take a twenty-minute shower, and settle in for the evening with his quiet little family. “How about if I take you out tomorrow night,” he suggested. “I don’t have to work tomorrow, so we can leave earlier in the day and go see a movie.”
But I didn’t want to see a movie. I wanted to put on slim black pants, a sleek shirt, and high-heeled boots, then go to a restaurant in the city with some other married couples. I wanted to wear red lipstick, have adult conversation, and be witty. As much as I loved my husband, we were alone together all the time. I wanted to spend the evening having cocktails with new friends while flipping my hair and laughing. It had to happen that night or we might never have the chance again for the rest of our lives.
I was in the middle of pleading my case to Ladd, possibly stomping my feet a little, when he looked away and suddenly ran into our bedroom. I thought this was a bit of an overreaction to my asking to go out with other couples, but he had just had a long day, I reminded myself. Seconds later, though, he emerged from the bedroom wielding a shotgun and ran with lightning speed toward the front door . . . and when I looked outside the window at our yard, I instantly understood what was going on: The skunk was running toward our house.
A bit of background: At our little house on the prairie, we had a skunk problem. On a pretty continual basis, except for the coldest months of winter, skunks had decided they liked it under our house, and it made our lives a stinky hell. They scratched their backs on nails and boards, and it was actually as if I was burning a Skunk Essence candle when they were down there doing their thing. Skunk smell when you’re driving down the highway is one thing; skunk smell wafting up into your marital home on a daily basis is quite another. Those were some pretty dark, disgusting days.
In recent weeks, we’d had enough, and had been weeding out the skunks one by one by fashioning a board to cover the breach that the skunks were using to get in and out, occasionally blocking the hole with the board anytime we saw a skunk scurrying away from the house, presumably to go hunt and forage. The idea was that when they came back (whatever time of day that would be), the inn would be closed and they’d move on to greener pastures. Of course, it also meant trapping some skunks under the house for hours at a time—but we had a system, albeit a clunky one, and it had been working. It was a long, painstaking process that required patience and some lucky timing, but sure enough, by now almost all of them were gone . . . that is, except for the lone skunk ranger. He’d been completely elusive, sneaking in and out for weeks, and we never seemed to be able to catch him, whether coming or going. Earlier that morning, as we’d done regularly, we removed the board, hoping we’d catch him coming out but doubtful we’d be that lucky.
So now, in the late afternoon, after Ladd’s long day of work and before the date he didn’t want to go on, there he was! The elusive skunk was finally in our sight. He’d obviously left our house without our knowing earlier in the day, and at this moment he was running at full skunk speed back to his dark little den, also known as our home. Ladd saw him and knew the board was still off the house, and that this was his one chance to make sure our skunk days were forever behind us. And so, about fifteen feet from our house . . . BOOM! The skunk was no longer an issue, and a pungent, greenish mist hovered in the air. Ladd immediately secured the board to the base of the house, then put the shotgun back in its place. Victory was ours. Our skunk problem was solved. Now I really had a reason to celebrate with new friends that night!
Ladd, however, was still trying to wriggle out of it. “Aw, let’s stay home,” he said, taking off his boots. “We’ll pop popcorn and watch movies.”
“But I want to get out in the world,” I pouted. “I’m going to shrivel and die if I don’t go out tonight.”
“I’m going to shrivel and die if I go,” he countered. Clever boy.
“I’m going to shrivel and die and cry,” I said. Even cleverer girl.
That got him where it hurt. Ladd was unnerved by crying. It stumped him. But he wasn’t going down without a fight, and he pulled out all the stops: “Tell ya what,” he said with a smirk. “You get the dead skunk out of the yard while I go shower, and we’ll go out with all those guys tonight.” Then he walked in the bathroom and turned on the shower, probably patting himself on the back over his coup.
The gauntlet was thrown. Alex by now was awake from her nap, so I put her in her bouncy seat and did something I never imagined, in my wildest childhood or teenage dreams, I would do in my life: I went outside with a black trash bag, wearing Ladd’s work gloves. I dug around in his toolbox in the back of his pickup and found huge pliers, then walked slowly and purposefully over to the dead skunk. Holding the pliers in my right gloved hand, I reached all the way to the bottom of the empty bag, used the pliers to grab hold of the skunk’s leg from inside of the bag . . . then lifted it up and inverted the trash bag over the body. I sealed the bag and stood there, not even sure how in the world I’d come up with that method.
But it didn’t matter: I did it! I got the dead skunk out of the yard. And it was done before Ladd was even out of the shower.
When he turned off the water and came out of the bathroom, I directed his attention to the empty spot in the yard where the skunk had been. He looked at me with shock, shook his head, tried not to smile, and said, “Crap . . .” He would never have guessed I’d be capable of getting that close to a wild animal, let alone allowing myself to touch it. (I neglected to tell him I hadn’t actually touched it. I wanted to keep my methods to myself.) Tail between his legs, my husband skulked into the bedroom to get dressed
for our hot date.
I had officially won. I was sorry about the skunk’s abrupt end, but it’s a harsh reality of country life that sometimes man and wildlife have to go toe to toe in turf wars such as these. As for me, I’d pushed through and, by sheer will, had taken on Ladd’s challenge. I’d completely called his bluff. I was ready for our date! I got dressed up and we dropped Alex at my mother-in-law’s house, then met the group of couples in town, where we loaded up in a couple of SUVs for the hour-long drive to the restaurant.
Once we were all in our seats and buckled in, one of the ladies looked around and said, “Whew! What is that smell?”
I guess the skunk made sure he got the last word.
I Really Hate Summer
Growing up a freckled, fun-loving child who lived just a hop, a skip, and a jump from the country club pool, I always thought summer was the happiest time of year. From as young as I can remember, my daily schedule in the summertime began with zero urgency, at whatever time my natural clock told me to roll out of bed. Breakfast consisted of either bacon and eggs cooked by my mom or a big bowl of Cocoa Puffs, whichever struck my fancy. Then I’d get cleaned up and head to the pool, where I’d meet up with my very best friend, Becky. The two of us would stay there until the sun started to go down (we must have been handfuls, because our moms never sent for us), spending all our time giggling, playing Marco Polo, buying grilled cheeses and frozen Snickers from the snack bar, and laying out. Summer was easy, summer was beautiful, summer was free.
Many years later, after I’d gone to college in California, eaten my fill of sushi, dated a surfer, and moved back to Oklahoma, I became engaged to Ladd, a cowboy from the next county. Before we got married, I enjoyed getting acquainted with his mother, Nan, my future mother-in-law, who doled out random pieces of advice regarding my upcoming future as an agricultural wife and rural resident, a fate I’d never imagined for myself. I lapped up every word she had to say. It was all so very interesting! Among her practical tips for country living were things like buying multiples of grocery items, investing in a larger-than-normal upright freezer, planting flowers that could withstand harsh winds and hail, painting our homestead a natural color so enemies flying overhead couldn’t spot us (see A Rich Inner Life), and never walking outside at night without shoes. I listened and took it all in—especially when she uttered a phrase I’d never heard before. It was a phrase so foreign in concept, in fact, that I could hardly grasp the idea.
“And one more thing,” Nan said, peering over her glasses. “Get ready to really hate summer.”
Hate . . . summer? “Huh?” I replied. “I don’t understand.”
“You will,” she said, before moving on to pantry-stocking tips. I was a little confused, but decided to tuck it away in a tiny recess of my brain in case it ever came up.
Fast-forward a quarter of a century: I really hate summer, just like Nan said I would. And let me tell you why.
Forget feeding cattle and chopping icy ponds in the winter. On a ranch, summer is when the real work begins. First, Ladd and his brother have to get all the cattle ready for the summer grass. They have to worm the cattle, give them all their vaccinations, work all the spring calves, and preg test all the cows (that’s short for “pregnancy test,” but they do it so often that we decided to save them a couple of syllables). And as soon as they get all of that marked off the list, they’ve got to start cutting, baling, hauling, and putting up hay, which is a solid three-week ordeal. Before the final bales even make it to the stackyard, they have to start shipping cattle, which lasts for another few weeks. So basically, there are six or seven major summer tasks that overlap one another, and the kicker is this: All of it (with the exception of hay) has to be done early in the morning, before it gets too hot. Avoiding working in the brutal afternoon sun is better for the cowboys, it’s better for the cattle, and it’s better for the pocketbook (because the cattle don’t lose weight by sweating).
This all means that for a big chunk of the summer, we often have to get our rear ends out of bed at 3:45 in the morning. And I don’t know about you, but where I come from, 3:45 in the morning isn’t actually the morning. It’s the middle of the night.
Getting up this early as an individual human is difficult enough, but it’s particularly dicey with four children, especially when the children’s father had to get up at 3:45 a.m. in the summer during his childhood and by golly, his kids aren’t gonna be slackers! There is no pool life for my kids. There isn’t even lake life. The kids all have to go work, too, just like their dad, and as much as I would love to roll over and put a pillow over my head while they get up and head out into the darkness, I am afflicted with ranch wife syndrome and feel that I also must get up and suffer with them. When the kids were little, I had to help them gather their clothes, round up their boots, find their spurs, and remind them to brush their teeth. Now that they are teenagers, I have to physically pull them out of bed because of their adolescent comas.
Let me repeat: 3:45 a.m. is the middle of the night.
In May and even June, this summer schedule is hard. But by July and August, it becomes downright unbearable. Sunday is really the only day that’s safe, as we take the “day of rest” concept seriously—beyond that, depending on the week, we can find ourselves getting up at 3:45 a.m. for six days in a row. It is unrelenting and crazy-making, and it causes me to question everything. I lose my REM sleep. I lose my looks. I lose hope. I get cranky. I try to stay on top of my own work and projects, but as soon as I get any momentum, the family gets home, exhausted, and I have to wash their jeans before the mud and manure become permanently bonded to the threads of the denim. Then I make lunch. Then they nap. And before I know it, it’s 10:00 p.m. and all I have to look forward to is my alarm going off (or my husband poking me in the rib cage) less than six hours later.
What I’m getting at is that I’m not sure how much longer I can do this. Summer will eventually break me. And this is exactly what I try to tell my husband during our typical early-morning/middle-of-the-night 3:45 a.m. exchanges, when Ladd wakes me up to tell me it’s time to wake up the kids. He’s already halfway dressed and has to go start saddling the horses, which can take up to thirty minutes. So I’m on kid wake-up duty. The routine goes something like this:
“Honey,” he says tenderly, touching my shoulder.
I don’t move.
“Honey,” he tries again.
“Mmmrfppph.” I sniff, snort, and pretend I don’t hear him.
“Hey, honey,” he says, not so tenderly poking my shoulder this time.
I jerk away from him in protest, as if he’s startled me from a nightmare. “No,” I mumble, pulling the quilt over my head and squeezing it tightly so as to close off all access from the outside world.
“Mama,” he says, poking my ribs through the quilt. He doesn’t even have to see my ribs. After twenty-four years, he knows exactly where they are.
“NOOOOOOOOO-wuhhhhh . . .” I groan. I sound like an irritated teenager.
“Get up, get up, you sleepyhead,” Ladd sings—and very off tune. It’s one of the few things he can’t do well. I want to punch him and cry at the same time. And I’m normally not the punching, crying type.
“Fine . . .,” I say, trying to blink my eyes into staying open. “But I need to tell you something.”
“What’s that?” he asks, buttoning his jeans and finally confirming that I am, in fact, awake.
“I want a divorce,” I tell him plainly. Communication is the key in any healthy relationship, after all.
“Tell the kids to wear their chaps,” he replies as he buckles his belt. “It rained last night and it’s gonna be muddy.”
“It still is last night!” I insist. “And I can’t do this another day. I’m losing my religion and my mind. I have ceased to exist and dream. I can no longer create and thrive. Give the girls my grandmother’s china, please. Tell the boys I love them.”
He leans over me and pokes my ribs again. “You’re funny,” he says,
chuckling. We’ve had this same conversation since 2003.
And anyway, he has to head down to the barn. There are horses to round up and saddle. He doesn’t want to be late meeting the other cowboys. So I roll out of bed and wake up the kids, then go pour them all an orange juice before searching for wayward socks, boots, jeans, chaps, shirts, spurs, and hats. I walk with them down to the barn and make sure everyone is good before waving as they drive off with their dad and the five-horse trailer. Then I stumble back in the house and knock out my first big chore of the day: sitting down with a large glass of cold-brew coffee mixed with a little sweetened condensed milk and finished with a splash of cream. The first sip ensures my survival.
I guess divorce can wait till tomorrow.
Gardening Heartbreak
I never gardened before I married Ladd, but once I moved to the country and was bitten by the bug, I fell madly in love. Once I really found my green thumb, I felt like a redheaded Mother Earth, hauling loamy dirt from the river bottom to mix with the clayey soil at our house and planting zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, peppers, potatoes, and all the herbs God has bestowed upon the earth. I did this partly because I love garden-fresh vegetables, but mostly because I loved staring at my garden and experiencing that self-congratulatory feeling of horticultural accomplishment. Also, it made me feel like a complete stud. Or whatever the female word for “stud” is. (Does such a word even exist?) Still, with gardening always comes a certain measure of heartbreak, and it seems like the measure I was given was a little bigger than others’.
In addition to veggies, I also grew flowers around my house, because flowers give my soul something to live for. I was the only girl in my sorority who wore bright floral Adrienne Vittadini outfits from head to toe; everyone else was rocking sleek Guess jeans and black leather jackets, like normal college girls. When Ladd and I moved to the homestead where we live now, it was almost completely flowerless. So, lest my psyche start to shrivel, I planted zinnias, huge Russian sage, salvia, echinacea, rudbeckia, gaillardia . . . all the beautiful flowers that thrive in Oklahoma’s extreme wind and blistering heat. Oh, and I planted roses. Lots and lots of roses.
