NOTE: This is the second in a series of guest posts scheduled to run while I’m away from real life. Ironically, in today’s post, David mentions Milan, Ill. And as long as I’m not dead, that’s exactly where I am right now, immersed in the warmth of friends and family I don’t see often enough. I asked David (the blogger behind both The Marmot in My Head and Sounds like Orange) to write because I believe we’re kindred spirits. Because I believe we both find unique beauty in the mundane. Because David is just very real, very… human. And that’s something that means a lot to me. Because that’s exactly what I want to be. Thank you, David.
…
Have a seat everyone. Get comfortable. We’re going to talk about livestock, pigs, uncles and chess.
Grab a beer or pop from the fridge. Yes, that’s “pop” because, today, location matters. You see, my roots overlap with Matt’s, barely I suppose, but closer than you’d imagine. They overlap in a place where “soda” is for baking and “pop” is for fizzy-drinking. Where? Milan. Matt’s dad ended up in Milan, Ill. My aunt and uncle live just outside of Milan on a farm.
I can assure you that the Milan in Italy and the Milan in Illinois differ. In two hours in Milan, Italy, I did two things: change trains and find an internet cafe. Neither are possible in the Illinois version. True, my actual roots are from a little farther west along the Iowa-Nebraska border, but culturally, they are almost identical.
We’ll start in Elk Horn, Iowa, a town 10 miles off the interstate halfway between Des Moines and Omaha that billed itself as the Danish capital of America. Yup. They have a windmill and a museum to prove it. I don’t remember exactly, but I think I was five years old when my family and I visited, staying at my grandparent’s house on a farm just outside of town. It was a typical farmhouse, seemingly both spacious and cramped all at once. There were toys, too, including that electric train track that always smelled like it was smoldering.
I was bored.
I could go outside, I suppose, but as a “city kid” (anyone living in a place with more than 5,000 people), I wasn’t allowed to go near the farm equipment, the road, the barns, the pastures, the animals. Really, I was allowed on the porch and the driveway. Boring, yes, but the noisy tractors were scary and the weirdly massive pigs were scarier yet.
Oddly, at the other grandparent’s house, where several barns were partly fallen down, a windmill that had stolen part of my dad’s finger when he was a child, “filled in” outhouse pits and tractors that were older than my parents, I was given free reign. Not in Iowa, though.
For whatever reason, my uncle found me, not my brother or sister, but me and invited me along to do chores. He was the tallest in a family where, at 6’4″, I would be the shortest adult male in two generations. First (and last), we went to the pig barn where there were creatures that looked like the Jolly Green Giant’s hot dogs, with surprisingly agile flat pink noises and almost as much hair as in my grandparent’s ears.
A quiet sleeping pig is not that scary, but when food is coming or the mud is just right, they turn into terrifying steam engines randomly bouncing off one another. Worse yet, I’m told, is their behavior around threatened piglets. My uncle, one of the calmest, gentlest people in the world, opened the door to the pen, lured me in and told me to stand quietly just over there near the edge. He poured feed into the trough and the pigs (were they hogs?) surged. They bumped into my uncle. He shoved them back. Then, from off to the side, a piercing squealing noise. One of the piglets had gotten a foot caught in the wire fencing. Sure my uncle could handle that all by himself, but he called me over anyway.
So, I delicately stepped past mud and pig poops, worrying about a pig tsunami, to join him by the fence. While he held the 40 pound piglet in his arms, I worked the wire out from around the pig’s hind leg. Then, once free, my uncle set him down, shutting down the pig air raid siren and letting the piglet scurry beetle-like over to the trough with the rest. I’d still be afraid to step into a pig pen, but I learned that calmness in the face of fear is often all that’s needed for things to work out.
But wait, there’s more. Later that week, my uncle got married. I remember that day because he was getting married on my birthday. At the time, I thought he chose that date just for me. After all, he gave me a spectacular watercolor paint set and unlike my infinitely cuter (and younger) brother and sister, gave me nothing to do at his wedding. I got to just sit and enjoy it. Obviously, it wasn’t for me, but, when you’re six years old, who can tell?
My uncle had a way to be an adult, a real adult, and be with children, treating them not as pests or annoyances, but as real people who, for the moment, are smaller than the rest of the world. Among my favorite memories was him lying down on the floor to teach me how to play chess. I was and still am horrible at it, but there he was at my level, in my world, showing me how my world worked.
I don’t see him much, but that doesn’t keep me from being impressed by him. Later, I don’t know when, I remember him being the one person who could give real advice to my sister. Later still, when my life was a mess, he was the only person I knew who could accept me as an expert at digging holes in life and still offer constructive advice for living better. Most recently, he finished grad school again (a veterinarian in the past and now a public health degree) and takes periodic trips volunteering for agricultural education in Tanzania. He’s not perfect by any means, but he accepts life as it is, lives it as best he can, and leaves the best bits of himself lying around for the benefit of others.
I’m not like him, but I want to be.
Maybe I am and I just can’t tell.
I’ve left bits of me lying around, but sometimes I needed those bits myself.
I’ve botched a marriage, but then again, so has he.
I never did get as tall as he is… but that’s okay, I guess.
I’m tall enough.
Great storytelling, David. I liked that part when you said, “but there he was at my level, in my world, showing me how my world worked.” Your uncle sounds just like my grandma when she was alive. She adroitly shifted from being an adult to being one of us kids. That is, when I was still a kid. Learned a lot from her, and I continue to live out those lessons.
It’s a treasure to know people who can shift levels so well. I’m not sure how he did it so well, but, like with your grandma, I try to live up it every day. Sometimes it works, but even when it doesn’t, it’s still the right kind of goal to pursue.
An amazing mentor. What beautiful lessons you learned from him! “Being calm in the face of fear is often all that’s needed…” That one alone is gold.
I loved your writing in this piece, David. What an awesome guest post!!
Loved it! (Great pick, Matt!!)
🙂
Thanks Mel! I wish I could maintain that calm more easily, but I try … I do try.
You do an amazing job.
So it appears to the outside world, but watch my heart when an unexpected call comes in …. ugh!
This is the kind of storytelling that stays with you long after you have read it. Really enjoyed, thank you 🙂
Right?
How about the part where 6’4″ makes him the family midget?
“We wish to welcome you to Munchkin Land!”
Yeah, family reunions are a bit strange for me with all that looking up. But a hug from my uncle? One of the few that completely wraps me up in it.
Tallest. Family. Ever.
The compensation I get for being the shortest? My hairline isn’t receding like most of my taller relatives. Ha! Less bonked heads and less sunburn!
I’m glad you liked it! The story itself has stuck with me for at least [REDACTED] years — pig, coloring book, and chess — and gets reinterpreted with each new challenge.
Reblogged this on The Marmot in My Head and commented:
Matt, over on Must be This Tall To Ride decided to go on vacation and I got a chance to fill in with a story from my life. It turned out alright, eh? Meanwhile, if you get a chance, Matt is a kind of blog brother living honestly through one of the largest challenges life can throw at you. You’ve gotta check his stuff out, too!
Reblogged this on jothclub.
Thank you, nice guest blog. Very enjoyable story to read, and then at the end, like dessert, I got that final sense of who your uncle is, not perfect, accepting of life, does his best, and tries to “..leave his best bits..” He’s an everyday hero.
Definitely. He’s created a legacy that way, beyond just his own children.
If I’d done that with my life, I could die well, I admire your uncle.
Hi David, nice to meet you! I had an uncle who lived on a pig farm too. When we were little (there were 4 of us) he’d take us out to the ‘big’ barn, sometimes carrying us on his back to avoid the big poops…and set us on the stone footing ledge in the barn and tell us not to move. Then he’d let the big pigs out and you are right, it WAS a pig tsunami! Never thought of it with that term, but it’s the perfect word to use as description for a swarm of pigs running toward supper. I remember them bouncing off of him too. So many memories you provided! Thanks.
PS: I bet you’re more like your uncle than you realize…and congratulations on that fact.
I like the beautiful, calm energy radiating from Davids story. I also believe his uncle is a very inspiring person – at least from what I can see in this post.
Thank you David for this enjoyable read (I agree with Muddletation, by the way).
Thank you Matt for providing the space for it.
Much love,
Steffi
🙂