“These are the hands that will work alongside yours as together we build our future.”
Mr. J and I held hands and spoke those words to one another somewhere between our wedding vows and our officiant pronouncing us man and wife before he had even completed the ring exchange portion of our wedding ceremony.
Regardless of the little hiccup (every wedding has at least one - ours had a few) we made those vows to one another and never looked back. Though, at the time I didn’t realize how true those words would be. I thought our little “hand ceremony” would be a sweet gesture where we would hold hands and look deep into each other’s eyes while we made a symbolic promise to work together to build our future.
Little did I know, that cute little addition to our wedding vows would be less symbolic and much more literal. I understood how truly literal it was the first time Mr. J and I pulled a calf solo.
Sometimes nature requires a little assistance, and it usually happens at the most inopportune times. If my memory serves me (which it usually doesn’t) it was nearing the end of last calving season; my in-laws were away for an afternoon and Mr. J and I were looking after the farm on our own. As they say, when the boss is away the cows will calve (or something like that).
Anyways, when we determined a calving cow needed assistance giving birth, we brought her into the barn where we would attempt to help her have the calf by pulling it. For those who have not experienced a calf being pulled, the process begins with attaching small-link chains to the calves front legs while they are in the birth canal.
The rancher will then pull on those chains while the mother cow is contracting in order to help her push the calf out. Pulling a calf may be required for a number of reasons, the most common being that the cow is a heifer, meaning that she has never given birth before, or that the calf is very large.
In many cases, pulling a calf is a much less traumatic option for a cow than a cesarean, which is why it is more commonly used among ranchers. That being said, as Mr. J and I prepared to pull this calf we needed to prepare ourselves first. As I’m sure many people know, birth, though amazing, is very messy.
So much like preparing a surgeon for surgery, I put a plastic gown over Mr. J’s farm attire; I then placed large plastic gloves over his hands that went all the way up to his armpits and put white surgical gloves over top of that. To remain sterile, he could not touch anything but the chains and the calf’s legs during the process, so I was there to hand him whatever he needed, whether it was a particular length of chain, or betadine solution to remain sterile.
As he pulled that calf I realized that day more than ever before, our hands had worked together, alongside one another’s to build our future. Our hands had brought a calf into the world that would not only give us a financial future, but a future of a life on the farm.
When I look back at our wedding day, hand in hand, when we spoke those words to each other I wish I could tell that young bride how true they’d be, and what a true privilege it would be to work alongside that man’s hardworking hands for as long as we both should live.