Gravel with the Kids
I had sixty tons of gravel brought to my home in two dump truck loads. There is so much mud around my place that sixty tons probably won’t be enough. The dump trucks left the gravel in two big piles. And they were big piles, especially when you stand in front of one of them with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. Levan, where I live, is a small country town where everyone seems to know how to take care of themselves. The people have big pickups and trucks, trailers and tractors, front loaders and backhoes—everyone, that is, except me. I have a shovel and a wheelbarrow.
I know that most men in town would have borrowed a front loader of some type from a neighbor and made short work of the gravel. My problem was that I didn’t know anyone with a front loader and I didn’t want to go begging around. Instead I thought I would just dig in with a shovel and wheelbarrow and see what I could do. It ends up you can do a lot with a shovel and wheelbarrow—it just takes more time.
Some may see the extra time to get the job done as a drawback big enough to go begging around for a front loader. If I had a deadline to meet I might see it that way also, but I didn’t. And as it turns out, the extra time it took me to get the job done was well spent. I have eight children. One of them is a teenage boy just perfect for helping on a job like this. I asked Rory, my 15-year-old, if he would come out and help. He wasn't the picture of enthusiasm, but he agreed to help. I didn’t have any idea how the job would go. I just thought we would work for two hours and see how far we get.
Clorinda, my nine-year-old, came running out of her own accord. She wanted to help and took the rake and spread the gravel I brought in the wheelbarrow. She enjoyed being out with us and listened to our talk and contributed to the conversation now and again. I didn't know how long she would last, but I would let her help while she was able and willing. Jory, my five-year-old son, came running out too. Short of beating him there was no way I could have stopped him from helping in his own fashion. He came to the job with all the enthusiasm in the world. He grabbed a plastic shovel at first and tried to take individual scoopfuls to where Clorinda was with the rake. He eventually found his Tonka Toy dump truck and would fill up the bed and push it over to the dumping area. Finally he found a shovel with a broken handle and helped Rory and I fill the wheelbarrow. His energy and enthusiasm was inspiring. He worked the entire two hours. It was quite a stretch for his attention span.
Rory was a real pleasure to work with. He is a teenager, just on the edge of getting his driver’s license, whose world is getting larger than the one his Dad used to fill. Lucky for me he is still willing to talk to his Dad at times and that is what he did the entire two hours we worked together. We would fill the wheelbarrow scoop by scoop, each of us in our own rhythm, and he would be telling me about his life. Then, when the barrow was full and I wheel it to the dumping spot Rory would put his shovel down too and walk with me so that he could keep talking to me. I almost held my breath for fear of scaring him away. What a pleasant experience that was for me. The blisters on my hands and the ache in my back weren’t troublesome to me—I recognized them as a by-product of a wonderful activity that put me in a situation where communication with my children, especially one of my teenage children, happened naturally and beautifully.
Across the street a young construction contractor was building his own house. While I was shoveling gravel and wheeling the wheelbarrow he was driving a front loader around pushing the earth around the foundation of his home. I suppose I could have approached him about how much it he would charge to help me spread my gravel. It would have taken all of 20 minutes to get the job done with that machine instead of the many hours it was going to take me with a shovel. But the truth is that I was actually afraid he was going to come over and offer to help. I was afraid because I would have had a hard time turning him down without seeming crazy and his help would have robbed me the wonderful time I was having with my kids—that wonderful kind of time that you can only have when it happens unplanned. He didn’t come offer to help and even towards the end of the job when I was exhausted I wasn’t sorry. My kids were still there and still talking at the end. It was the sweetest hard work I had ever done.
posted by PapaT @ 11:18 AM
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