A Moment in the Ring

Will I have a long, sappy post every show season now? Maybe!  We are in my oldest child's last few years of school, so these moments get more and more precious as we go.

I watched her through the screen of my phone (while videoing) and with my own eyes, simultaneously as almost in slow motion the judge stretched his hand out to her as his choice for grand champion swine.  Keep in mind, this is just our local show and doesn't count for much in the whole scheme of things besides a cool monogrammed vest and bragging rites.  But, we have never won grand champion anything!  Oh, that grin!  She turned to no one in particular and the grin she had was not the one that usually belongs to my 16 and a half year old daughter who almost 20 people that day told me didn't recognize her due to the fact that she just looks so grown up now.  

No, that was the grin of my 9 year old freckled faced girl, holding a lead rope to a calf big enough to drag her around the ring.  All the feminine, teenage, miss-america-esque  grace that she uses to artfully maneuver pigs around an arena drained right from her body as she - for just the briefest of moments - let her pig walk ahead as her shoulders relaxed and she just relished the fact that she'd won it all.

Sissy with her second calf. Winter, 2010 (10 years old)

So many in the audience don't know.  They don't know this is her 8th local show and we usually end up towards the back of the placings there.  (We have some pretty good competition in our little town!) They haven't watched her get up in the mornings and work every evening since she was 8 years old. They haven't seen that for this one magnificent moment there are a hundred times she's had to hide her discouragement in a ring.  They haven't seen the rope burn on her hands from trying to hang on to that 1,300 pound calf we just couldn't ever really break, the ice she has broken in the freezing cold mornings, the times she's given up doing normal kid stuff because she has animals to take care of, the tears she has cried over a pig that got hurt.  This pig in particular.  This pig we thought probably wouldn't even make it because it hurt its leg right after we got it this fall.  They don't know she has walked and fed another pig all Fall and Winter long that we can't even show because it had health issues and won't make weight at our County and Regional shows.  

Sissy with her very first calf in the Spring of 2009 (8 years old)

This moment was a culmination of so many other moments and it was over in a flash.  Somehow, though, this time in the ring where she won breed champion and went on to win grand was enough.  It was over so quickly but it will stay with all of us forever and it is enough to make us all go back to the barn and keep going.  For those of us who have been around since she was just a little girl, it was a tearful and proud moment we absolutely relished in.  She knows as well as we all do, it may not ever happen again.  And as we watched that almost woman turn around and grin, we all saw more than just that moment - we saw all the years leading up to it.  We saw the tears, sweat, hope, disappointment, hard work, and grit it has taken to stay with this thing we call livestock showing.  

And, somehow we've loved every moment in the ring.     

"The hard-working farmer ought to be the first to receive his share of the crops." -2 Timothy 2:6

Sissy winning Grand with her cross at local - Feb, 2017

(Originally posted 2/20/2017)