The Notebook

"Have you seen my little booklet where I write down things I want to remember?" my husband asked first thing this morning.  "See, it looks like one of these," he said, showing me tiny books he had bought at the stationery store with names like Penny for your Thoughts, Bright Ideas, and Stuff to Do.  

I told him I hadn't seen it, and he said he had looked for it yesterday to use in the lesson he was teaching in Sunday School.  He gave up resignedly and in a few minutes came in wearing his denim farm shirt.  "It was in this pocket," he said, "I prayed I would find it, and there it was!" The title was Stuff I'm Likely to Forget.

My spouse has a memory like an elephant, and he doesn't forget much, especially about things that happened a long time ago. He had called me to come and look at a calf that was lying in the grass just outside the corral on our son's farm yesterday.  "I think it's a newborn," Howard said.  Pretty soon, though, it got up and ambled to another spot and lay down in the tall grass.  I could see it wasn't a newborn.

Howard called the owner of the cows that pasture on the property and asked him about it. "Did it have a tag in its ear?" the man asked.  It didn't, then he said, "That calf has a very mean mother.  She wouldn't even let us get near it to tag it.  She is very good at hiding out her calf."  It's a good thing my wanna-be farmer didn't try to "rescue" it, as he had thought about.

My husband was telling this story to our son-in-law on the phone, when I heard him say about a mutual friend of theirs from the past, "I remember when Buck Martin told me a cow knocked him down, then pinned him to the grass.  He looked up to see her standing over him with those long horns and called out to God that she wouldn't hurt him.  Just then she moved away!"

I must admit I  was a little relieved Howard hadn't found the booklet, for it contained reminders of stories he liked to tell. (He related enough of them in class yesterday.) Today is his birthday, and he's had an overwhelming number of Happy Birthday wishes on Facebook, as well as a text message, a voice-mail, and a telephone call.  Everybody loves him, and he's worth it, stories and all! Something I'm not likely to forget!