farm life

Most weekdays, I cook dinner.

There are exceptions, of course. Some nights Stouffer’s grandma’s rice and chicken comes out of the freezer because, honestly, it’s delicious. Sometimes Pizza Hut or Jimmy John’s gets picked up. Not every evening needs to end with me standing in the kitchen pretending I have unlimited time and energy.

But most Monday through Friday evenings, I cook.

And because apparently cooking dinner wasn’t enough, I also make a menu for the week.

There is actually a surprising amount that goes into deciding what goes on it. I look at the weather, the farm chores, what the kids have going on with school and gymnastics, and how much running around we are going to be doing. A meal that sounds perfectly reasonable on Sunday can suddenly seem like a terrible idea when I realize Tuesday is going to be one of those days.

I also try to make at least one new recipe every week.

That one is always a bit of a gamble. Sometimes we find something that everyone likes and it gets added to the rotation. Other times, we discover that the recipe sounded considerably better on paper.

Those are the meals that get promoted to Bowl of Sadness.

A Bowl of Sadness is not made again.

We don’t revisit it. We don’t convince ourselves that maybe we just did something wrong. We eat it, acknowledge the mistake, and quietly move on with our lives.

Thankfully, there are more successes than Bowls of Sadness.

And then there are the menus themselves.

I like making them, but I apparently cannot make a normal one. I have to give the food ridiculous descriptions, usually with far more drama than the meal deserves. It has become one of those little things I do for the family, and now they expect to see what nonsense I have come up with for the week.

This week’s menu is a pretty good example.

I am already thinking about next week’s.

I’m considering going medieval.

I don’t entirely know what that means yet, but I feel like I have already committed to the idea. There may be feasts. There may be peasants. There will almost certainly be an unnecessarily dramatic description of whatever pork happens to be on the menu.

And honestly, I kind of love that this has become a thing.

Dinner is still just dinner. Some nights it is something I have made a hundred times, some nights it is a new recipe that turns out to be wonderful, and every once in a while it is a Bowl of Sadness that will never see the kitchen again.

But somewhere between the farm chores, the weather, the kids’ schedules, and figuring out what I can realistically make that week, I get to put a little bit of my personality on the refrigerator.

Even if that personality apparently involves declaring a ham sandwich to be a deceased pig.

I was setting bowls down for the cats, just moving through one of those slow, slightly off days that come after being sick. Not bad enough to stop everything, just enough to make it all feel a little distant, like I was a step behind my own life.

They circled my legs, impatient and steady, completely present in a way I wasn’t.

I glanced out the garage door and there it was.

A rainbow stretched wide across the sky like it had been waiting for someone to notice.

And I did what I always do. I stopped.

Because I am the kind of person who chases these things. The sky, the storms, the quiet moments most people pass by. I have stood in fields for stars, driven back roads for light, waited at the edge of days just to catch something fleeting before it disappears.

That part of me hasn’t gone anywhere.

Even sick, even tired, even a little disconnected, I still feel it. That pull. That instinct to look, to notice, to hold onto something beautiful for just a second longer.

I finished setting the bowls down faster than I meant to and went inside.

“Hey, come look.”

She’s four, so she ran like it mattered. Like wonder is something you have to meet halfway or you’ll miss it.

Her hands pressed against the window, her whole face lighting up in a way that felt familiar.

“A rainbow! Aunt Kelly, it’s a rainbow!”

And then, like it was the most obvious truth in the world,
“There’s a pot of gold at the end.”

And I smiled, because I understood her more than she realized.

Not the gold.
But the chase.

Because that’s what it is.

Not just seeing something beautiful, but believing there is something worth moving toward because of it.

I don’t believe there is a literal pot of gold waiting at the end of a rainbow.

But I do believe in standing in the cold for stars.
In chasing storms across open land.
In pulling over on gravel roads because the sky decided to become something more for a few minutes.

I believe in going after wonder like it might slip through your fingers if you don’t.

Standing there, still not fully myself, still carrying that quiet weight of the last few days, I realized something.

Wonder didn’t feel smaller.

It just felt a little further away in that moment.

But it was still mine.

Still there in the way I stopped.
Still there in the way I looked.
Still there in the part of me that will always turn toward the sky.

She saw a pot of gold waiting.

I saw something just as real.

A reason to keep chasing.

So remember to follow it.
Not just to notice the beauty, but to move toward it.
To step outside, to look longer, to go a little further than you need to.

Because wonder isn’t something you either have or lose.

It is something you choose, again and again, every time you decide the sky is worth looking at.

The Stars Take Note

What’s for Dinner?

The Sky Is Still Worth It