This morning Terry asked me:” what are you going to do today?”
“Don’t know, maybe work in my garden for a little while.”
Quiet often this is our early morning conversation, and usually we don’t have big plan for the day, just do something around the house or in the farm.
After I visited my garden, I weeded one orchid patch by the house. Orchid and Bromeliad are planted together, it was hard to weed. My arms got lot of cuts from Bromeliad’s sharp leaf edge, didn’t finish the job.
When I was working, my mind took me back to an old memory.
My dad worked for rubber plantation when I was young, he took care about 5 acres hill side land. He and my mom cleaned the jungle land, planted rubber trees. Weeds grow very fast on tropical land, my parents built a working shack on the field, it was built with bamboo and thatch roof . There are about 5 meters space between two rows of rubber tree, so my family planted corn, upland rice, soy bean, peanut, sorghum on those unused land; planted pumpkin, bean and veges in the valley near the shack, and flowers around the shack. Of course, we kids all helped planting, weeding and harvesting when we were off from school.
I remember the days of harvesting peanuts. Beginning my parents and elder sisters pulled the peanuts from the soil and piled them around my younger sister and me, and my younger sister and I picked peanuts off from the plants. Early mornings were pretty cool ’till around 9 or 10 O’clock when it got hot. My dad would tie an umbrella on a bamboo pole and stick the pole on the ground beside us to gave us good shade since we just sat on one spot. At the end, everybody would pick peanuts with us. We girls were talking, joking, singing, laughing, like a flock of chirping birds. The whole valley was filled with our happy voice and laughter, nobody lived in the valley, so the valley became our private little world.
At that time, not only my dad, but also lots of Chinese men didn’t kiss or hug their children to express their love, or say “I love you” to them. I’m sure lots of them do love their children, and I’m pretty sure my dad loved us too, we girls all understand his love now from lots of his small deeds.
Sometimes field chores could be hard for us, especially for me and younger sister. I cried many times without anybody seeing my tears, but now those memories are priceless. I can find them inside my mind, so warm and fresh, just like yesterday’s life. I’m really happy with my childhood which my parents gave to me, it taught me a lot without me knowing it.
I never thought I would be a farmer before I married, now I’m a coffee farmer. I’m fitting in farmer’s life pretty good, and I’m still learning. The most wonderful thing is that I’m happy to be a coffee farmer.
