Sharing a Joke

See this son of mine?

He and I shared a moment recently that I just love.

Rewind to a week and a half ago when I went to my friend's farm to shovel chicken manure into buckets. 

The flies were plentiful. 

The smell was pungent.

The horses and goats gathered round.

Alisa was kind enough to load those 4 buckets of manure into the farm truck and bring them back to my house.

So, there I was, and Isaiah came home right about this point.

He walked out to the garden with me where I grabbed a garden rake and shed my shoes.

Then I proceeded to dump the buckets across the garden. Most of it was either dry or like a dry mud consistency, but there was one wet bucket. Isaiah stood there watching me, and when I dumped that one, a big wet clump came out at the end. Splat.

It stunk.

So there we were, and I'm raking, trying to spread a few places out. I'm also noticing the flies that showed up immediately once the poop was on the dirt. 

And as I'm standing there with Isaiah watching me (and he was kind of grossed out at the smell), for some reason my dad came to mind. He was a farm boy and spent much of his childhood gathering eggs from the chickens (trying to avoid the bull snakes -- my dad hates! snakes), milking cows, tending gardens, hauling hay. All that stuff.

 (My boys planting tomatoes with my dad in his garden 8 years ago.)

Standing there, I could just imagine my dad walking in the back gate at that moment and coming over to see what was going on. I could see him standing there at the edge of the garden, taking in my bare feet, the manure, Isaiah's somewhat grossed out expression. And then I could see amusement on his face and I heard these words in my mind, in a voice that he used to use when he was being goofy:

"There's nothing quite like fresh chicken shit, Liz!"

I thought it so much that I looked over at Isaiah, referenced my dad, and then said it, exactly in that voice, commenting on how amused my dad would be.

And WE LAUGHED out loud.

I can still see Isaiah's face as it dropped in laughter.

He agreed that it was something Poppi would totally say.

(Isaiah and Poppi planting geraniums.)

Dad may as well have been standing there sharing the joke.
He is still with us, and that moment warmed my heart.

(P.S. I've gone by Elizabeth for years, and it's what I prefer. But my dad called me Liz, and this is EXACTLY how my dad would have said this and it's endearing. And makes me laugh.)