Mom was nervous.  And that usually took a lot.

As she used to tell the story, it had started as a normal day getting settled into her new home on the prairie.  She and Dad had only been married for several weeks and they had been getting settled into their new life together.

They had moved back to the farm that they were taking over from my father’s bachelor uncle.  Into the same little house that he and my great grandfather had built years ago in the near wilderness.  My father had helped to clear the land as a boy.  This was home.

For my mother, it was a grand adventure.  Born and raised in the city, she still felt a connection to the land.  Born and raised in South St. Paul, Minnesota, she new the smell of livestock.  Her uncles lived on the old family homestead along the banks of the Mississippi.  Yet she was a product of the city too.

Her other sisters, already married, had warned her about the “talk” she could expect from her mother-in-law.  The one where she laid down the rules of the family, where she explained how things were going to work, and, they warned, it would be even more difficult for my mother.  Their own mother-in-laws were hundreds of miles away….my mother was moving right down the road from hers, on the family farm and into the community that were not her own.

Mom didn’t want to believe them.  She said that my father’s mother was much too nice for that.

Every day for a week when they were trying to get settled into their home, grandma would be over, helping her air out the house, clean cupboards, and back stuff away.

Then one morning, it happened.  Grandma poured two cups of coffee, sat down at the table, and said, “We need to have a little chat.”

That is when Mom got extremely nervous.

“There are a few things you need to know moving from the city out onto a farm.”  Grandma started.  My Mom thinking she knew what was coming next - and long list of social do’s and don’ts, a list of how not to cross the family.  How to be seen and not heard.

“First,” grandma started, “Don’t drive a tractor.  If he gets you out their once, he will always expect you out there.  You have enough work to do without driving tractor.”

This was not what Mom had expected.

“Second,” grandma continued, “Don’t milk the cows.  If he wants those smelly things around here, let him milk them himself.”

Mom was a bit flabbergasted.

“Finally,” grandma concluded, “Don’t mow the grass.  He can take an hour or two each week and cut his own darn grass.”

Mom sat with her mouth open.  This was not what she expected.  But she took the advice to heart, much to the chagrin of my father.  Mom lived the rest of her life on that same farm, turning that little house into a home for husband and five rambunctious children.  She never drove a tractor.  She never milked a cow.  She never cut the grass.

And what about Mom and Grandma?  They were friends until the very end.  My grandmother calling my mother the daughter she never had and my mother wearing that title like a badge of honor.