My brother Pat raised a pig for 4-H. He named her Petunia. Within a year she went from pink little piglet to grown-up sow with a bunch of pink piglets of her own.
I wanted to raise a pig too. I wanted to show a pig at the fair.
Dad said, “That’s not for girls.”
He liked me to be outside with him. Why wouldn’t he want me to have a pig?
I knew better than to look to Mom for help or explanation. In third grade, I’d come home from school full of the news that I’d beaten a boy at arm wrestling. I ran off the bus, through the gate, up the sidewalk and the three steps to our porch. I couldn’t wait to tell her. I thought she’d be proud too. She always pointed out my strong shoulders and arms.
She was in the kitchen and I burst out my news. Her eyes went big. She moved in toward me, already shaking her head. “Oh no,” she said. Her voice was fierce. “That’s not ladylike. Girls are supposed to let the boys win. Make them feel strong. Otherwise they won’t like you.”
I’d always felt close to her when she taught us things about being a lady, how to sit with our ankles crossed and our hands folded in our laps, how to say please and thank you and always offer to help with the dishes when we were guests, how to squat, not bend, when wearing a dress. But this didn’t make any sense. To pretend would be a lie. Wasn’t being strong part of being a lady too?
Dad didn’t give us girls any lessons about livestock. What little I knew came from listening and watching. Even then, much of it remained a mystery to me. What kind of cows we had or when to breed or vaccinate, the feed to give an animal, types of wheat and planting cycles, horses and bits and bridles, these were lessons Dad gave to my brothers. They had outside chores meant for boys and men.
We girls were taught to do the inside chores: dishes and laundry, toilets and floors, dinners and vacuuming. The women things. We girls could also ride horses whenever we wanted. We watched the annual cattle brandings, collected eggs, fed scraps to the chickens. Anything outside was our choice—as long as we didn’t get in the way.
One cold spring a mare got into trouble giving birth. The colt was breech. Dad called Granddad, and he came out with a man who knew horses. They all went to the barn, my brothers too. I bundled up and followed them.
The colt wouldn’t come any farther out of the mare than one hoof and a stick leg. The man from town had his arm up inside her all the way to his shoulder, trying to turn the colt. The mare’s eyes were wide. Her chest rose and fell as her nostrils flared. Other than that, she was still. I wanted to go to her and put my hand on her muzzle, to stroke her neck. To whisper, “It’s okay, It’s okay.”
Granddad must’ve caught whatever movement I’d made. “She shouldn’t be here,” he said. Cold and hard. “Not a place for a girl.”
Dad looked at me. I already had my mouth open with reasons I should be allowed. “She can be here,” Dad said. Granddad shook his head and the men went back to work on the horse. I stayed on that top rail with a new kind of love for Dad, him speaking up for me against his own father. Raising pigs and planting wheat weren’t jobs for a girl. But where birth and death were, I could be witness.