I was into the third month of my ‘adventure’. ‘Adventure’ was what my friends and family who didn’t quite get why I headed off to foreign lands with very few plans called it. I didn’t think of it as an adventure: I just thought of it as my life. Sometimes it was hard (really hard), sometimes it was lonely, sometimes things didn’t happen as I imagined them but it was always mine – my choices and my decisions. I planned to spend three weeks in Barcelona studying Spanish, writing, and cycling. Instead, I got a little side tracked up north in the mountains around Olot. I saw a posting outside a Hostel for a family that was looking for someone to stay at their house and take care of their animals for a couple weeks and I thought, “Hey, why not? That sounds like something I’d be into.”
The house was outside Santa Pau and made of stone. Fields and mountains surrounded it. The road in front of the house was dirt. Cami and Maurio met me with smiles and ice-cold water. They had a couple dogs, some chickens, and a few cows. The flyer hadn’t said anything about cows. “Have you ever milked a cow before?” Maurio asked. My first reaction was to laugh but I thought that would probably be perceived as rude so I stifled it and sort of half smiled, half snorted instead. “Is that yes or no?” Maurio asked. I stood there for a few more minutes, not saying anything. The words running through my head were fast and furious. There was irony everywhere. “I am the grand daughter of a dairy farmer who was the son of a dairy farmer who was the son of a dairy farmer. I am the grand daughter of an Amish woman.
I am the grand daughter of a wood worker from Ribnica, Slovenia who kept cows and chickens to feed his family. I am the grand daughter of a poor country farm girl from a village called Medvode that wasn’t even a village until the year 2006. I come from a long line of cow milkers. Yes, I have milked a cow before.” All of my ancestors were suddenly behind me, along with everything I always thought I wanted to get away from. I never liked to tell people that I grew up in the country on a farm, that my family didn’t have a lot and we grew our own vegetables (this was before growing rooftop vegetables became trendy) and raised chickens for the eggs.
I left and went to live in the biggest city I could: New York and I hardly looked back. I didn’t ever want to be known as the girl from the country. Ever. I’d almost forgotten that that was where I came from, that I did know how to milk a cow. My ancestors moved closer and suddenly I felt a little stronger and a little taller and a little more…grounded. “Yes.” I finally said, “Yes, I know how to milk a cow.”
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