I Love New Mexico

“If life was any better, I’d have to be two people.” Those are the words I heard every day of my life from my Dad. I heard him say that when I was four years old and we had moved to a tiny house in Logan, New Mexico where he planned to make a living as a dryland farmer. I heard them again when I was thirteen and the bank was taking the farm and he and my mom were going to have to learn a new trade running a café/truck stop. “We’ve hardly ever even been in a café to eat, Kenneth,” my mother said, “so who do we think we are that we can RUN one?”

He said it when I was a headstrong senior in high school, spending my Saturday nights in a cove out at the lake, drinking beer and driving fast, when I was a pregnant, unmarried college student, when I got my second and third divorces. Even when I was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. Every day of his life, my dad spoke the words that told the rest of the world that he couldn’t believe his good fortune, that his life was full and blessed and happy. “If life was any better, I’d have to be two people.”

Words matter. I didn’t always know how much. In the beginning I assumed that everyone had a Kenneth Terry in their life, someone who affirmed every single day what they knew in their heart. There were hundreds of days in his life when his outward circumstances didn’t look like what he was expressing, but that didn’t’ keep him from saying it.

There were days on the farm when it didn’t rain. There were days when it rained too much and washed everything out. There were years when the bank wanted what we didn’t have – money to pay our farm debt. There were years when he farmed during the day and graded roads in Harding County to buy our Christmas presents. There was another year when he sold his hunting rifle to buy Christmas.

There was a visit from the Harding County Sheriff one time. After he chained our old Studebaker to his pickup and drove off, I asked Dad what he was doing with our car. “Aw, don’t worry. It didn’t run anyway. And now the farm taxes are paid. How nice of him to take it off our hands.”

There was a collision when I was in the fifth grade, where our new (to us) Ford was slammed on the right side by someone running a red light. We were on a very rare vacation – my Dad sold memberships in four states for the National Farmer’s Organization to make ends meet, so he had been invited to attend their conference, for free of course. While Mom waited with the Dallas police, she sent my cousin Susie and me to find Dad at the NFO gathering in a hotel across the street. We were breathless with shock and fear and Susie said, “Is your Dad going to yell at your mom?”

When we found him and told him about the wreck, he asked if anyone was hurt, and when we reassured him that no, everyone was okay, he started smiling and whistling, taking our hands and leading us back out to the street. He never got upset, he never stopped smiling. He visited with the cops like they were old friends. Later Susie asked him why he seemed so happy. “Well, all my girls were alright. If life was any better, I’d have to be two people.”

There were deaths and losses and heartbreak. My parents are both the youngest of ten children and they’re now the only remaining siblings. In a tight knit family like mine, that equals a lot of sitting next to hospital beds. A lot of funerals.

For almost three decades, he and my mom were voluntary EMTs and firefighters. He’d come home from an overnight haul to Tucumcari and then a transport to Albuquerque and still stay, “If life was any better, I’d have to be two people.”

It was a gift to grow up with those consistent words of gratitude. Today at 87 (88 next month, a month in which he’ll also celebrate the 70th anniversary of his marriage to Mom), Dad continues to use this language, along with words of praise about the accomplishments of me and my three siblings, his eight grandchildren, and his eleven great grandchildren. He tells my mom she’s beautiful or smart or perfect every single day. He expresses his gratitude. He makes a list every morning, and in the middle of the list it says, “Kiss Betty” or “Tell Betty how perfect she is,” as though he needs to remind himself to express this to my mom. And by example he taught me to do the same.

At some point in my adult life, I started carrying a small spiral notepad in my purse where I made a daily list of what I cherished most along with what I needed to accomplish that day. What I didn’t know was that this practice would change my life when I was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. I’m finishing a book about how gratitude and my support system saved my life then. Parts of this post are in that book.

Gratitude can save our lives right now. So can staying home and staying safe, but knowing what matters most is both a necessity and a gift.

It’s a good day in New Mexico. If life was any better, I’d have to be two people.