Andrew has had some digestion issues lately. The doctor suggested that we switch him to soy formula for a few days to see if it would help. I took one whiff of the formula and had a major flashback...
The year was 1991. I was 8 years old. This was the first year that we bought and raised holstein calves. The original money for the calves was a gift from my Great-grandfather as a way to help us earn money. Some of the money that we earned was used the next year to purchase a new calf, and the cycle repeated itself in a perpetual fund to be used for college.
Every morning and evening, we were responsible for bottle-feeding our newborn calves. We got up at 6:30 A.M. to feed our calves before school. This required combining powdered calf milk with water in a bottle. As strange as it sounds, Andrew's baby formula smelled exactly like the calf milk (it must have soy components...who knew). I would know that smell anywhere because I raised and fed calves from that year until I graduated from high school.
Those calves were our pets. I specifically remember drawing and designing name tags that were laminated and hung above our calf pens. The calf that stands out most in my mind was that first one. I named him Octavius, but called him Gus for short. In my 8 year old mind, I was pretty proud of the fact that I copied what Cinderella named her little mouse. It was always sad to sell them at the end of the year, but we knew that the next year would bring a whole new set. We not only earned money, but we learned so many life lessons. We learned responsibility, the concept of life and death, and the value of a dollar.
These memories fill my childhood. I look back on them with so much happiness. I'm glad that I was able to reminisce about them over a can of infant soy formula.
