The Bull Who Taught Me Patience

At eighty-two, I find myself running—well, walking briskly—to the back porch every morning, just as Papa did before his legs gave out. The old leather chair waits there, worn smooth by decades of settling in, and I trace my palm along its armrest, feeling the impressions of time like fingerprints in soft clay.

The friend who gifted me this chair, old Clarence, passed last spring. We'd known each other since the drought of '52, when we were just boys worrying whether the crops would survive. But the real story, the one that still makes me shake my head and smile, concerns the bull.

Old Bessie—that was the bull's name, don't ask me why—had a temperament as stormy as summer weather. Papa said she'd been abused before we got her, mistrustful of everyone. For weeks, she'd charge the fence whenever anyone approached, horns lowered like she meant business.

"You've got to win her trust," Papa told me, though I was just twelve and petrified. "Can't force it. Some things take time, like growing corn or building character."

So I began sitting outside her pen, day after day, just being present. Sometimes I read aloud from the Bible. Sometimes I simply existed. Slowly, cautiously, Bessie began approaching the fence. First just watching, then eventually allowing me to feed her sugar cubes through the boards.

The morning she finally let me touch her velvet nose, tears streamed down my face. Papa watched from the porch, nodding like he'd taught me something far more important than farming.

Now, as my own granddaughter watches me from the kitchen window, I understand what Papa knew all along. Patience isn't just about waiting—it's about believing that gentle persistence matters more than force. In a world that's always running, racing, rushing toward what's next, sometimes the bravest thing you can do is stand still and wait.

The old bull lived sixteen years after that, gentle as a kitten. And every morning, as the sun rises over these same fields, I remember: some of the best things in life—friendship, trust, love—arrive not on our schedule, but in their own sweet time.