He’s Strong and Capable…
No wonder “She Thinks (His) Tractor’s Sexy!”
Country singer Kenny Chesney was on the radio a while back, singing She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy. It’s happy, cheeky, and so audacious it always makes me laugh.
Listening, I thought about my husband on his tractor, “chugging down the road,” and his early season “farmer’s tan.”
That’s when it hit me like a brick. Heaven help me, I do think his tractor’s sexy! Well, maybe not the tractor itself, but certainly my husband as he wields it and so many other big, powerful tools on projects around our property.
Back up. My professional life revolves around PhDs and bioengineering. The people I talk with during my 9 to 5 discuss things like cell and gene therapy and how, specifically, Wnt ligands help form the blood-brain barrier, and how that barrier is implicated in diseases of the central nervous system. Yes, they’re brilliant. Are they sexy? I never really considered it, as that’s in the eye of the beholder.
With that in mind, my realization that “I think his tractor’s sexy” needed a bit of unpacking.
The tractor is just a symbol, I decided after some thought, of practical competence and a can-do attitude. I admire that. (Or, maybe the tractor symbolizes raw masculinity. I’ll mull over that alternative later. Privately.)
I’d like to say practical capability goes part and parcel with country living, but that’s only partially true. Competence is based in the willingness to try, with a strong dose of resilience and repetition. Capability starts with a mindset, and it’s found everywhere people decide to challenge themselves and tackle something beyond their ordinary experiences.
For us former suburbanites, country living merely exposes us to situations we wouldn’t have experienced in our former lives, governed as they were by homeowners’ associations and limited space. Cougar encounters and cattle escapes weren’t the stuff of life back in the ‘burbs, but they do make good stories!
And sometimes, tackling projects ourselves is the only way to get something done on time and on budget.
Midwestern and New England winters have snow days. Here in the Pacific Northwest, Spring comes with sun days, and we don’t waste them indoors if we can help it. And then, when we begin seeing the sun regularly, it’s fishing season, followed by hunting season, ya’ know? That means most deadlines, outside of emergencies, are flexible (at least to many contractors). Is it like that everywhere? I really don’t know…
So yes, I think his tractor’s sexy. When I see Randy on it, chugging down the road with a huge bale of hay weighting down the front forks, I’m reminded that my husband, the son of an Apollo-era rocket scientist, is willing to get his hands dirty and do the hard, messy work to turn our property into what we dream of. If he doesn’t get it right the first time, that’s okay. He’ll figure it out – thank you, YouTube! – and try again. His brothers, even without tractors, are like that, too.
Practical capability is important to me, and to lots of other wives and mothers, regardless where we live.
Be very clear: I’m not saying the PhDs I interview aren’t capable. They truly are brilliant, but usually in a different way. To untangle the mysteries of Alzheimer’s disease or the obesity epidemic, they’d be my first call.
To deliver hay to cattle in a rainstorm and keep the road from washing out afterward, I’ll count on my husband and his tractor.
Happy Fathers’ Day, Honey!
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I think my wife is sexy too!