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“Elvira—Grandma Duck? Donald Duck’s grandmother.”
“Donald Duck? Seriously?” Mina rolls her eyes. “Okay, boomer.”
“Hey! Don’t blame me. I was raised by that one.” I jerk my head over to Grandpa. “His idea of entertaining me was showing me old clips of vintage comics. Anyway, Elvira Duck was a farmer.”
She laughs at me a little. “I suppose I can’t blame you too much for that.”
“You should feel lucky that you were raised by such a young, cool, hip mom like me.”
I expect her to continue giggling, but she just gets quiet and starts maneuvering the hay from the pile and into the truck bed.
“Hey, what’s up?” I inquire.
“It’s nothing,” Mina says in her, ‘I’m a teenager, don’t bother me’ voice.
“Hey, kid. Talk to me.” She still says nothing, so I poke her in her ribs.
“Come on, Mina, I’m just going to keep annoying you until you tell me what’s up. You might as well tell me now and save yourself the pain.”
“Ugh,” Mina says, slumping down until she’s sitting on the truck bed. I don’t like her looking like this, so sad and small. “What you said just reminded me of the time Madison and Chelsea relentlessly picked on me because my mom was the same age as one of their older sisters.”
“What, really?” She’s never mentioned that she got picked on at school because of me.
“Yeah. And they were saying really mean things about you,” Mina says quietly.
I roll my eyes and lean on my pitchfork. “I can imagine. I heard them all back in the day.”
“It didn’t bother you? When people say that stuff, I mean?”
I sigh, straighten up, and get to work myself. It’s a long-healed wound, but I still find myself needing to do something with my hands. “At first, sure,” I tell her. “But then I got used to it. Plus, if anything, I’m proud to have been a teenage mom. Raising a kid when you’re barely an adult yourself takes a lot of strength and guts.”
We’re both quiet while we tackle the task at hand.
“But!” I shout after a second, and she jumps. “That absolutely does not mean that you should ever follow in my footsteps…not in that way, at least. I’m too young to be a grandma.”
“Motherrrrrr!” Mina whines. “We’ve had this talk so many times.”
“I know. I just want to ensure that you don’t make the same mistakes that I did—not that I think you were a mistake.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. I was just a ‘happy accident.’”
“Exactly.” I fork up a huge chunk of hay before saying, “Oh, no! It looks like my little happy accident has a little something—” I pour it all over her.
“Hey!” She shouts. But even as she says it, she’s grabbing her own bundle of hay to dump on me.
We continue fighting like this until Grandpa Bob walks in and stops us.
He clears his throat loudly, and we both freeze.
“Ladies, I’m glad you’re both having fun, but let’s focus on being more productive.”
“Sorry, Grandpa,” we say in unison.
He walks away. We’re both completely caked with the stuff, and when we look at each other, we both burst out laughing.
“I hope I’m not interrupting something,” a familiar deep voice says from behind me.
When I turn around, I see the man from the other day, the one who got angry because he was supposed to buy the farm. Now that he’s no longer hiding in his car, I notice how tall he is and how nicely his shirt fits his muscular chest and arms.
