Kids, Chores, and a Sense of Purpose

Word is out that the Obama girls will continue making their own beds and doing chores at the White House, just like they did back home in Chicago. Maybe they’ll take turns feeding the family dog and taking their new pet for bathroom breaks on the White House lawn. I hope so. I hope they even have to scoop a little poop.

Kids need outdoor chores. We all do. The only time I didn’t have outdoor chores was when I moved to Santa Fe for a year and a half in 2006. Within a few months, I started volunteering weekly at the Santa Fe Horse Shelter. I loved the sense of purpose that came with pulling on my “chore clothes,” getting in the car, driving out of town and into the high desert, then arriving at the Shelter. Lilly, the bay mare I worked with, greeted me with a nicker and suddenly all was right in my world. Hers too, I like to think. That's my daughter with her in the round pen.

I made it a point to visit with some of the youth exhibitors at Denver’s National Western Stock Show last weekend. “Do you like 4-H?” I asked young rancher Jade as he was waiting to show his glossy black Simmental calf. He nodded and told me that he does chores every morning on the family ranch.

Young Ky, too, has chores. He helps take care of the Tibetan yaks on his family ranch near Elbert, Colorado. “They’re pretty fun,” he told me, petting a cow. “She’s kinda protective,” he said, pointing to the calf next to her. “She’s still nursing.” According to the Grunnien Ranch website, the family got started raising yaks when, “Grandpa and I were driving through the country and he saw some sort of beast standing on the back of a trailer and tossing hay to his friends. Turns out they were YAKS! Grandpa wanted some...” Within a month, the yaks were on the ranch and the family’s journey had begun. In yak circles, Ky might someday be a good enough handler to be called a Yakalero.

When I met Katlin Hornig, an 18-year-old from Alamosa, Colorado, she was holding the reins of two Heston Brabant Belgians. We visited while she was waiting her turn to compete in a driving competition. She told me that the Brabant is the foundation horse for the American Belgian. She’s been driving teams since she was in third grade and plans on attending Colorado State University this fall as a pre-vet student. I was impressed with her confidence around the big horses and was reminded of what it felt like to watch my own daughter drive the old Ford tractor when she was harrowing the fields on our small family ranch in Wyoming.

Chores not only give us a sense of purpose, but when chores involve animals, they also give us a sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves. A child welcomed each morning by the nicker of a horse, or the bawling of a calf, or the eager yipping of a puppy waiting to be fed, is a child grounded in what it means to matter. And matter, as defined by Random House, means to have substance.

Substance, and grounding, are important. Especially for the children of a movie-star President and his First Lady. Maybe, on days like this when the schools are closed, Sasha and Malia will be able to venture outdoors and return with a little dirt on their boots, the kind that grows grass, and flowers, and trees, and character. Hopefully, they won't be "fertilizing" the new White House rugs installed by designer Michael S. Smith. But I hear he likes to mix casual with formal -- fancy furnishings with dog-friendly fabrics.

Which reminds me, I've been wanting to do a blog on public parks and anti-dog ordinances. It won't be pretty.