"No use crying over spilled milk"

As I work on writing the fourth Ada Elaine book I've been reading the tributes and memories written by my mom and her brothers for the Hicken Highlight (a family newsletter).  Tuesday, January 22, 2013, I read several tributes which repeated something that Grandpa Hicken lived and taught his family.  This is from a tribute from Jay Hicken written in 1992:

As I grew up on the farm, I was almost moved to tears when seemingly devastating events occurred such as:

• One of our best cows bloating and dying.
• Mistakenly milking a cow which had been treated for mastitis, thus contaminating a whole tank of milk which could be sold for only a fraction of grade "A" milk.
• Milking the first half of the cows only to find the milk strained, cooled, and run down the drain because we had left the valve open on the end of the milk tank.
• To see big black clouds gather and dump rain on hay that was just ready to bail.

When I was eighteen or nineteen I asked Dad how he managed to cope with these catastrophic problems.  Dad simply said, "I learned early in my farming experience that it didn't pay to waste time worrying about spilt milk, a dead cow, or rained on hay--or anything else that you could do nothing about."  Dad seldom made much fuss over our mistakes, he would usually say, "Get it cleaned up, or call Brown Keeling to pick up the dead cow, etc."  Then he would add, "Try not to let it happen again."

In 1995 Jay wrote another tribute giving more details about the incident with the bloated cows:

       Dad has taught many unforgettable lessons of life.  Among the most useful for me is one that has helped me cope with many of life's circumstances.
       While in my mid-teens, one early spring morning when we went to milk the cows, there were no cows to milk.  They were all in the young alfalfa hay--one dead (a good milk producer) and three or four very bloated.  As we herded the cows home, Dad instructed us to call Brown Keeling to pick up the dead cow. He also suggested that we keep a close watch for any other cows that were distressed by the bloating.
        I felt awful.  We located and repaired the fence.  It took two or three days for me to accept the loss of a very good cow, especially one of the best producers and the mother of  several calves that also became good producers.  
        Some days later, still concerned about our loss, I asked Dad how he learned to handle such a loss. He said, "There are three things I never worry about: a dead cow, spilt milk, and rained on hay...all of which you can do absolutely nothing about."  He added, "Do what you can do to not let it happen again, and don't dwell on it."  
        I've learned that there is very little good comes from making much fuss over things you cannot control or change.

Then I read this memory written by Neil in 1992:
Dad pushed the snow from the city streets in the winter.  The snowplow had been built by Dad, Byron Pierce, and Nephi Molton.  One day the plow hit the railroad track near the Hicken Feed Mill.  The snowplow was wrecked and so was the train track.  I was awestruck by the damage.  He asked me what I would do.  I shrugged my shoulders.  He said, "We will just rebuild it."  And he did.  He told us many times, "No use crying over spilled milk."

Little did I know that soon after reading those three accounts I was about to have my own bloated cow experience.  I was cleaning out my oven Tuesday morning and debated whether or not I needed to wash the two oven racks. I decided that it would be good to wash them while I had them out of the oven so I put them in my laundry room sink and turned on the water.  My laundry room sink is a large sink and takes a long time to fill up. I didn't want to stand around waiting for it to fill up so I squirted in some dish soap then went to make a phone call.  After the phone call, I finished eating lunch then went to the office to work on Ada Elaine.  I typed for more than 30 minutes when I noticed a clicking, tapping sound coming from somewhere.  I thought it might be coming from the little hard drive box which holds all my pictures and writing.  I was worried about my hard drive but didn't know what to do for it.  About that same time I decided to take a break from writing and go in the kitchen to make a phone call.  In the kitchen I heard more strange sounds.  It sounded like the washing machine was doing something different.  I didn't once remember having left on the laundry room faucet until I opened the door to the laundry room and stepped into an inch of water.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  How could I have been so absent-minded?  There wasn't much time to cry over the spilled water because I knew I had to get it cleaned up.  I threw down several towels then realized that it would take a long time to mop up an inch of water.  I called my neighbor who wasn't home but told me I could borrow their wet/dry vacuum and explained where it was.  I trudged over to the neighbors and found the wet/dry vacuum box on the shelf.  I carried it back home thinking that it was super heavy.  When I deposited the box on my porch and opened it to pull out the vacuum all I saw in the box was wood shavings and sawdust.  I dug down into the shavings asking myself why the neighbors would store their vacuum in a bunch of wood chips then I realized that the box didn't contain a vacuum.  At that point I did want to cry.  But with Grandpa Hicken's matter-of-fact counsel at the front of my thoughts I bit my lip and went back into the laundry room determined to get all that water off the floor armed with nearly all the towels in our house.  I was starting to feel that things weren't too bad when I opened the cabinet below the sink and found all my shoes filled with water.  I dumped the water into the sink and set my shoes out to dry on the counter.  By the time my first piano student came I had cleaned up all the water and felt pretty good about my efforts.  After teaching piano I knew I needed to check the basement below the laundry room.  Fortunately, our laundry room is built over an unfinished crawl space instead of the finished rooms in the basement.  Unfortunately, water has a way of seeking the lowest point and the crawl space is about 4 feet higher than the work room where we store toys, sports stuff, dog stuff, and all my husband's tools and fix-it-up projects.  The work room is unfinished but we had laid several carpet fragments to warm up the cold concrete floor.  The minute I stepped into the work room my foot gushed.  Not a good sign.  The water had saturated the carpet scraps we had on the floor of the crawl space as well as about half of the work room.  Still I did not cry.  My 11 year old son saw my distress and took charge.  He was willing to help me.  We moved stuff off the carpet and emptied the crawl space.  We threw away soggy cardboard boxes and salvaged what we could of their contents.  We worked until we had to stop for dinner and pack meeting.  After pack meeting my husband and I finished moving things, pulled up the carpets, and set up the fans.  By 10:00 we were exhausted.  That's when I cried.  I had intended to save 10 minutes by not standing in front of the sink waiting to turn it off when it was full and instead I had spent at least 5 hours cleaning up the mess my carelessness had caused.  Throughout the whole afternoon I kept picturing the difficulties my Grandpa faced with the challenges of farm life:  broken machinery, rain on the hay, irrigation ditches clogged, bloated cows, wasted milk from spills or other mishaps.  In the face of challenges that threatened his livelihood he learned to move on without looking back.  I can learn a lot from Grandpa Hicken.  Today I put the clean oven racks in the oven and have done three loads of laundry (mostly wet, soggy towels) without so much as one tear being shed.