Finding Pigs

Our parents are our first and most important teachers. Our first beliefs are given to us by our parents. Some of these stick with us for a lifetime and some we outgrow. The benefits of honesty and hard work might be a lasting value, while Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy take on a different perspective as we grow up. In addition to what our parents are telling us, as kids we are always trying to figure out for ourselves how things work in the world. Our understanding of where babies come from is just one more of those mysteries to be unraveled.

My childhood was shared with every kind of farm animal known to man, plus an assortment of wild things we drug in from the woods. Growing up on a farm gives one a unique perspective on lots of things. The direct contact with nature; the impact of the weather, being outdoors often, the animals and the life and death relationships between them, shape one’s thinking in a way that is different from those whose formative years are not spent in the country. This holds true for early ideas about how things come into the world as well. There were always baby animals on the farm, with more new babies showing up all the time. My earliest memories of these babies and where they came from were about pigs

My father, who was from the most rural part of Berkley County, had many expressions and ways of describing things that existed no where else in the English language, except in our family. One of those descriptive phrases related to the birth of pigs. Daddy would say, “The black and white sow is about to find pigs.” This phrase takes on real meaning when you understand that the moma sows never “found” pigs in the farrowing house, a barn that was a “maternity ward” for hogs. Instead they would break out of the pen and go down into the woods behind the barn and “find their pigs” in the edge of the swamp. Daddy and Harden, a man that helped us on the farm, would go down in the swamp and bring out the pigs in a big tin wash tub. From my perspective, they were carrying a tub full of squealing babies that the mother had “found” in the swamp. For a time as a young child I believed that all animals, and humans too, found their offspring in the swamp or woods somewhere. Since mother sows found their babies in the swamp, I extrapolated that all creatures must find their kids out there in the woods. What an amazing thing, I thought, that babies were out there in the swamp and the mother was able to find them. I had never found any babies out there.

These ideas didn’t last very long, however, since I would soon witness firsthand the excitement of conception and the miracle of birth. With so many animals around us it was just a matter of time until the mystery became even more complex. The amazement grew when I saw with my own young eyes our dog giving birth. It was a mystery that later came to be understood from a biological standpoint but would always be awe-inspiring. The miracle became even more fantastic when I saw my own children come into the world. The two babies that were "found" in the hospital on those two special days were the greatest finds anyone could ever have.

Circa 2006