An exceedingly common question I get in clinic, especially in the heart of a South Dakota winter, is how to remedy dry skin. And the questions aren’t just in clinic; my own kids, family, friends, everyone seems to have an occasional problem with dry and irritated skin.

It happens every spring. The best laid plans dashed by unpredictable weather, equipment malfunctions, illness, or most likely all three. But really, the truth behind why spring always gets crazy when you are working on a ranch or farm, is that there’s more to do than can be done. Every year, we must go through the charade that our chore list is doable, and every year we discover it is impossible, but that we must do it anyway.

When I was a kid, I spent an inordinate amount of time hunting frogs. We had a variety of local ponds and frogs were plentiful. We didn’t need frogs for anything, but we caught them because catching them was fun. It was not uncommon to return home with a bucket full of frogs. I don’t think I have seen a single frog in local ponds in more than 40 years.

Last week, I brought home three orphan lambs to bottle feed, and this week I was expecting the sheep I brought home last month to begin having babies of their own. My old flock is still at the old place, and won’t start welcoming babies until May, but we’ve been keeping the new little flock at our barn in town as a kind of quarantine (safety first!) but also because they were supposed to start lambing April 11. Since weather can shift from balmy to blizzardy in a matter of hours this time of year, keeping them close seemed like a good idea during their lambing period.

I had a dream that I ran my own Japanese restaurant. Now, I am less Japanese than most people…but that doesn’t mean it would be impossible for me to do so.

It’s human nature to tell stories about the past, and doctors aren’t immune to that impulse. The second year medical students rotating through my clinic have me reflecting on my own years as a fledgling physician, and the changes I’ve seen in my decades of practice.

There is an old joke where a man walks into his doctor’s office and says, “Doc, it hurts every time I do this. What should I do?” To which the doctor replies, “Simple, don’t do that!” While the advice seems trite and maybe even insulting, like most jokes, there is some truth in it. Pain is one of the ways your body tries to protect you from even worse injury. Pain tries to keep you from walking on a sprained ankle or lifting things with a broken arm. In those cases, the advice from the doctor is accurate.

Early last week my husband got a text message. It read: “Does your wife want some bum lambs?” A fellow shepherd and rancher in the midst of lambing was being overrun by triplets and needed to find them homes. My husband read the text aloud to me with raised eyebrows. I paused to consider what that would mean… It’s been exactly 13 years since I brought home Pearl and Theo, my first bottle babies. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I loaded them into a cardboard box in the back of my Subaru station wagon. It was early in my tenure here in South Dakota, back when I still thought living rurally was a temporary adventure. But I’d gone to visit a friend’s lambing barn and with one step inside I felt a subtle shift in my known universe. Something about the bright, fresh smell of straw, the gentle sounds of the ewes talking to their lambs, the warmth of the dusty air felt like home. I didn’t want to leave.

Winter snowfall turns to slush, an easy season is almost done Hard-packed roads will turn to mush and the springtime will have won Baby cows with big brown eyes with more arriving every day Lie in wonderment in grassy fields with moms not far away Perhaps this once the spring will hold…perhaps this once the winds back down Perhaps this once it will unfold…that winter won’t come back around But you know that we’ve been wrong before; stop preparing and let our guards down The clouds will churn and fill with ice, and cold and dark come back around The baby cows with the big brown eyes will feel the sting of the freezing rain And ask the question as they hunker down… “Is life short and full of pain?” But springtime snowfalls after heated days are gone as soon as they began Soon the baby cows rejoice in the warm spring grass again In troubled times we fear the worst as uncertainty and doubt kick in We fear the loss of what we think we have and the consequence of our sin Like the cows, we let darkness fall, and like the cows, we have no say But our souls will warm up with God’s son, and that light never goes away So relish the time you have on earth in the calm with your family and friends The storms of today will surely pass and your warm days will have no end

During our most recent family movie night, we watched one of my favorites: Encanto. At one point in the movie, a character who has been gifted supernatural strength confesses that she fears she will crumble under the weight of all that is expected from her. Although she accomplishes amazing things, it never feels like enough. She never feels like she, herself, is enough.