Don’t Mess with Ahma’s Hoes: A Family Tale

In our family, there are certain unwritten rules passed down through generations. Chief among them: you don't mess with Ahma's hoes.

Ahma, our mother and a retired first-grade teacher, is known for many things – her gardening prowess, her home-cooked lunches, and her legendary Christmas cookies and candies. But perhaps most notably, she's known for her passionate dedication to proper garden tool maintenance.

This story began when a well-meaning 16-year-old farm worker, thinking all the garden tools belonged to my brother Alex, borrowed one of Ahma's hoes for some work at the barn. His cardinal sin wasn't in the borrowing – it was in leaving the hoe there, dirty and abandoned on the ground.

Now, you have to understand: Ahma takes immaculate care of her hoes. Each one has its proper place, and they're always, always cleaned after use. So when she discovered one missing and eventually found it lying in the dirt, she was, to put it mildly, livid.

I'll never forget driving down the road with her in the passenger seat, listening to her impassioned speech about proper hoe maintenance. She was especially frustrated because Alex and others had laughed at her reaction. She couldn't fathom why anyone would find it amusing – after all, these were serious gardening implements!

As she continued her emphatic discourse about clean hoes and proper storage, I couldn't contain myself any longer. Through barely suppressed laughter, I finally said, "Yeah, 'cause my mom don't deal in no dirty hoes."

The double entendre finally hit her, and she burst out laughing too. It's become a running family joke ever since. Even our now-adult children will solemnly warn others: "Do not mess with Ahma's hoes."

Ahma's collection is impressive – she has a variety of hoes for different gardening tasks. Her enthusiasm for these tools knows no bounds. Once, while we were sorting through hand tools, her eyes lit up at a particular find. "OH Kara, look at this!" she exclaimed, immediately hugging the tool to herself. "It's a copperhead hoe!" We ended up spending over $20 for that hoe, and it was worth every penny to see how thrilled she was to add it to her collection.

This devotion to garden tools runs in our blood. My cousin recently shared a story about our great-grandmother, Granny B. When she discovered a snake in her chicken coop, she enlisted the help of Gary Doug and Georgie (then in their 30s) to deal with it. They proudly emerged with the dead snake – but they'd broken her hoe in the process. Granny B was more upset about the broken hoe than she was relieved about the dead snake.

The lesson has been consistent through generations: we do not break hoes in this family. We take care of them. It's part of a larger philosophy: if you take care of your tools, your tools will take care of you. Gardening is serious business in our family, and that means one thing above all else – you do NOT mess with Ahma's hoes.

And yes, we're still running this joke into the ground after all these years, and we're not stopping anytime soon.