teats n honey

       Yesterday after I posted this and sent it to some friends and family, I got to thinking about the word teet.     I realized that it was probably spelled wrong.  In the title of the blog, in the web address, and in the text that I had written.  There is a vague recollection of teet being underlined in red while I was writing.  And I do remember a thought flashing through my mind as I ignored the red.  'I know about teets.  Who ever runs the dictionary on this computer and assigns red to words does not know about teets like I know about teets.  Must be one of those farm words that only farmers really understand.'

         Its true though, right?   How can one truly understand all there is to understand about the teets on a cow's udder, until one has squeezed many of them.  Day after day after day.  There's so much to know. There are short ones and long ones.  Short fat ones and short skinny ones.  Long skinny and long fat.  Many times one udder will have 3 short fat ones and one long one (fat or skinny).  Which direction does the opening point?  When its squeezed does the milk flow directly down into the pail or do I have to make a subtle adjustment in my wrist so the milk doesn't squirt her leg, or my knee?  Sometimes the back two are so close together that my hands don't fit at the same time.  Morgan is like that.  She needs to be milked back in one hand and front in the other.  But the front ones frequently empty out first so then there's a choice to make.  Squish my hands together and rub knuckles in an uncomfortable fashion, or just be patient and milk one teet at a time.  

            Anyway about the word teet.

Eckhart Tolle says somewhere in one of his books, that words are sign posts.  They point to the object or idea they describe, but the word itself is not what it describes.  If a young person learns the word 'honey' before having tasted honey, they do not really know what honey is.  They may spell it correctly on a test in school, but to truly know honey, one must let it drip on their tongue, close their eyes and breathe in as the mouth experiences all there is to experience with honey.  And a guardian of bees may even say that to truly know honey, one must care for a hive all year and then gently, carefully, collect their bounty, filter it, put it in jars, and spread it on some buttered bread. 

 Then, and only then, may one correct the spelling of the word 

teet.