I Got Your Goat

It has always made me uncomfortable - this gated property in the valley.  Ominous somehow in it's silent vigil by the railway track.  But nature mocks my misgivings, sun shining warm and welcome against the chipped red barn wood - this barn in which people obviously make their lives - and he walks past the No Trespassing and approaches the haunt.

"Hello?" he hollers.  "Hello?"

It's only a rooster that answers him.

I'm waiting at the road with the children.  And a goat. 

I had seen her as we passed the tracks, head bent down at a fresh spring shoot.  "What is that?" I'd asked.  And her head had popped up and I thought at first she was a sheep but she trotted along the path right up to us, rope around her neck and bleating out a sorry, 'Haaaaallllpppp Meeeeeee, I'm looooooost.'  (Yes, I speak goat - doesn't every body 'round here?)

"Hello?" He's still hollering, round behind the barn and then back out to us again.  He shrugs.  Nobody home.  "There's a bunch of pens and a shed full of feed and old bagels..."

We resume our walk and she obediently joins our family like a leashed pet.

"Can we keep it?" Zander asks.  "Please???"

A shiny white truck crests the far hill pulling a red trailer.  Two men in the front are pointing and waving and when they slow we ask, "is this your goat?"

But, of course it is.  And they point back to the trailer where we see the head of an alpaca and some sheep hunkered down in the depression of their quickly lost freedom.  Their English isn't pristine by any means but they say it over and over, "Thank you, thank you."

A tiny Vietnamese woman climbs from the back seat, she nods her head at us and smiles as I hand her the rope and we watch our new friend walk away to the gated property.

"Why couldn't we keep it???" Zander asks.

We continue on our walk.  The children are collecting beer bottles for spending money and we linger around the stream because there seems to be a few among the long grass.

When we finally turn for home and walk past the red barn nothing has changed.  There is no movement.  No face in the upper window.  No sign of life but the motion of the wind in the trees.  Like it never happened.

We begin the climb up the hill and then we hear it - one long bleated note to mark our farewell... 'Thaaaank Yooooooou!'


(This was not my first goat experience - that's me on the left - back in the day when my dad decided to try his hand at some goat raising.)

Then Came The Dark

We are made for sun.  We are bent for light.  And yet, roots of history dig us deep into this Canadian soil and we wouldn't dream of leaving for more than a heartbeat.  The storm rocks our foundation and shudders our walls like a haunting and we sleep like babes through the first assault and wake to...silence.  No hum of the circulation fan, no buzz of a light bulb, no vibration of the deep freeze or drone of the refrigerator.  Everything looks the same.  But everything is different.

Outside, ice lays her weighted head on winter-weakened boughs and sudden cracks burst upon the stillness as branches give way to this mocking seasonal oppression and fall to litter the lawn - wooden bodies martyred in their search for spring.  Nature is grey.  Chill seeps into our bones.  I build up the fire and feed it logs.  I feed it circulars.  I feed it Walmart and Home Hardware and M&M Meats.  I find my largest pot and brown ground beef over the fire and I am a pioneer.

"Ice Storm Chili," I yell and the children come.  We eat from paper cups left over from a birthday party.  Because we can't do the dishes.  Because water has never been so precious.  Because you don't know what you've got until it's gone.

The bathroom door must remain closed.

Night comes so early.  Candles burn so low, wax dripping over the lip of the liquor bottle.  Darkness is total.  This is country dark.  There is no perforating light from a passing car.  There is no soft red glow from the clock radio.  There is no time.

Her voice calls out in the darkness, heavy with sleep and fear and the stumbling over the toys she didn't put away.  I throw my feet over the edge of the bed and find the carpet, chill seeping through from the cold floor beneath.  My eyes are wide but the blackness is thick and ink and we are all blind and we are all invisible.  I feel my way through the darkness and my hand finally lands on her warm head and she is 
trembling and has always slept with a night light and this reality around her defines her fear.

She hides with me beneath the quilt and this is somehow safe and good and this darkness is no different than eyes closed in sleep and she falls into it quickly, her warm little body tucked up against me.

Minutes? Hours? Sometime later she stirs and moans and, "Mommy, I think I'm going to puke..." And I'm jerked awake and struggling to strike a match in the blackness and light the candle at the moment she lets loose upon sheets for which I have no means to clean and I want to cry.

Morning takes longer to come than any other morning before and all I want is to shower.  Ice falling off the roof sounds like an earthquake and the boys have eaten all the cereal and the bread box is empty.  We eat canned pasta cold and feed the fire logs and Foodland and Shoppers Drugmart and pray for the lights to come on.

We play Uno.  We roast hotdogs.  I read a whole book.  We smell like cabin fever.  Keep The Bathroom Door Closed!!!  My cell phone might only last another hour...

It is nearly night again when a familiar hum breezes through our house and I throw down the second book I'd just started and run to the bathroom - hallway light fluttering to glorious beaming above me like a halo of rescue - and I set the bathtub to fill (just in case this is not but a tease) and I flush the toilet - Oh, HALLELUJAH! Back in the kitchen I fill the kettle and bounce with the brilliant need to hold a hot cup of tea in my hands and I cook us a real meal with meat defrosted after two days in a disfunctional freezer.

And then the shower.  The glorious, wonderful, steaming shower.  And sheets in the washer and hands lost in hot dishwater and nightlights and charging the phone and the computer.  And...And...And...

We are so spoiled.  Ruined by the pleasures of modernism.  Is a lamp not beautiful, cutting down the darkness with a comforting glow?  Here I am with arms wide open - ruin me!

I Don't Raise Them Weird - They Do That All On Their Own

He teeters on the precipice of a preteen nightmare, stuck in this tango of child and mini-man and I find myself relishing the moments he is all child: wild, ridiculous, unreined, glorious child.  Like this:

He holds up the baggie, proud like it's full of something spectacular - like gold he panned by his own sweat, or moon rocks found in the south field, or a minecraft cheat code that turns simulated water into simulated jello.

"Today we learned how to extract banana DNA!" Something about mushing and blending and salt and dish soap and rubbing alcohol.  "I wanted to bring mine home to show you...we already got the DNA out of it but it just looks cool."

What it really looks like is what a body would look like if you sealed it up in plastic and left it to decompose down to soup.  Rank, brown, little-bits-floating-around, if-you-drank-it-you'd-die soup.

"That's gross, Zander.  You can't keep that.  It'll smell up the whole house."

"But I want it!  His name is Steve!  I have named him Steve. You can't throw him out."

"I'm sure Steve's feelings won't be hurt."

"Steve is a person too, you know!  Don't you have a heart???"

And poor Steve lays on the table all DNA-less and soupy and the whole thing is just ridiculous.

"Well then can I make a Stevesicle? Can I put him in the freezer?  Can I freeze him?  And then I'll bury him in the garden and we'll have a funeral and everything."

Ridiculous.  But loveable.

Stay out of my freezer.  There's a banana cadaver in there.

She Will Always Be My Baby

The house waits in darkness while I'm cast in the glow of the Wal-Mart lamp, gore-deep in a literary gem (if zombie fiction can be called 'gem') and I hear her plodding gait against the carpeted stairs, not unlike the main character wooing me towards bedtime.  Her feet shuffle heavy - all bent down with the weight of the world on those wee four year shoulders, breathing hard like a chain-gang captive with her heart on the sleeve of a bright orange jump suit. 

She comes right to me.  Trying to keep her heart pieces together.  Trying.  Trying.  Failing. 

I reach out for her and brush sleep hair back from her face.  "What's wrong, baby? You can't sleep?"

She takes a breath that exerts her whole body - shudders through like pain - and a huge tear leaks down her cheek, eyes shining like the moon and lip trembling furious.  "I dust...I dust...I'm dust going to miss you when I'm at stool to-mow-woah." And it all lets loose - this torrent of momma-need, salty and broken, and I gather her up and kiss her tears and band-aid her heart with my momma-love and take her back to bed where she takes not but a moment to fall back to sleep.