Friday, April 11, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
This was Mikey about a year and a half ago...
Me: Brush your teeth.
He: "NO!" (he seems, against all possible logic, surprised)
Me: Yes.
He: No.
Me: Yes!
He: No!
Me: yes (feeling stupid)
He: No (feeling in control)
Me: (thinking to regain the upper hand) Well then, the next time you want something from me, the answer will be no. (I am so the mama here.)
Pause.
He: Can I brush my teeth?
He: "NO!" (he seems, against all possible logic, surprised)
Me: Yes.
He: No.
Me: Yes!
He: No!
Me: yes (feeling stupid)
He: No (feeling in control)
Me: (thinking to regain the upper hand) Well then, the next time you want something from me, the answer will be no. (I am so the mama here.)
Pause.
He: Can I brush my teeth?
Slow Transformation of a Typical Neighborhood Dweller
We'll start with three sheep. And a donkey. I need the donkey because in Vermont, sheep are dead in no time without some kind of guardian. He's a guardian donkey. So what if I live in a typical neighborhood with one tiny acre and shrubbery that needs my care rather than caring for me (you know, like fruit trees, even maple trees, would)? It's time to slow down. Some doppleganger got hold of me and now it seems like I'm living somebody else's life, not mine. I thought I owned all this stuff--ha! the big joke is, the stuff owns me!
Remember that time when you were a kid and you heard the grownups talking about furnaces? And you thought, "That is SO boring that there is NO WAY I will sound like that when I'm a grownup!" Well, now I talk about furnaces! and septic tanks! and water heaters! I spend most of my waking hours thinking about things that are boring beyond belief and even quite unpleasant. What happened to joy? I mean, you get to the end of your life, you're dying, and you think back and you wonder, "Why didn't I....?" What's the blank for you? The blank for me is "...find a way to be happy?" I live in the richest country in the world, my children are fed and cared for and have access to (what used to be) excellent medical care, and I burn out my best energy wondering how to get most quickly from the school to the grocery store to the first time-anchored obligation of the day. I'm saying no! to the world. NO! Where is happiness? My best energy, my best intelligence, my best social skills and love I am now going to spend in an effort to slow down, to taste each moment, to savor and understand what is the part of each moment that makes it not a waste of the precious little time that I have.
I believe that when I die, it's over. I wish I believed something different, but there it is, my education and intellect accept only that death is like becoming a broken toy, she don't work no more, might as well move on. I believe that. My belief is a relief over the dogmatic Mennonite beliefs I was fed throughout childhood about heaven and hell, but it is so utterly sad that I envy people who have different beliefs from me. But you know, you can't pretend you believe differently from what you do, can you? Or can you? I've tried and it just won't work for me. Personal integrity says that it's best to believe unless you can't, but if you can't, then call it what it is, hope for the best, expect God to give you credit (if he's there) for having the courage to stand up for your non-beliefs.
But okay, so without beliefs of an afterlife, what am I (and my children) left with? Belief in an eternity, and that eternity is all packed into NOW. NOW is all there is. There isn't yesterday (didn't I forget most of it anyway?), there isn't tomorrow (somewhere out in the eternity of space there is a comet headed our way, our galaxy is on a collision course with another one, and then this whole show is over, gone, kaput, and there won't be even somebody to put flowers on our galaxy's burial site). NOW is about typing the next character--there it went, it's gone, I typed that dash and then it was done being typed and I was on to the next dash and then the t and then it was over and look I'm already at the end of a sentence! Each NOW fleets by and is g o n e like a puff of seeds from a dandelion PUFF they scatter to the wind and five minutes later I'm cooking dinner and the existence of the seeds is forever unknown to any but me but I've already forgotten.
If that is all, just now, just that character I finished typing before I even knew I had begun it, then what oh what is there? here? I think, ponder this every day, thinking about death--not because I like death but because I loathe death more than anything else. Death is the proof that there is no God as I was taught during my years as a Mennonite child growing up on a sheep farm in Pennsylvania. I mean, think about it. Suppose YOU were God? Would you create this universe of dandelion seeds? Would you make everything totally meaningless?
Okay, so maybe that's why somebody invented Heaven. To give us all meaning. If we never die (spiritually) then there is meaning in our Being. Souls that go to heaven are permanent because then those souls carry within themselves the memories of their own existence. They are never forgotten, they never cry "Yonondio!" with all the forgotten lifes that touched our planet and evaporated never to be noticed or remembered.
Personally, I'd like to buy real estate in heaven. I mean, that place is definitely being populated at an exponential rate. And what makes it more valuable, the For Sale sign says: "No comet insurance necessary!" In fact, in Heaven all insurance would be a thing of the past, angst would be a thing of the past, human grasping at ephemeral realities in a constant, exhausting attempt to catch and HOLD meaning now and FOREVER, that would be a thing of the past, and peace, true quiet of the soul, could actually happen.
Quiet of the soul. That is what I want. On our last vacation we were lucky enough to be camping just steps off the beach in Maine. I woke up first each morning. I made tea. I walked to the beach with my tea, and sat watching the waves. The waves, when you are tired and having your first cup of tea, are endlessly fascinating. Watching the waves is like watching the most significant creature that could possibly inhabit the earth--like watching that creature breathe. It breathes in, the waters draw back (look at that odd wave right there). He breathes deep into his lungs, sucking the realities of beaches all over the world into himself, like a vast beast of meaning that draws it all to himself with every change in the waters, and the whole eternal moment hangs for a few delicious and suspenseful seconds while his breath is held, savored, and changed to a vast exhale, a release, a gentle and unimaginably powerful and musical statement of YES existence may go on, and the waves come back in, to grasp at the sands, at the place just 20 yards from where my children (my hearts out of my body) are sleeping. The beast falls upon the beach, but he is harmless, he is still miraculously within the territory that I expected him to hold to, my children slumber safely, and the waters take what they want and withdraw, leaving everything changed behind them. Every grain of sand at the surface is overturned, bubbles rise from bits of sand that looked packed solid, my footprints are gone, and if I am lucky, my toes have been kissed by this fascinating creature who teaches me something with every breath.
Sometimes I think that, were it not for the children, I could stay on a beach and learn the breathing of the ocean forever. But after forever and no time at all, I hear the strange multi-voiced crunch crunch of little feet on the sand, and a child who would be really irritated with me if he read the above comes close and raises his arms for the embrace he knows he can count on from that beast that rules the world for him, his mother. I pick up the child, and his skin is as good as the waves, and I sit down on the beach chair (he is heavy), kiss his head, and hope I can hold him without spilling my tea. And he says, wonderfully, "Can I play video games first thing when we get back?" How anchored I am.
But the sea, the sea haunts me all the way home from Maine to Vermont, and it whispers to me of a place that needs to happen for me. If somehow I can find the eternity of the waves in my life, my life of conflict and divorce and hamburger and a dog that needs brushing and a car that smells bad and a dishwasher that needs emptying and a rug that needs vacuuming and calculus problems that need doing, if I can find the eternity of the waves in furnaces and septic systems and fights among the children over who goes first and phone calls and obligations and oil bills and furnaces and hot water and laundry, if I can call all of these things somehow into submission, so that they bow to the importance of things like waves, if somehow I can find the wisdom or the energy or the freedom or the cleverness or the creativity to say like Max does to the Wild Things, "Enough!" if I can just do that, then maybe I, and I'm sorry but more importantly my children, can suck the joy out of each moment so that it doesn't matter who remembers it, it doesn't matter that tomorrow it is gone like a dandelion seed; the moment was so full of joy in itself in that time that it bubbled over with meaning and significance and love, if I can reach up the sand of memories and happenings like the mighty and confined ocean myself, to draw unto me and my family all the meaning brought to the beaches by rain and wind and tides and people and myriad creatures, then I can lie on my deathbed and I will be so used to inhaling joy out of moments that it won't even occurr to me to look backwards to do something so dry and dusty and useless as evaluate my life. My life will be there, and NOW, and then, not that there is such a thing as then, but then it will be gone and I won't even know it or care. And my children will themselves know how to live and will know then how also to die with the same joy I taught them in each moment, the joy that stands and stands and crumbles before pain but collects itself ultimately and claims a secret spot in the universe for itself from which it can never be cast out.
Where can I find this in my house in the town of Charlotte, VT, with my shrubbery and my roof and the requirements of the school district for my childrens' education?
Oddly, I think I have found this in the smell of a donkey's hide. Mennonite girl that I am, who once breathed the air of barns and manure and ponies and donkeys and sheep with such joy of being that even in an adulthood buried as mine is by septic systems and furnaces one deep breath of the essence of a farmyard can clear the fog from my mind.
So Harry the donkey, Snowy and Miracle the ewes and the as-yet-unnamed little ram sheepling are coming to my house to show me how to slow it all down, to focus on essentials. My instincts tell me that they hold a secret that can help to set me free.
"It doesn't matter."
We had a fairly routine call about a month ago, but something about it continues to haunt me. I hesitate to recount this because it appears to fall into a formula that has crept into American writing in the last few decades. The formula is story + judgment = control over reality. I'm not interested in that formula. Really. I'm interested only in understanding the event and exhaling thereby a kind of understanding for everyone involved.
We took somebody to the hospital who needed to go but who was not in any imminent danger. With no overwhelming feelings to process and with coffee in hand, I went to tend to my duties. My first job is to re-make the stretcher. As I was doing this, I couldn't help but hear a young woman talking on her cell phone. She was saying to somebody, "I've got another patient to move, so I'll call you back." She snapped the cell phone shut and left. I finished with the gurney and took it outside to load it into the ambulance.
My next job was to make sure the rig was clean and ready for the next patient. Today it was easy. The crew had been unusually neat, so after loading the gurney there was nothing for me to do but wait for the rest of them to finish filling out paperwork and come out so we could go back to Charlotte. I leaned on the back of our ambulance and sipped my coffee. Near me another crew pulled up and discharged a patient--apparently another routine situation--and after several minutes some crew members from another town came out, talking and laughing. I sat quietly and waited, just watching the people and chilling out. It was hot on the tarmac, but I was in the shade. Traffic sounds echoed from around the corner of the hospital.
A few minutes later, the young cell-phone woman came out, with a stretcher and another crew member from her squad. On the stretcher was a very old, very frail woman, who was wailing sort of under her breath, pushing the sounds out against some kind of inner resistance, as some people do when they are unconscious and uncomfortable. Her back and neck were arched so that she was looking straight up into the sky, through closed lids. Her knees were raised--she almost looked like someone who had been fastened to heaven by her knees and chest and was about to be hoisted up, or was trying to call somebody to hoist her up. Her knees and her arms were bare--and so was the area between her legs. I could see that somebody had put a pad on her.
Sometimes moments freeze, almost like you have found yourself in the landscape of a painting. All the colors become more vivid, and time seems to stop, and your heart and mind seem to move around in the surreal landscape without any attachment to time. I experienced that just then, and in the frozen painting around me I could see the tarmac, and the white sheets, and the pale parchment tan of the woman's skin, and the vivid red of the ambulance, and I felt a kind of shock at the total incongruity of this frail holy figure placed as she was. I couldn't bear it.
As I moved forward, time began again. I walked over to the stretcher and gathered a blanket that looked like it might have been put there with some thought of covering her. I shook it free. The cell phone woman and her companion did not stop the stretcher, so I walked along beside them and awkwardly placed the blanket over the woman's legs and hips. She never stopped moaning and she never moved. The cell phone woman looked at me. "It doesn't matter," she said.
Now, don't get offended. It is as easy to pass judgement on that young woman as it is to know that it is wrong to cause the elderly helpless ones among us to suffer indignities. You haven't walked a mile in the cell phone woman's shoes and neither have I. For all I know, she could be absolutely right that it doesn't matter whether we see an old dying woman's diaper on the tarmac with traffic going by. For all I know, the human spirit has just so much coinage, and hers was spent on far more significant and important activities than mine was at that moment. I had something to give just then. At other times, I haven't.
But I blushed, and turned back to my own ambulance. I had to do it. I had to fix that blanket because although it didn't matter to the old dying woman, it mattered terribly to me. I don't want the world around me to ignore indignities. Life becomes so much more meaningless when "it doesn't matter." I want it to matter. Maybe it doesn't. But I want it to.
We took somebody to the hospital who needed to go but who was not in any imminent danger. With no overwhelming feelings to process and with coffee in hand, I went to tend to my duties. My first job is to re-make the stretcher. As I was doing this, I couldn't help but hear a young woman talking on her cell phone. She was saying to somebody, "I've got another patient to move, so I'll call you back." She snapped the cell phone shut and left. I finished with the gurney and took it outside to load it into the ambulance.
My next job was to make sure the rig was clean and ready for the next patient. Today it was easy. The crew had been unusually neat, so after loading the gurney there was nothing for me to do but wait for the rest of them to finish filling out paperwork and come out so we could go back to Charlotte. I leaned on the back of our ambulance and sipped my coffee. Near me another crew pulled up and discharged a patient--apparently another routine situation--and after several minutes some crew members from another town came out, talking and laughing. I sat quietly and waited, just watching the people and chilling out. It was hot on the tarmac, but I was in the shade. Traffic sounds echoed from around the corner of the hospital.
A few minutes later, the young cell-phone woman came out, with a stretcher and another crew member from her squad. On the stretcher was a very old, very frail woman, who was wailing sort of under her breath, pushing the sounds out against some kind of inner resistance, as some people do when they are unconscious and uncomfortable. Her back and neck were arched so that she was looking straight up into the sky, through closed lids. Her knees were raised--she almost looked like someone who had been fastened to heaven by her knees and chest and was about to be hoisted up, or was trying to call somebody to hoist her up. Her knees and her arms were bare--and so was the area between her legs. I could see that somebody had put a pad on her.
Sometimes moments freeze, almost like you have found yourself in the landscape of a painting. All the colors become more vivid, and time seems to stop, and your heart and mind seem to move around in the surreal landscape without any attachment to time. I experienced that just then, and in the frozen painting around me I could see the tarmac, and the white sheets, and the pale parchment tan of the woman's skin, and the vivid red of the ambulance, and I felt a kind of shock at the total incongruity of this frail holy figure placed as she was. I couldn't bear it.
As I moved forward, time began again. I walked over to the stretcher and gathered a blanket that looked like it might have been put there with some thought of covering her. I shook it free. The cell phone woman and her companion did not stop the stretcher, so I walked along beside them and awkwardly placed the blanket over the woman's legs and hips. She never stopped moaning and she never moved. The cell phone woman looked at me. "It doesn't matter," she said.
Now, don't get offended. It is as easy to pass judgement on that young woman as it is to know that it is wrong to cause the elderly helpless ones among us to suffer indignities. You haven't walked a mile in the cell phone woman's shoes and neither have I. For all I know, she could be absolutely right that it doesn't matter whether we see an old dying woman's diaper on the tarmac with traffic going by. For all I know, the human spirit has just so much coinage, and hers was spent on far more significant and important activities than mine was at that moment. I had something to give just then. At other times, I haven't.
But I blushed, and turned back to my own ambulance. I had to do it. I had to fix that blanket because although it didn't matter to the old dying woman, it mattered terribly to me. I don't want the world around me to ignore indignities. Life becomes so much more meaningless when "it doesn't matter." I want it to matter. Maybe it doesn't. But I want it to.
An Ass and Three Sheep to the Wind
All I wanted to do was move the fence--and before I knew it, Harry was off down the dirt road, the sheep were off down the dirt road, and there was nothing but dust where I was. I swore softly in Portuguese, because chances were, this was going to get ugly.
Harry ran off about, oh, maybe 10 yards, and then he ROLLED. He frickin' rolled on the frickin’ dirt road to scratch his back. and then he looked back at me (picking my way barefoot on the dirt road), waved a friendly ear, and high-tailed it into a neighbor's yard. Where he proceded to eat some grass.
When I caught up with him again, I could see the look of donkey smugness on his face. I spread my hands and smiled invitingly. "Haaarrrry," I crooned. "Aren't you having a nice time. C’m'ere and let me scratch your back." He shook his head. (It was then that I began to wonder about my intelligence relative to his.) And then he gave a little hop and began to run in circles around a tree in the backyard of an apparently empty house. I trudged after him, thinking that he would eventually get bored of this, musing on what the homeowners would think when they got home and found unidentifiable fewmets on their back lawn next to the swing set.
Now, my life is way too complicated for your average chase after barnyard animals. When I ran off to follow Harry and the sheep, I left my two children plus their friend at home. My 7-year-old (we'll call him Napoleon) saw the jail break. I figured he'd stay near home. The two ten-year-olds were, to my mind, variables--as evidenced by the fact that here came one now, trailed by the other two. Uh oh. A donkey chase is one thing, but a donkey chase with inexperienced children is quite another.
Simplify the equation. I said, "Guys, the best thing you can do is go back and open up the fence again, then find a way to block off the dirt road so that when they run back, they go right through the hole they came out of, okay?” The children gazed at me, then slowly turned around and went back. "Can I play video games?" called Napoleon. "Um," I said, then had to sprint again, as Harry and the three sheep had just found a new way to get into yet another neighbor's yard.
So we did our little maneouvring, Harry and the sheep and I, for maybe twenty minutes. But just when I thought I had them, when they looked like they were ready to head back up the road, (and this is Harry's point of view) a large white stationary contraption suddenly stuck out a wing and discharged a large round white slow-moving man in a white suit with white hair. Harry snorted, the Fima Feng (my new name for the sheep) scattered, and they all passed me again going the wrong way. My neighbor had arrived home in his white Chrysler when we weren't looking.
The man grinned broadly at me. "Need help?" he called, oh so amiable. "No thanks," I grinned (grimaced) back. "I can handle it."
They headed into the large white man's back yard, a lovely little refuge complete with winding brook (clearly weed-whacked regularly, a thing I can't personally conceive of), lawn chairs, bar-b-que grill, and clothes line. And Harry and the Fima Feng walked right into a trap: a loop of the brook that nearly closed at one end with a line of trees and bushes. Gotcha.
Harry assessed the situation. "Give it up, Harry," I said. "You can't get out of here. The bank is steep, and you’re a donkey. You can’t jump." He rolled his eyes at me, and tried to sneak past on the left, all the time watching me carefully and—I could swear—plotting trajectories. I crouched and moved to block him, feeling like a basketball guard. He stopped and regarded me.
An alert ass is really kind of beautiful, if you're not ready to murder him. Even when you are, those lovely black innocent eyes and the wavy ears can almost make you laugh. Well, okay, I did laugh. I thought I had Won. He tried to get past me on the right. I blocked him. He lunged immediately the other way, and I got there first. He was trapped.
Just then, the Fima Feng jumped the brook. Blast! I thought. I hadn't expected them to be so creative and brave and independent. I started muttering in Portuguese again. All it took was for Harry to do the same and I'd have lost my advantage.
Harry was immediately upset. This was nearly intolerable for him. He likes the Fima Feng and he doesn't like being separated from them. He faced the brook, and shook his head. He tried to go around it. No good. He looked back at me. "No joy here," I said comfortably.
And then, Harry the Ass gathered himself. He got his front feet close to the bank. He tried to get his back feet to go to the other side of the brook while leaving the front feet in place to protect himself from the brook. The result was that he was bent almost in the shape of a hot-air balloon. Then he began to work all of his feet, one by one, up and down like they were on strings being pulled from above. Honestly it looked like he was trying to cross the stream without actually having to jump. He seemed to think that he could just will himself up and over this barrier. For a minute, it looked almost convincing. And then, probably more to his surprise than to mine (though my jaw had dropped when he began looking like he could levitate), he jumped. He jumped almost completely vertically, with only the slightest bit of energy applied to moving forward. He reached a truly amazing height, and as his body went up, his head went down so he was sort of watching the brook go by underneath him. And during this whole maneouvre he kept his four feet together, though they dropped a bit behind his body as he went across.
And he landed, miraculously, on all four feet at once (!) on the other side. He sank deep into the mud, panicked, and lunged free.
I won't repeat the stream of invectives. I'm sure you can imagine. Effin' ASS being chief among them.
So now he wasn't having fun any more, and I was mad. Time to mean business, I thought. I did what I knew would bother him the most—I cut the sheep off from him and drove them across the brook. He couldn't easily jump back over, and I was content to let him stay on the other side of that creek until I was ready to come back and get him. "Maybe THEN you'll be glad to see me!" I tossed over my shoulder as I waved my arms at the sheep, driving them through the large white neighbor's yard, and out into the dirt road. They went reluctantly, but without Harry they were easy to drive.
As we rounded the house again (I ignored the large white man grinning from a window), I looked past the sheep down the road to my house. A small person suddenly jumped up and begin dragging a section of fence across it. "Oh, well done, you!" I thought gratefully to my son. It all worked beautifully. The sheep ran full tilt down the road, one 10-year-old closed off any exit but the hole back into the paddock, and the other held the fence and then closed off the gap at exactly the right time. Napoleon (my seven-year-old) looked on, half his mind on what was in all this for him. I cut off the Fima Feng's retreat. Oh so excellent! they were in. We all whooped and high fived each other.
But the Fima Feng were upset, and I was afraid they would break back out through the fence (it was moveable electrified mesh netting) to get to Harry again. I looked at my firstborn. “How about you run inside and turn the fence back on. Then come back out.” He nodded. I regarded the rest of my small troops. “Here’s the plan. You,” I pointed to Napoleon, “watch the road for Harry. As soon as you see him, run inside and unplug the fence again. You,” I pointed to my firstborn’s bewildered friend, whose face wore a mixture of amazement and acceptance—like, gosh, maybe this is how the world works, after all—that you see only on the faces of children when adults are being strange and amusing. I regarded him. “You,” I said again. “Your job is to stand in the middle of the road, wave your arms and look as big as you can.” I felt the first tiny glimmer of doubt as he sort of nodded and swallowed. “And you,” I said to my now returned firstborn, “As soon as Napoleon turns it off again, you go and grab two poles and drag the whole two sections of fence across the road, okay?” He nodded, the picture of 10-year-old eagerness and competence. “Everybody understand?”
“Yes!” they chorused, my sons beginning to enjoy themselves, their friend manfully willing to take one for the team.
“Good,” I said. “We can do this if we work together. I’m going back up the road to find Harry. Will you be ready if you see him coming?”
“Yes,” they said again.
So off I went, and as I turned around and jogged back down the dirt road, I thought for only a fleeting second that this may not be a plan without flaws. But just then, as I looked up, I saw Harry emerging from the large white man’s yard, clearly upset. “Ah ha. Now you’re not so smug!” I yelled, regretting, in a way, that I had missed his jump back over the brook. I ran wide to the left and got behind him.
It was a lot easier now. He wanted his Fima Feng, and after looking into just one or two back yards he had a pretty good idea where they were. He started to run up the dirt road.
And after that, everything went pretty fast. Harry galloped up the road for home, the kids jumped up again, and I saw Napoleon moving fast across the driveway and out of sight. Somebody yelled, “It’s off!” and my firstborn grabbed the fence.
And screamed.
Here, revealed, are the flaws in my plan:
1) My younger son would not be able to open the door to the house;
2) my firstborn would test the fence between pulses, and therefore proceed directly to seizing it in both hands;
3) the sheep were going to surprise me yet again; and
4) my son’s friend was afraid of sheep.
The fence is designed to convey a shock but not to cause injury, so although I was sorry for my firstborn’s shock, I wasn’t actually worried. His scream was quickly followed by a yell of rage at Napoleon, who responded with, “Do it yourself, then!” Harry was, by now, at the fence, which had been only partially dislodged. He wouldn’t go through the gap, but the Fima Feng--obliging creatures that they are--they were out in a trice. Reunited, the animals easily dodged the last 10-year-old, he of the heretofore unrevealed terror of sheep (and perhaps the dodging was all the other way).
I swore, in English, in front of the children. Not far down the road was another road, and if the animals reached that other road we would have a much harder time capturing them. I had wanted them to stay in the cul-de-sac.
As Harry, Snowy, Miracle, and Eric the Red galloped around a bend in the dirt road, I turned to the children, sorry to have left them with so much responsibility. I knelt in front of my firstborn, who was in tears, and put my hands on his shoulders. “You okay?” I said. He sniffed and nodded, glaring at his brother. “You were fantastic. These things happen—and it’s nobody’s fault.”
He looked up. “Will they be all right?”
I laughed a little. “Oh yes, you wait and see. We’ll be laughing about this over dinner. Trust me.” Yeah, and I had also told them we didn’t get earthquakes in Vermont. Well, we don’t, usually.
I looked at Napoleon, who glanced up at his older brother from under a resentful brow, then turned the look on me. “The door was locked!” he said. “Why did you lock the door, Mommy!” I hadn’t, of course, but sometimes the door knob sticks.
“Oh, honey.” I said. “It must have stuck. And you were so on the job—I saw you run across the driveway. You did exactly as I asked you to, and it’s not your fault it didn’t work.”
I looked at our guest, who was also close to tears. "You almost had them," I said. "I'm impressed."
“I’m afraid of sheep,” he replied. “I thought they were going to run me down. One of them had horns.”
“Even if you hadn’t been afraid of them, you couldn’t have stopped them,” I said. “The road is too wide for one person to block. Don’t feel bad, okay?” He looked at me doubtfully.
I breathed, because now I knew that I needed help. At these childrens’ ages I had already lived on a farm long enough to have a good instinct for what to do in this kind of situation, but for the first time I realized just how different my childrens’ world had been up to this point from mine. I felt sorry. It wasn’t fair to give them more than they were ready for.
At this point, Napoleon, sensitive as always to a shift in the atmosphere, said, “Mommy?”
“What,” I said, distractedly, my mind on whom to call for help.
“Can I play video games?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” Maybe the squad would help.
“How about computer?”
“Sure.”
“How about Grand Theft Auto?” he said, eagerly reading the signs of distraction on my face.
I looked at him then. “No!” I said. “Don’t push it.”
“Aw.”
He turned and went back to the house. My firstborn and his friend looked at me.
Where were Harry and the sheep? I thought, a bit frantically, but still hoping they hadn’t left the dirt road. I ran inside, unplugged the fence, grabbed the phone, and brought it along with me. I dialed the station.
Dan picked up the phone. “Rescue.” He said. This is a very straight, very responsible and stressed out young man. I think I’ve seen him smile only once.
I said, “Hey, you guys busy?”
“Not really,” he said.
“Well, I need a little help,” I said.
“What’s up?”
“Um, my three sheep and my donkey have gotten out of their paddock, and I think they might leave the cul-de-sac. I wondered—can you guys help with traffic control?”
Pause. “Your what and your what?” he said.
“Three sheep and a donkey.”
“Um,” he said. “Just a sec.” He said to somebody, “Can we help Sheila with her three sheep and her donkey?” An explosion of laughter, and somebody said, “Sure! Why not.”
“Dan?” I said.
“What?”
“You don’t have to tone this out, do you?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“We’ll be right there.”
“Okay.”
I hung up and got in the car. The two 10-year-olds wanted to come along, so I said, “Yeah, come on,” started the car while they got in, and headed for the end of the cul-de-sac, looking on both sides of the road for Harry and his Fima Feng. At the end of the cul-de-sac was another car parked with the people standing outside of it. My heart sank. But no, they were getting bicycles out of the trunk. Good. I parked and got out. Just then the two cars from the squad pulled in. I stopped to talk to them.
Dan was in the first car. He very seriously nodded, drove past me, and went up to assess the situation at my house. He returned in a few minutes and waited. Phil, the driver of the second car, grinned and said, “Did I hear right?”
“Probably,” I said, with studied nonchalance.
He kept looking at me, grinning, and Danielle, sitting in the passenger seat, stared fixedly out the front window, her face admirably immobile given the obvious shaking of laughter in the rest of her body. I was resigned. This was why I hadn't called them sooner. “Go ahead and laugh,” I said. I would never hear the end of this.
They both did. “What are you doing with a donkey?” Phil asked.
“It’s a spiritual thing,” I said flatly. “Can you help me?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “What does he look like?”
“What?”
“The donkey. What does he look like?”
“What do you mean what does he look like?” Danielle said, choking. “He’s a donkey!”
“Well, I don’t know anything about donkeys,” he retorted. “Don’t they have long ears?”
“Yes,” I said, gently, thinking that the children would be more helpful after all. “Long ears.”
“What color is he?”
This was too much. “He’s GREY.” I snapped. “What possible other color could he be?”
“Well, I don’t know. And just how long are the ears?” He placed his hands about three feet apart. “This long?”
“No,” I said, dully. “No.” I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead.
Danielle was out of patience. “Like this,” she said, in the manner of one who is going to take over, placing her hands about one foot apart. She climbed brusquely out of the car. “What do you need?” she said.
“Well, I think Phil should stay in his car, don’t you?” I said. Ours eyes met. She nodded. “Phil, how about you take the boys and go park your car just north of the opening in the fence. They know where it is.”
“Okay,” he said, with obvious relief. “I’ll do that.” The boys, happy to be smarter than a grownup, climbed with alacrity into his car.
Danielle and I walked over to the other car, the one that had parked just inside the cul-de-sac before the squad arrived. The people near it were still doing something with bicycles.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” said a woman about my age, who was helping a teenager set up for his bike ride.
“Have you by any chance seen a donkey and three sheep?” I asked.
She gazed at me for a long moment. “Yes?” she said. I think she may have been either relieved to find that she was not hallucinating, or considering the possibility that I was part of the hallucination. For my part, I was by now pretty sure that she was part of my nightmare, no matter what else might be true. Beside me, Danielle began to weep.
But she had seen them, and this was a relief. “Do you know where they are?” I asked.
She pointed over my head, into yet another neighbor’s back yard. “Right there,” she said.
I turned. It was true! They were right there, hidden by a willow tree. I asked Dan to block the way out to the main road.
Just then, the grandmother who lives next door, who now had a donkey in her yard, came out onto her front porch. She waved a cheery hello and walked carefully down the steps. She’s just recuperating from knee surgery, but this was something she absolutely could not miss.
“Hi,” she said, grinning. “That your new donkey?” There is nothing like the way a farm woman from Vermont can talk to a flatlander who has done something ridiculous.
“Yeah,” I said. “Want to meet him?”
“Oh, sure!” she said happily.
“Okay,” I said. “Can you stand right there and wave him off if he tries for the main road?”
“Sure,” she said, in that musical Vermont lilt. There would be no problem from her quarter. She, at the age of 82, was more adept with a donkey, certainly, than either Phil or Dan.
Danielle and I walked towards Harry. Danielle has good instincts—she took up a perfect position and altered it perfectly in response to whatever Harry did. He had to face me. He looked up from his grass, the picture of friendly curiosity, like somebody who wonders whatever you’re doing here.
“Come on,” I snapped. (No more crooning.) “Time to go home.” I reached toward him to smack his rump, but he was already running, straight for Gram, who responded as a true Vermonter, with an unequivocal statement to him that he couldn’t go that way. He believed her—anybody would—and ran the other way. Danielle cut him off, though, and he had no choice but to go back down the dirt road towards home. Snowy, Miracle, and Eric the Red followed. “Blaaat,” somebody said. I could hear Danielle giggling as she ran first this way, and then that. Dan had closed in behind me. We had gotten Harry trapped between my garage and the fence, which on this side was (of course) closed. But he couldn’t get away.
Any creature with an ounce of sense would have known he was beaten. But not Harry. Endowed with a good deal more than an ounce of sense, he still looked for a way out. And he found it: Dan. Here again, unbeknownst to me, was a person with a Fear. Of donkeys. Harry faced Dan, and Dan melted away in front of him with a muttered “Er… Sheila?”
“What are you doing?” I asked. Kindly and sweetly.
“I’m just… I just thought he might bite.”
“He doesn’t bite,” I said. These people needed so much briefing!
“Oh. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said, for about the fourth time that day swallowing my ire at Harry, as Dan and I stood side by side and watched him head back for the main road. I sighed.
But we had all forgotten Danielle. I heard her gasping for air as she ran stumbling and laughing around some cedar trees. They were both lost to sight. She would need help, but first I unfastened the fence on this end, and glanced across the paddock at Phil and the boys, who were laughing with each other on the other side—except my firstborn, who suddenly said something rather seriously to Phil, who reacted by reaching protectively towards his car and saying something in a forceful tone. (I learned later that my firstborn had said, “I hope he doesn’t just ignore this barrier and jump right through,” at which Phil had responded, “You HOPE not?! My CAR is on the other side of this barrier!”)
Suddenly, all three of them stiffened and looked off to my right. “AAAAAh!” yelled Phil. And again, “AAAAAAAAAAh!” as he tried to decide whether to stand and protect his car or run behind it.
It was Harry. Danielle had cut him off (Danielle-the-Magnificent—all-hail-Danielle, I breathed) and he was clattering, Fima Feng in tow, back up the road straight at Phil and the boys. Straight at my firstborn, actually, who looked rather small just then.
But I had totally underestimated that child. He stood his ground. He held the fence firm across the road, and he SCOWLED from his full height (which happens to be at Harry’s eye level). Harry quailed when he saw him. My firstborn stood stock still, relentless, and I was put in mind of all those times he and I had clashed like the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object. But it was Harry in his sights this time. My son glared. He might even have growled. And Harry seemed to know in his heart that, if he didn’t go into that paddock, my firstborn would hunt him down and surely kill him. He turned left, hesitated just for an instant, and trotted meekly into the paddock. My firstborn soberly shut the fence behind him. We all cheered.
Danielle jogged up, panting and still laughing. “You’re amazing,” I said. “How can you be in so many places at once?” But she was still laughing too hard to respond.
Phil drove up to drop off the 10-year-olds and rolled down his window. “Your son scared me,” he said. I nodded.
Dan walked over to me. “Anything else?” he said, with quiet competence.
“Um, no,” I muttered, looking down. “Thanks, all of you. Drinks on me tonight.” But I was embarassed in the face of this man whose life would never ever include such adventures as this one, and who seemed to know that the secret reason these things happened to me was that I needed them to.
I looked down at my firstborn, gentle determined soul that he is. He was looking at Harry. “I hope he never does that again,” he said. Harry was pretending not to notice him, though one ear stayed cocked in his direction. I put my arm around my son’s shoulders. “He wouldn’t dare.” I said.
Just then, my little Napoleon came outside. “That was fun, Mommy!” he said, the picture of delight.
“Ya think?” I said.
“’Course!” he replied. “I got to play video games!”
I laughed and picked him up, he with his you-can’t-resist-me smile.
“You need a rest now, right, Mommy?” he continued. I nodded, pleased that he would notice. “So can I keep playing video games?”
Harry ran off about, oh, maybe 10 yards, and then he ROLLED. He frickin' rolled on the frickin’ dirt road to scratch his back. and then he looked back at me (picking my way barefoot on the dirt road), waved a friendly ear, and high-tailed it into a neighbor's yard. Where he proceded to eat some grass.
When I caught up with him again, I could see the look of donkey smugness on his face. I spread my hands and smiled invitingly. "Haaarrrry," I crooned. "Aren't you having a nice time. C’m'ere and let me scratch your back." He shook his head. (It was then that I began to wonder about my intelligence relative to his.) And then he gave a little hop and began to run in circles around a tree in the backyard of an apparently empty house. I trudged after him, thinking that he would eventually get bored of this, musing on what the homeowners would think when they got home and found unidentifiable fewmets on their back lawn next to the swing set.
Now, my life is way too complicated for your average chase after barnyard animals. When I ran off to follow Harry and the sheep, I left my two children plus their friend at home. My 7-year-old (we'll call him Napoleon) saw the jail break. I figured he'd stay near home. The two ten-year-olds were, to my mind, variables--as evidenced by the fact that here came one now, trailed by the other two. Uh oh. A donkey chase is one thing, but a donkey chase with inexperienced children is quite another.
Simplify the equation. I said, "Guys, the best thing you can do is go back and open up the fence again, then find a way to block off the dirt road so that when they run back, they go right through the hole they came out of, okay?” The children gazed at me, then slowly turned around and went back. "Can I play video games?" called Napoleon. "Um," I said, then had to sprint again, as Harry and the three sheep had just found a new way to get into yet another neighbor's yard.
So we did our little maneouvring, Harry and the sheep and I, for maybe twenty minutes. But just when I thought I had them, when they looked like they were ready to head back up the road, (and this is Harry's point of view) a large white stationary contraption suddenly stuck out a wing and discharged a large round white slow-moving man in a white suit with white hair. Harry snorted, the Fima Feng (my new name for the sheep) scattered, and they all passed me again going the wrong way. My neighbor had arrived home in his white Chrysler when we weren't looking.
The man grinned broadly at me. "Need help?" he called, oh so amiable. "No thanks," I grinned (grimaced) back. "I can handle it."
They headed into the large white man's back yard, a lovely little refuge complete with winding brook (clearly weed-whacked regularly, a thing I can't personally conceive of), lawn chairs, bar-b-que grill, and clothes line. And Harry and the Fima Feng walked right into a trap: a loop of the brook that nearly closed at one end with a line of trees and bushes. Gotcha.
Harry assessed the situation. "Give it up, Harry," I said. "You can't get out of here. The bank is steep, and you’re a donkey. You can’t jump." He rolled his eyes at me, and tried to sneak past on the left, all the time watching me carefully and—I could swear—plotting trajectories. I crouched and moved to block him, feeling like a basketball guard. He stopped and regarded me.
An alert ass is really kind of beautiful, if you're not ready to murder him. Even when you are, those lovely black innocent eyes and the wavy ears can almost make you laugh. Well, okay, I did laugh. I thought I had Won. He tried to get past me on the right. I blocked him. He lunged immediately the other way, and I got there first. He was trapped.
Just then, the Fima Feng jumped the brook. Blast! I thought. I hadn't expected them to be so creative and brave and independent. I started muttering in Portuguese again. All it took was for Harry to do the same and I'd have lost my advantage.
Harry was immediately upset. This was nearly intolerable for him. He likes the Fima Feng and he doesn't like being separated from them. He faced the brook, and shook his head. He tried to go around it. No good. He looked back at me. "No joy here," I said comfortably.
And then, Harry the Ass gathered himself. He got his front feet close to the bank. He tried to get his back feet to go to the other side of the brook while leaving the front feet in place to protect himself from the brook. The result was that he was bent almost in the shape of a hot-air balloon. Then he began to work all of his feet, one by one, up and down like they were on strings being pulled from above. Honestly it looked like he was trying to cross the stream without actually having to jump. He seemed to think that he could just will himself up and over this barrier. For a minute, it looked almost convincing. And then, probably more to his surprise than to mine (though my jaw had dropped when he began looking like he could levitate), he jumped. He jumped almost completely vertically, with only the slightest bit of energy applied to moving forward. He reached a truly amazing height, and as his body went up, his head went down so he was sort of watching the brook go by underneath him. And during this whole maneouvre he kept his four feet together, though they dropped a bit behind his body as he went across.
And he landed, miraculously, on all four feet at once (!) on the other side. He sank deep into the mud, panicked, and lunged free.
I won't repeat the stream of invectives. I'm sure you can imagine. Effin' ASS being chief among them.
So now he wasn't having fun any more, and I was mad. Time to mean business, I thought. I did what I knew would bother him the most—I cut the sheep off from him and drove them across the brook. He couldn't easily jump back over, and I was content to let him stay on the other side of that creek until I was ready to come back and get him. "Maybe THEN you'll be glad to see me!" I tossed over my shoulder as I waved my arms at the sheep, driving them through the large white neighbor's yard, and out into the dirt road. They went reluctantly, but without Harry they were easy to drive.
As we rounded the house again (I ignored the large white man grinning from a window), I looked past the sheep down the road to my house. A small person suddenly jumped up and begin dragging a section of fence across it. "Oh, well done, you!" I thought gratefully to my son. It all worked beautifully. The sheep ran full tilt down the road, one 10-year-old closed off any exit but the hole back into the paddock, and the other held the fence and then closed off the gap at exactly the right time. Napoleon (my seven-year-old) looked on, half his mind on what was in all this for him. I cut off the Fima Feng's retreat. Oh so excellent! they were in. We all whooped and high fived each other.
But the Fima Feng were upset, and I was afraid they would break back out through the fence (it was moveable electrified mesh netting) to get to Harry again. I looked at my firstborn. “How about you run inside and turn the fence back on. Then come back out.” He nodded. I regarded the rest of my small troops. “Here’s the plan. You,” I pointed to Napoleon, “watch the road for Harry. As soon as you see him, run inside and unplug the fence again. You,” I pointed to my firstborn’s bewildered friend, whose face wore a mixture of amazement and acceptance—like, gosh, maybe this is how the world works, after all—that you see only on the faces of children when adults are being strange and amusing. I regarded him. “You,” I said again. “Your job is to stand in the middle of the road, wave your arms and look as big as you can.” I felt the first tiny glimmer of doubt as he sort of nodded and swallowed. “And you,” I said to my now returned firstborn, “As soon as Napoleon turns it off again, you go and grab two poles and drag the whole two sections of fence across the road, okay?” He nodded, the picture of 10-year-old eagerness and competence. “Everybody understand?”
“Yes!” they chorused, my sons beginning to enjoy themselves, their friend manfully willing to take one for the team.
“Good,” I said. “We can do this if we work together. I’m going back up the road to find Harry. Will you be ready if you see him coming?”
“Yes,” they said again.
So off I went, and as I turned around and jogged back down the dirt road, I thought for only a fleeting second that this may not be a plan without flaws. But just then, as I looked up, I saw Harry emerging from the large white man’s yard, clearly upset. “Ah ha. Now you’re not so smug!” I yelled, regretting, in a way, that I had missed his jump back over the brook. I ran wide to the left and got behind him.
It was a lot easier now. He wanted his Fima Feng, and after looking into just one or two back yards he had a pretty good idea where they were. He started to run up the dirt road.
And after that, everything went pretty fast. Harry galloped up the road for home, the kids jumped up again, and I saw Napoleon moving fast across the driveway and out of sight. Somebody yelled, “It’s off!” and my firstborn grabbed the fence.
And screamed.
Here, revealed, are the flaws in my plan:
1) My younger son would not be able to open the door to the house;
2) my firstborn would test the fence between pulses, and therefore proceed directly to seizing it in both hands;
3) the sheep were going to surprise me yet again; and
4) my son’s friend was afraid of sheep.
The fence is designed to convey a shock but not to cause injury, so although I was sorry for my firstborn’s shock, I wasn’t actually worried. His scream was quickly followed by a yell of rage at Napoleon, who responded with, “Do it yourself, then!” Harry was, by now, at the fence, which had been only partially dislodged. He wouldn’t go through the gap, but the Fima Feng--obliging creatures that they are--they were out in a trice. Reunited, the animals easily dodged the last 10-year-old, he of the heretofore unrevealed terror of sheep (and perhaps the dodging was all the other way).
I swore, in English, in front of the children. Not far down the road was another road, and if the animals reached that other road we would have a much harder time capturing them. I had wanted them to stay in the cul-de-sac.
As Harry, Snowy, Miracle, and Eric the Red galloped around a bend in the dirt road, I turned to the children, sorry to have left them with so much responsibility. I knelt in front of my firstborn, who was in tears, and put my hands on his shoulders. “You okay?” I said. He sniffed and nodded, glaring at his brother. “You were fantastic. These things happen—and it’s nobody’s fault.”
He looked up. “Will they be all right?”
I laughed a little. “Oh yes, you wait and see. We’ll be laughing about this over dinner. Trust me.” Yeah, and I had also told them we didn’t get earthquakes in Vermont. Well, we don’t, usually.
I looked at Napoleon, who glanced up at his older brother from under a resentful brow, then turned the look on me. “The door was locked!” he said. “Why did you lock the door, Mommy!” I hadn’t, of course, but sometimes the door knob sticks.
“Oh, honey.” I said. “It must have stuck. And you were so on the job—I saw you run across the driveway. You did exactly as I asked you to, and it’s not your fault it didn’t work.”
I looked at our guest, who was also close to tears. "You almost had them," I said. "I'm impressed."
“I’m afraid of sheep,” he replied. “I thought they were going to run me down. One of them had horns.”
“Even if you hadn’t been afraid of them, you couldn’t have stopped them,” I said. “The road is too wide for one person to block. Don’t feel bad, okay?” He looked at me doubtfully.
I breathed, because now I knew that I needed help. At these childrens’ ages I had already lived on a farm long enough to have a good instinct for what to do in this kind of situation, but for the first time I realized just how different my childrens’ world had been up to this point from mine. I felt sorry. It wasn’t fair to give them more than they were ready for.
At this point, Napoleon, sensitive as always to a shift in the atmosphere, said, “Mommy?”
“What,” I said, distractedly, my mind on whom to call for help.
“Can I play video games?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” Maybe the squad would help.
“How about computer?”
“Sure.”
“How about Grand Theft Auto?” he said, eagerly reading the signs of distraction on my face.
I looked at him then. “No!” I said. “Don’t push it.”
“Aw.”
He turned and went back to the house. My firstborn and his friend looked at me.
Where were Harry and the sheep? I thought, a bit frantically, but still hoping they hadn’t left the dirt road. I ran inside, unplugged the fence, grabbed the phone, and brought it along with me. I dialed the station.
Dan picked up the phone. “Rescue.” He said. This is a very straight, very responsible and stressed out young man. I think I’ve seen him smile only once.
I said, “Hey, you guys busy?”
“Not really,” he said.
“Well, I need a little help,” I said.
“What’s up?”
“Um, my three sheep and my donkey have gotten out of their paddock, and I think they might leave the cul-de-sac. I wondered—can you guys help with traffic control?”
Pause. “Your what and your what?” he said.
“Three sheep and a donkey.”
“Um,” he said. “Just a sec.” He said to somebody, “Can we help Sheila with her three sheep and her donkey?” An explosion of laughter, and somebody said, “Sure! Why not.”
“Dan?” I said.
“What?”
“You don’t have to tone this out, do you?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“We’ll be right there.”
“Okay.”
I hung up and got in the car. The two 10-year-olds wanted to come along, so I said, “Yeah, come on,” started the car while they got in, and headed for the end of the cul-de-sac, looking on both sides of the road for Harry and his Fima Feng. At the end of the cul-de-sac was another car parked with the people standing outside of it. My heart sank. But no, they were getting bicycles out of the trunk. Good. I parked and got out. Just then the two cars from the squad pulled in. I stopped to talk to them.
Dan was in the first car. He very seriously nodded, drove past me, and went up to assess the situation at my house. He returned in a few minutes and waited. Phil, the driver of the second car, grinned and said, “Did I hear right?”
“Probably,” I said, with studied nonchalance.
He kept looking at me, grinning, and Danielle, sitting in the passenger seat, stared fixedly out the front window, her face admirably immobile given the obvious shaking of laughter in the rest of her body. I was resigned. This was why I hadn't called them sooner. “Go ahead and laugh,” I said. I would never hear the end of this.
They both did. “What are you doing with a donkey?” Phil asked.
“It’s a spiritual thing,” I said flatly. “Can you help me?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “What does he look like?”
“What?”
“The donkey. What does he look like?”
“What do you mean what does he look like?” Danielle said, choking. “He’s a donkey!”
“Well, I don’t know anything about donkeys,” he retorted. “Don’t they have long ears?”
“Yes,” I said, gently, thinking that the children would be more helpful after all. “Long ears.”
“What color is he?”
This was too much. “He’s GREY.” I snapped. “What possible other color could he be?”
“Well, I don’t know. And just how long are the ears?” He placed his hands about three feet apart. “This long?”
“No,” I said, dully. “No.” I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead.
Danielle was out of patience. “Like this,” she said, in the manner of one who is going to take over, placing her hands about one foot apart. She climbed brusquely out of the car. “What do you need?” she said.
“Well, I think Phil should stay in his car, don’t you?” I said. Ours eyes met. She nodded. “Phil, how about you take the boys and go park your car just north of the opening in the fence. They know where it is.”
“Okay,” he said, with obvious relief. “I’ll do that.” The boys, happy to be smarter than a grownup, climbed with alacrity into his car.
Danielle and I walked over to the other car, the one that had parked just inside the cul-de-sac before the squad arrived. The people near it were still doing something with bicycles.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” said a woman about my age, who was helping a teenager set up for his bike ride.
“Have you by any chance seen a donkey and three sheep?” I asked.
She gazed at me for a long moment. “Yes?” she said. I think she may have been either relieved to find that she was not hallucinating, or considering the possibility that I was part of the hallucination. For my part, I was by now pretty sure that she was part of my nightmare, no matter what else might be true. Beside me, Danielle began to weep.
But she had seen them, and this was a relief. “Do you know where they are?” I asked.
She pointed over my head, into yet another neighbor’s back yard. “Right there,” she said.
I turned. It was true! They were right there, hidden by a willow tree. I asked Dan to block the way out to the main road.
Just then, the grandmother who lives next door, who now had a donkey in her yard, came out onto her front porch. She waved a cheery hello and walked carefully down the steps. She’s just recuperating from knee surgery, but this was something she absolutely could not miss.
“Hi,” she said, grinning. “That your new donkey?” There is nothing like the way a farm woman from Vermont can talk to a flatlander who has done something ridiculous.
“Yeah,” I said. “Want to meet him?”
“Oh, sure!” she said happily.
“Okay,” I said. “Can you stand right there and wave him off if he tries for the main road?”
“Sure,” she said, in that musical Vermont lilt. There would be no problem from her quarter. She, at the age of 82, was more adept with a donkey, certainly, than either Phil or Dan.
Danielle and I walked towards Harry. Danielle has good instincts—she took up a perfect position and altered it perfectly in response to whatever Harry did. He had to face me. He looked up from his grass, the picture of friendly curiosity, like somebody who wonders whatever you’re doing here.
“Come on,” I snapped. (No more crooning.) “Time to go home.” I reached toward him to smack his rump, but he was already running, straight for Gram, who responded as a true Vermonter, with an unequivocal statement to him that he couldn’t go that way. He believed her—anybody would—and ran the other way. Danielle cut him off, though, and he had no choice but to go back down the dirt road towards home. Snowy, Miracle, and Eric the Red followed. “Blaaat,” somebody said. I could hear Danielle giggling as she ran first this way, and then that. Dan had closed in behind me. We had gotten Harry trapped between my garage and the fence, which on this side was (of course) closed. But he couldn’t get away.
Any creature with an ounce of sense would have known he was beaten. But not Harry. Endowed with a good deal more than an ounce of sense, he still looked for a way out. And he found it: Dan. Here again, unbeknownst to me, was a person with a Fear. Of donkeys. Harry faced Dan, and Dan melted away in front of him with a muttered “Er… Sheila?”
“What are you doing?” I asked. Kindly and sweetly.
“I’m just… I just thought he might bite.”
“He doesn’t bite,” I said. These people needed so much briefing!
“Oh. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said, for about the fourth time that day swallowing my ire at Harry, as Dan and I stood side by side and watched him head back for the main road. I sighed.
But we had all forgotten Danielle. I heard her gasping for air as she ran stumbling and laughing around some cedar trees. They were both lost to sight. She would need help, but first I unfastened the fence on this end, and glanced across the paddock at Phil and the boys, who were laughing with each other on the other side—except my firstborn, who suddenly said something rather seriously to Phil, who reacted by reaching protectively towards his car and saying something in a forceful tone. (I learned later that my firstborn had said, “I hope he doesn’t just ignore this barrier and jump right through,” at which Phil had responded, “You HOPE not?! My CAR is on the other side of this barrier!”)
Suddenly, all three of them stiffened and looked off to my right. “AAAAAh!” yelled Phil. And again, “AAAAAAAAAAh!” as he tried to decide whether to stand and protect his car or run behind it.
It was Harry. Danielle had cut him off (Danielle-the-Magnificent—all-hail-Danielle, I breathed) and he was clattering, Fima Feng in tow, back up the road straight at Phil and the boys. Straight at my firstborn, actually, who looked rather small just then.
But I had totally underestimated that child. He stood his ground. He held the fence firm across the road, and he SCOWLED from his full height (which happens to be at Harry’s eye level). Harry quailed when he saw him. My firstborn stood stock still, relentless, and I was put in mind of all those times he and I had clashed like the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object. But it was Harry in his sights this time. My son glared. He might even have growled. And Harry seemed to know in his heart that, if he didn’t go into that paddock, my firstborn would hunt him down and surely kill him. He turned left, hesitated just for an instant, and trotted meekly into the paddock. My firstborn soberly shut the fence behind him. We all cheered.
Danielle jogged up, panting and still laughing. “You’re amazing,” I said. “How can you be in so many places at once?” But she was still laughing too hard to respond.
Phil drove up to drop off the 10-year-olds and rolled down his window. “Your son scared me,” he said. I nodded.
Dan walked over to me. “Anything else?” he said, with quiet competence.
“Um, no,” I muttered, looking down. “Thanks, all of you. Drinks on me tonight.” But I was embarassed in the face of this man whose life would never ever include such adventures as this one, and who seemed to know that the secret reason these things happened to me was that I needed them to.
I looked down at my firstborn, gentle determined soul that he is. He was looking at Harry. “I hope he never does that again,” he said. Harry was pretending not to notice him, though one ear stayed cocked in his direction. I put my arm around my son’s shoulders. “He wouldn’t dare.” I said.
Just then, my little Napoleon came outside. “That was fun, Mommy!” he said, the picture of delight.
“Ya think?” I said.
“’Course!” he replied. “I got to play video games!”
I laughed and picked him up, he with his you-can’t-resist-me smile.
“You need a rest now, right, Mommy?” he continued. I nodded, pleased that he would notice. “So can I keep playing video games?”
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Court
Court wasn't too bad. Could have been better, could have been worse. Can't post exact stuff here,
but details aren't as important as overall impressions anyway--that is what the judge walks away with.
Thanks for your kind words, Pri--you are as always a pillar. I really felt your support yesterday. Love you! Beijos beijos beijos!
Dad, Mom, Amy, Aunt Marilyn, Nick, Vernon, each of you reached out. Elizabeth, what a blessing it was to have lunch with you and talk girl talk instead of obsessing over the details of the day. Magic, I knew you were there in spirit.
Love to you all!
but details aren't as important as overall impressions anyway--that is what the judge walks away with.
Thanks for your kind words, Pri--you are as always a pillar. I really felt your support yesterday. Love you! Beijos beijos beijos!
Dad, Mom, Amy, Aunt Marilyn, Nick, Vernon, each of you reached out. Elizabeth, what a blessing it was to have lunch with you and talk girl talk instead of obsessing over the details of the day. Magic, I knew you were there in spirit.
Love to you all!
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