Just some thoughts about life

Earlier today, I buried a goat. It was a somewhat surreal experience, but let’s back up a bit.

Last weekend, for my birthday, I bought too many plants and drove to West Virginia for three days of gardening. For a variety of reasons, I suppose, or maybe for no real reasons at all, this was not a good birthday. I love my birthday, and so this was disappointing, but I’m glad it’s in the rearview and my plants are in the ground. Much of what I planted last year for my birthday plantathon is thriving (I shake my fist at you, ironweed!); it reminds me that growth can appear so glacially slow that what was alive seems to have died, but in reality, progress is being made. Life is biding its time. Cell by cell, root by root, bud by bud.

Despite my inability to settle, I spent a lot of time with the goats and cats and the peace and beauty of the land and our view. Of our four-turned-eight goats, Lefty has always been the weakest, the gentle lumberer the others butted and picked on to continually assert pecking order. She nearly died three years ago of listeria; her then-owners literally saved her life by literally going above and beyond for many sleepless days and nights.

I also, last weekend, hired a couple to help me pull some shiso (my invasive nemesis!) from the pastures. West Virginians endure so much poverty and hardship. It’s enough to break your heart on the regular. This couple currently lives with their teenage daughter in one room of a house in which dogs are allowed to pee and poo and it’s rarely cleaned up. There is mold, and they wish they could return to the hotel, but they can’t. Lefty loped up to say hi as they started pulling, and they even got to see her turn a left circle (hence her name, from the listeria episode). I hope she gave them a moment of simple pleasure.

Since we adopted Lefty, we have all doted on her. She was often alone, which is not the norm for a herd animal. Tom thought she seemed content; I always worried that she was lonely. In that is such a fascinating perspective on how different people read and experience others. But, that is an explication for another day.

Last weekend, I took Lefty aside each day for a chopped apple in private. She is a slow eater, and I didn’t want her to feel rushed. She loved apples. As she chomped, I scratched her neck and looked into her big brown eyes; they were like pools of simple goodness. Some apple juice ran down her jowls, and it made me so happy. When I left Sunday, I hugged her and said I’d see her soon.

On Friday, our caretaker called to say that Lefty had died. He’d seen vultures for a few days straight and found our girl lying in a sun-dappled dip in one of the pastures. Because he has dealt with livestock death before, he knew to close the gates to isolate her so that the other goats and scavengers wouldn’t meet up.

Yesterday was Earth Day. I’d organized a neighborhood yard sale which was a fun, great success. So many families sold and gave away so many things, hung out together, and contributed to various eco and charitable drives I and some other neighbors spearheaded. Supplies for a local diaper bank, a humane shelter, a family shelter, and a summer art camp for poor and refugee families in our area. The rain we desperately needed held off until closing time. It ushered in a cool front, and I wondered if that might help any smell or bloat we’d encounter when we went to bury Lefty. I thought about how much material stuff was being exchanged and how it was both wonderful and awful. The excess when so many have nothing.

Right now, I’m on my porch watching grackles and northern mockingbirds and sparrows and mourning doves duke it out at my feeder station. They, too, have a pecking order and regularly flex with wing, call, flight, and talon. A zaftig dove has decided to use the tray feeder as a bed. It’s both reclining and eating, and you’ve just got to admire the chutzpah. I am sad and quiet.

We all dreaded finding Lefty today. J was extremely worried about what state she might be in; O and I felt the right thing to do was properly bury her no matter what; T was solemn.

As it turns out, vultures are profoundly capable creatures, and Lefty was but a skeleton, one leg, and a hide. There was a smell, but only if you were downwind or on top of what remained. It was remarkable, really. Like, objectively, we all had to take a moment to appreciate the incredible efficiency, thoroughness, and lack of waste. And selfishly, the vultures’ work made ours infinitely easier, in both emotional and physical ways. What we saw didn’t look like Lefty anymore, and that helped. And, so much of our land is rock with a hint of dirt, but where Lefty lay, we could dig with relative ease. Quietly, wearing masks, Ol, T, and I dug and folded and covered. J pulled shiso, and then we all built a cairn atop Lefty’s grave. In a weird way, the entire afternoon felt rather like a perfectly organic end to the Earth Day weekend. For what it’s worth, I want to be buried like we buried Lefty. A pine box if you must, but just me and the earth would be my choice, with some flowers on top.

I am enjoying a glass of wine and the cacophonous concert of these wonderful birds —a scarlet cardinal has just entered the mix— and thinking of Lefty and the differences between strong and weak, objective and emotional, simple and not. About community and the individuals that comprise each one. About how hard life is for some.

I think, as I so often have, about articulating for the first time how strenuously I wished for a simpler, more still mind. It was my senior year of college, and a boy and I had recently fallen deeply in love. He would be the second and final heartbreak of my life, but I can still only think of him with fondness and gratitude. In any case, our relationship was, perhaps, a mere month old. We were in bed, and he looked at me with his big brown eyes, pools of love, and asked, “Emil, do you ever wish you had a slower, simpler mind? I do.” MANY people call me Em, some call me Emmy or Nichols. No one, before or since, has called me Emil.

“Yes, all the time,” I said. And that was that. We listened to a lot of music together; Tom Petty was a favorite, and whenever I hear “Time to Move On” I am instantly transported back to a room in the Delt house.

It's time to move on, it's time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It's time to move on, time to get going

In the decades since, I’ve gotten tougher, stronger, orders of magnitude so. But my mind? It still runs and races and feels and hurts, and that in this world is…well, it’s hard. Is the goat lonely? Will the couple be ok? Will the ironweed ever grow? Will the shiso be eradicated? Will any plastic bag recycling drive ever make one bit of difference? Will my loved ones continue to grow up and out in healthy ways? Will I get to take the stage for my next act?

Today I buried my darling Lefty. My greatest hope is that she didn’t suffer at all between the last slice of apple and lying down in that bit of valley. I hope she felt love and some peace. Perhaps her mind was always still, perhaps it was at the end. It’s time to move on.

Nostalgia and New Years

We spent a quiet Christmas at home, the boys, Tom, me, and my parents. It was cold but snowless. Everyone seemed interested in staying in their pajamas and in the house for as long as possible each day, and for the most part we did.

Movies were huge this holiday season, both at home and in the theaters. We watched Roman Holiday, The Circus (Charlie Chaplin silent film from 1928- have you seen it? Priceless.), the original Star Wars trilogy, and the original Murder On the Orient Express, and went out to see The Last Jedi once again and also The Post (that one sans kids). I highly recommend all of them.

We took the kids to a local restaurant to hear the senior chamber chorus from their school sing carols and to eat big burgers and plates of fries at the bar. Dad made many lemon pies, and we ate all of them.

Yesterday it snowed, and yesterday Mom and Dad left, and yesterday I started taking down our Christmas decorations, and today I feel terribly blue. Even my stomach is in revolt. The physical push and pull of emotion and fatigue and goodbyes to all that, I suppose.

For many, the end of the year, the turn of a season, the closing of any given chapter can be fraught. I can never anticipate how I'll feel during times of change; no one is always happy or a trigger. Last New Year's I felt festive and bright. This evening I feel heavy and sludgy. I am trying to roll with it, but such is not my forte.

Even with all the good, this year has also been dreadful in ways. The devolution of so much of our country -norms, what unity remained, decency, our standing in the world, our "president"- weighs heavily on my shoulders and my heart. So many people died this year, so much of the natural world was harmed. Some of my closest friends have children with mighty challenges. My sister and her family are far away, my parents too, really, and I feel that disconnect so deeply at times. I am getting gray hair and wrinkles that concealer doesn't much hide. I don't look young anymore.

And while all of that can be managed most of the time, sometimes it feels none of it can. Sometimes the yoyo of acceptance and positivity suddenly speeds back with ferocity and force and wallops you in the face and soul. It's annoying really. It's like when your phone battery is doing fine and then suddenly plummets into the red zone, and you're like WTF because of course you don't have a charger handy and you need to be able to receive a call and also send a few emails before you pick up your kids because even though they're older, you still can't count on uninterrupted time until they're asleep that night and now that's so much later than it used to be and maybe you can't even stay up that long. 

I'm really peevish about my hair and skin right now. I know that sounds so shallow, and it bugs me because I want to feel zen about aging and fight the stupid Hollywood establishment that imposes ridiculously impossible standards on the acceptable ways women should look as they age. Which is to say that they look as if they are not aging. But it's hard to suddenly look on the outside a way that doesn't match, or at least present, the way I feel (wish to feel) on the inside. 

Which is why I bought an expensive facial peel and mask at Whole Foods last night after speaking briefly to the male employee who may or may not have known what he was saying to me during a trip there for hummus and mayo. Desperation will drive you to the inner aisles, people. 

The yoyo is also swinging back to the point of its arc at which the kids need to return to school, routine needs to become routine again, and at least one of Oliver's enormous box creations has got to make it to the recycling bin. I feel like we live in a boxopolis. I don't want to live in a boxopolis. I don't want to quash his creativity either, but he is the laziest, worst cleaner-upper ever which is to say he cries and doesn't do it unless I threaten to take dessert away, and I mean really, aren't we past that now? 

And yet, as I push it all away, I pull it back to me, just like that yoyo. I am thankful that I don't exercise excessively anymore, that I eat what I want when I want, that my children love me so much and I them, that they are so creative and cool and dear and fun, that they like to relax in pjs as much as Tom and I do.

I am furious and heartbroken about the state of our country, but I am proud to resist in all the ways I can and do. I am grateful to have realized my strengths and to continually improve at overcoming worries and doing it all anyway.

If you are feeling nostalgic tonight, or sad, or pissed, or tired, or worried, or old, I am sending you a hug and a cozy pair of socks. If you're feeling festive and youthful and happy and full, I am so happy for you. I'm going to let myself feel what I'm feeling, and I guess that's growth right there. We have a fire to light, and nachos to make, and boys to tuck in, and T said he'd do a puzzle with me tonight, so there's that. 

Force be with us as 2018 rolls in.

Youth

I find myself, tonight, envious of youth. Not of being younger but of feeling that way. Of looking that way.

Today at the beach, I watched teens and twenty-somethings stroll up and down the sandy runway in front of me. Their bodies, regardless of size really, are still taut and solid. The vagaries of aging, childbirth, stress and life lived don't yet show themselves atop such fledgling canvasses. 

Tan girls with perky breasts and butts peeking from tiny, brightly-colored bikinis walked with confidence as their windswept hair blew around their sunglasses. No stretchmarks criss-cross their lower abdomens. Age-spots and rising veins don't interrupt the smooth expanses of hands and legs. Sag isn't yet a word in their self-descriptive vocabulary. 

Equally bronzed guys swaggered with confidence. Their necks slope into shoulders whose defined muscles are newly minted. Their torsos are taut like a drum, lean stretches that draw eyes southward. These bucks can still drink beer daily without the gut that will start to grow in another ten years. They can jump in the air and crash into the ground to catch a ball and be no worse for the wear. 

You can sense the vibrant spark of sex and newness all around. The life in young people is palpable. Intoxicating. Lusty. I covet it.

I had the strange sensation of being surrounded by ripe peaches, dripping their sugary juices everywhere but where I sat.

I have never wished to be a teen or twenty-something again. Not once, for I found those years to ask more than they gave in return. I love being 39 and am grateful every day for the growing self-acceptance and assurance I feel, for being settled in so many ways.

But when I see pictures of myself now, I sometimes gasp a bit. When did my skin start to look so...well, old? I like my laugh lines and crow's feet because they symbolize happiness, but when did they become so...well, pronounced?

When did my stomach start to so assertively resist all manner of toning exercise? When did my hair begin to frizz and require mousse? Mousse! Why do I never, despite lathering on bottle after bottle of moisturizer, feel, well, moisturized? The circles under my eyes are not going anywhere. I think I'd best accept them and stock up on concealer. 

My hands are looking ever more like my mom's and grandmother's: prominent veins, slightly ridged fingernails, skin that looks to me like micro-scales or finely-grained leather. Unlike the other evidence of decline, this I don't mind.

I always loved their hands and can still feel Nanny's in mine, even though she's been gone for nearly two years. In her later life, her skin was paper-thin but so soft. Unbelievably so. Her uneven fingernails were like a New Orleans sidewalk: on not a one can you walk two feet without encountering a break in the concrete due to uppity Oak tree roots. 

My mother's hands always seemed so capable. Strong yet tender, large but feminine. I like to think I have a combination of their hands, and so it feels traitorous not to embrace the fact that mine are aging in similar ways. 

As I watched the boys bury each other in the sand and Tom walk aimlessly while reading his Kindle (yet never hit a thing) and all the hotness of youth swarming around, I found myself glancing self-consciously toward my lap and my poochy stomach. I looked admiringly at my still-lovely legs and at my hands which, like my mother's and grandmother's have done and can do so much, and I felt a poignant peace.