I’m no scientist, but I’m fascinated by string theory. This idea that all fundamental particles are actually tiny vibrating loops of string attempts to reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics. I picture tiny squiggling pieces of invisible matter that bind together my knowable universe, kind of like seeing bacteria squirm under a microscope. Usually when I think about things like this my brain starts to feel like it’s melting and I run the very real risk of scaring myself into a state of existential dread. The world feels too big, too complex, too cold and mechanical, and I feel like a speck with no purpose. So imagine my surprise when this summer in Ireland I saw cows being moved from one field to the next and my understanding of the complexity of the universe came into sharp focus.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not smoking funny weeds during my summer months of introspection in Ireland, and our well water has been declared (mostly) not capable of producing mind-altering states, it’s just that with all the chatter of suburban chaos stripped away and the simplified country life becoming the meter and measure of ways, watching cows move made sense. We travel our back roads multiple times a day. Being in the back of beyond means that any small task means taking a route through the hillsides. We have memorized the potholes and blind curves, know where to keep far left because people come screaming around the corners, and notice immediately when things have been altered. Sometime in early August one of our neighbors cut his grasses to make silage and baled them up in the ubiquitous black plastic wraps that appear like mountains of dark rocks on most farms. It is customary to pile them in neat pyramids or geometric stacks and then make some accommodation for keeping the marauding crows and ravens away. The stack our neighbor made was surrounded by poles bound together with a thick string and hung with CDs flashing in the wind. Shockingly, there was also a dead crow that had been shot and strung up, too, a gruesome warning to the other corvids of what would happen should they choose to molest this fresh pile of future livestock fodder. I watched that crow swing for days, its head turned down as though it might tuck it back under its wing. As the wind and rain worked away at the body, the feathers became ragged and the strings above it frayed, but it didn’t drop. I couldn’t stop looking at it. I couldn’t stop checking it. I couldn’t shake the violence of the act. I was both morbidly fascinated and curious to see what the elements would do to it in time. It didn’t fall off the string before we left, and I am forced to imagine that a skeleton must hang there now, if the foxes haven’t finished the job. Just around the bend from the silage pile, we noticed that small stakes holding temporary strings had been placed along the road. They looked like tall plant supports with a small loop at the top, and the string was similar to butcher’s twine, with a red and white twirl to it. I noticed that this string was cotton, and I figured it was being used as a survey line to rebuild the walls edging the road. But it went across driveways, too, so that didn’t make sense. It stayed up for a few days, and finally on the third day of wondering about it, we saw it in action. We were on our way to visit the Fota Wildlife center with our framily and their young daughter when we turned down the road and were directed to pull over by our neighbor. She motioned to a gravel-covered driveway big enough for both our cars and we nosed in. Moments later a large herd of cows ambled past us in a long, unbroken line, mooing contentedly as they gazed at us with their dark eyes. While we were on a tight timeline, we were also thrilled. Everyone piled out of the cars and stood there for twenty minutes or so, appraising the cows with their swollen udders and lovely black and white coats. In America we call these "Irish traffic jams," and the novelty of seeing one often sticks with our friends and family when they come to visit. The cows calmly plodded on, and I saw the husband moving along at the back of the line, pulling up the string stakes as the herd completed their passage to the fresh field. My eyes flew open wide. All that kept the cows in line was string? Like, the same string I tie up my roasts with? The irony was too much. A typical mature Holstein Friesian milk cow weighs between 680–770 kg (1500–1700 lbs) and when they want to move in a particular direction not much can stop them, so the use of this delicate string was impressive to me. Perhaps it looks enough like the white electrical shock tape used to define their quadrants for strip grazing that it deters any thoughts of breaking through. This rather ordinary-looking polyester tape flutters in the breeze and looks innocuous until you realize that a live wire runs through the middle of it. Until I understood that fact I thought the stallion that lives in our front field was being kept in his (admittedly substandard) section of the meadow by mere ribbons. Then I realized he got a shock each time he tried to eat under the line. He grew restless at not having access to the luscious grass he couldn’t reach, and he pawed his side relentlessly until it turned into a muddy field of weeds and bulrush. Finally, after days of testing the tape with his nose and flipping it with his muzzle (maybe to build up resistance to the shocks?) he broke through the tape and was happily grazing in the green field for a few days before Donovan caught him again, moved him back to the muddy side, and raised the tape up a few feet to check the horse. I felt bad for the stallion and his failed attempt to break free to fresher pastures. And finally, my struggles with my own version of string made the whole lesson clear. As I perched on the couch in the sitting room listening to the rain fall on the slate roof at Reavilleen, I worked on crocheting a blanket that has been in progress in California for a few years. It’s a large one, and I’ve been struggling with it for ages. I put it in my suitcase and flew it to Ireland thinking I’d have lovely, peaceful afternoons to work it, but who was I kidding? I was busy building bookcases, tiling fireplace surrounds, pulling endless weeds, painting walls, baking bread, and generally having a ball. But here and there I would sit down and pull out the project, unwind my string, and weave away. I only know one stitch that my grandmother taught me; I do it poorly, but it doesn’t matter. It feels good to create something tangible and functional from a single line of kinky cotton. Inevitably, just as I get going at a good clip and make real progress, my ball of yarn gets tangled and I have to sit and patiently unwind it, teasing out knots and cursing under my breath. I usually have a long fuse with tedious projects such as this, finding Zen in the challenge of following the string on its journey and coaxing out the crazy loops. This time, though, I gave up and handed it to Tom. As he sat and pulled it through his fingers, talking to the tangle, sussing out its logic, I watched him as an architect to a small universe. Here we were, sitting on a couch in the green, quiet hills of Ireland, weaving something together and pulling it back apart. There was a frisson in that understanding. For every bit of loosening progress he made on the main knot, a little moment further down the string tightened up into a new problem. He made me hold the fixed portions while he gentle prized away at the next knot, and I felt us in our life, working together and trusting each other to hold the line as the other worked something out. It’s all so fragile, so tiny, the lines that hold us in or out, the boundaries drawn to protect us from something or deny us something. We see the green grasses on the other side and we want them, but we also see the warning of the shot crow twisting blackly in the breeze and we pause. If string theory is the “theory of everything,” a way to understand and unite all matter and forces into a mode of understanding, then these three string scenarios helped me see the framework of my days in Ireland. I am both building a life and unbuilding expectations. I am bound by the way I wish it were and the way it is. I am pushing against the line marking what I can be and where I can go, and testing it all to see if I can stand the little shocks that keep me checked. In the meantime, I’m watching something come together into a finished piece that symbolizes patience and hard work. A life, a blanket, a family, a house, a country, a home. As I rounded the corner home after errands in Clonakilty, I peered far up the berm road leading to Reavilleen. It is a twisty bit of lane bordered in both sides by deep ditches that run springs in wet weather, but this also means there are no turnouts to let another car pass by if you meet one, so care must be taken to ensure the path is clear before entering. Since there is no outlet and there are only three houses at the end, one can reasonably assume the coast will be clear, but there can be surprises. Huge slurry trucks spreading watered-down cow manure onto the fields can come around the bend when you least expect it, and our mailman, Fachtna (pronounced alarmingly like a swear word), regularly tests the treads on his tires as he tears around the corners, leaving broken bramble branches hanging their heads.
But this afternoon was different. Peter Daly had his car and horse trailer parked at the gates of the upper field and I caught a glimpse of Castle Salem Queen bolting across the tree line in the opposite direction. I pulled the car into the wedge opening at the head of the road about 100 yards from them, and turned off the engine. Peter and his young nephew noted my car but turned their gazes to the horses now walking reluctantly back in the direction of the horse trailer, Chico dragging his hooves. At the last minute Queenie got spooked again, turned, and bolted. Peter threw up his hands, closed the gate, and made a motion for me to continue on up the lane. I waited until he backed the horse trailer up to the passing point, and made my way to him. When I got there and rolled down the window he said, “Ye aren’t going to give out to me, are ye? Makin’ ye wait and all? But sure, aren’t ye on an extended holiday, yet?” His eyes glittered with mirth. I laughed and said, “Peter, it’s no problem at all! I would never give out to you. I can see you’re working. What’s up?” “Ah, just trying to catch Queen is all. Have a scan set up with the vet to see if she’s in foal. We’ve three we’re scanning, so.” Now this was exciting. Clare and I had such a thrill watching John feed his cattle in the winter and loved learning the intricate process behind farm life. It gave us a deep appreciation for how much work goes into the beef growing industry on a rural farm. I immediately invited myself and Clare (cheeky minx that I am) to come watch the process. Peter replied that he’d give me a ring once he caught Queen, and the vet said he’d be there at half twelve to scan the three. I raced home, collected Clare, and we dropped down the hill to Castle Salem at half twelve on the dot. Well, West Cork time being on a different planetary alignment and all, a good hour went by as we shared a pleasant cup of coffee with Peter’s three nephews, and his partner Jacinta. But, Clare and I hadn’t had lunch yet, the caffeine was buzzing in circles in our ears, and there was still no sign of the vet. Not wanting to intrude on what could be their lunchtime too, I excused myself and we retreated home after they promised to call when he arrived. Lucky for us, Tom was preparing lunch when we got home, and we spent a pleasant hour eating before my phone rang near 3pm. Jacinta was breathless: “Come quick! The vet’s finished two and he’s nearly done!” We tore down the lane at an unholy speed and arrived to find the vet already shoulder deep into the rear end of Castle Salem Queen as Peter held her nose with a twitch. While it looked painful to the horse, I’ve since learned that a twitch is a rope loop at the end of a sturdy stick that binds the horse’s nose and upper lip and provides a temporary calming effect during stressful procedures. The vet acknowledged that Clare and I had arrived by turning, peering from under his goggles, withdrawing his arm from inside the horse, dropping a great handful of green poop on the ground, and nodding at us. Then he took his gloved arm and reinserted it, rooting around and withdrawing more poop until the path above wasn’t pressing down on the area, and was clear for scanning. I looked at Clare askance and grinned. How stupid we were. Just moments before in the car we were wondering if they shaved the horse belly to ultrasound, or if they used jelly to make the instrument slide around, and if the horse would like it or not. We had no idea that the way to get the scan was so, erm, INVASIVE. He must’ve sense my amazement, because as he rooted around some more, leaning into the rear of Queenie as she shifted uncomfortably, he explained the method of scanning in scientific terms, relaying to us the waves emitted per minute, the way the scanner bounced like echolocation off the solid bits and moved through the watery amniotic fluid, then bounced back to create an image. He kept glancing up at his forehead, and for a moment I though it was a tic until I asked him if the machine produced a sound that would, like dolphins, change when it bounced off the fetus. He looked at me like I was half-mad and laughed, “No, no.” He pointed to his goggles, which I now noticed had wires running down the back, “There’s a tiny TV screen in here!” I laughed out loud. Well, of course there was! Here I was thinking it was a low tech process but the man was a veritable Blade Runner with all his slick gizmos. He stopped moving quickly and peered up to his eyebrows, “Three for three, I’d say!” Peter, who had been standing quietly at Queenie’s head let out a low, “By Jaysus, really?!” And Jacinta laughed gleefully, “Oh, Peter, can you believe it? After all that time?” Peter quickly untied the twitch, gave Queenie a nose rub, and shook his head, “I can’t believe it.” Jacinta relayed that all three horses had scanned in foal, and they had been trying for years to breed them. When she recounted the names back to me of the pregnant mares, I started to smile. Each one of them were the horses that Clare and I had fed apples to in the fields. “And you say none of them had even fallen pregnant before,” I asked Jacinta. “No,” she replied, “and Peter had given up hope that they would.” When I told her that Clare had been feeding those same mares apples all this summer and last, she cocked her head to the side and said, “Now, where do you buy those apples!?” I know she was joking but it got me thinking. I had been trying all last summer to introduce Clare on how to handle and read horses, trying to get her comfortable with their unpredictable nature and whims. Ear pricks and lowered lashes, tail flicks and hoof stamps, knickers and coughs, they all meant something different. In the beginning she would drop the apples or carrots when their lips got too feely with her hands, afraid of those huge yellow teeth. But now she puts her fingers right up and holds on as they take the little slices of apple from her fingertips and she even holds their noses as they chew, unafraid of an accidental bite. I love the thought of my girl of 15, her own body rounding towards womanhood, standing at a gate, feeding mares apples. They are learning together, she and the beast, how to trust and whom to allow close. She obeys the distance rule of the electric wire, careful not to make the same mistakes as her mother. She is aware of the pain that comes with not heeding the caution of others. Each of these mares was, in her own way, coming into her own, taking the time that nature demands to figure out the working of the world and the body. Perhaps the magic of a young girl offering up gifts blurred the boundaries of woman and beast; maybe her innocence allowed their bodies to finally flower. In the myth of Eden, Eve ate the apple from the tree of knowledge and thus saw the shame of her natural state. Women were cursed to suffer the pains of childbirth from thereafter. Here in our own Eden, I see Clare feeding apple slices to shy mares, and in that act of kindness I see the story changing. She is a child flowering into a woman. Through her sweet gifts she is releasing fecundity hidden away in the soft flanks of the ponies we have come to love. There’s no easy way to put this: Trixie is gone. She’s alive, as we now know, but she is… elsewhere. Let me explain. For dog lovers and coddlers, this will not be an easy story, as I well know because it colored our first weeks here with a sadness that can only come when something you treasure suddenly disappears. If you’ve been reading this blog from the beginning, you will know that Trixie was the highlight of our first summer here at Reavilleen. She slunk up and wiggled her butt and delighted us with her trademark enthusiasm mixed with submissive puppyishness. We laughed at her antics, rolled with her in the grass, bought her tug toys, a new collar, and never fed her treats because we didn’t want to encourage her away from Alec, her owner and our elderly neighbor just down the road. She brought a joy to us that tempered the fact that we missed our big furry boys at home desperately. When we found her seriously injured during our last trip and we sent her home with Alec to convalesce and then she simply disappeared, we were heartbroken. Lazarus dog that she is, she popped back up during our Christmas stay and the stories of her wandering off were relayed. She hung out with me in April when I came back for a week to attend to business, and she was ecstatic to see us this summer when we returned. We guessed her to be barely a year old and not handled or trained, and we took care to help her learn the ropes. Her obsession with chasing our car down the road as we left was worrisome to me, as she often would run with us far from the turns that led out of our little island in the sky. I was concerned about her being hit on the roads as she returned. As so it was that after one such tire-biting chase down the road as we left to drive to Cork, she disappeared. We had just bought her a new high-viz yellow collar to stand out against her black and white ruff, and each day we scanned the fields and roads for her form. I would search the ditches and watch the streams, each time fearful I might see her crumpled little body. John and Cathy asked us if we had seen her, as she had been de facto living with them in their garage as Alec couldn’t tempt her to stay home, and we sadly admitted that we hadn’t. Two weeks went by and I couldn’t help but ask Cathy about her again. She admitted that Trixie had been found wandering the farms down by Castle Salem, and seemed to be chasing or bothering livestock. Someone had picked her up and was going to take her to the pound when Tony, a friend of Cathy’s said he knew her owner and would return her. Cathy relayed that she was afraid of what became of Trixie, for it was not unknown for a farmer to get fed up with a dog and “give it the rope”. We all felt sick about this at Reavilleen, and you could tell that it affected John and Cathy, too. While she wasn’t technically their dog, they had been feeding and housing her for the better part of the year and had grown attached. Cathy even made a low-salt gravy to go with Trixie’s kibble on occasion. But farm life is different. Animals must work or obey or both, and Trixie didn’t fit the mold. Bothering livestock on another farm is unforgivable when everyone is working so hard to keep order. If an animal is out of line, the farmer is liable for its behavior. While most of us animal lovers couldn’t fathom killing an animal out of hand, on a farm where there is work to be done and money to be made, order must be kept. This made us all feel sick, and for me I couldn’t shake the anger and disbelief that Trixie was gone simply because she had not been properly trained to stay within her confines. I gave up looking for her, believing she had met her end along with Alec’s patience for her misbehavior. We grieved, and I pushed the tiny tennis ball Clare bought Trixie under the table at the backdoor so we wouldn’t be reminded of her zany antics. Two weeks later as I was brushing my teeth, Clare burst into my bathroom and held up her phone: there was a photo of Trixie smiling from the Instagram account of West Cork Animal Welfare! They had renamed her “Eden” and admitted she had had a rough start as she was shy and hesitant, but that she was available for adoption. I choked on my toothpaste and my eyes welled up a bit. She was alive! I swung through a tumble of emotions – was I happy she was alive or pissed off that she was dumped in the shelter? Was I going to rescue this dog and go through the hassle of flying her home in the hopes of integrating her into my pack? Would John and Cathy go save her from the pound and risk having the whole scenario repeat itself if she ran away again? Did Alec not go pick her up and just let her be taken to the shelter? Was I relieved? Was I sad? Finally, I said to Clare as she stood there, holding her phone and scanning my face: “I’m glad she has the opportunity to have a new home and be loved. I am glad she’s not dead.” As I said it I realized that was all that mattered. John and Cathy couldn’t go pick her up, obviously. Alec is John’s uncle and it really was his dog, and to go against his decision would not be a great move for harmony’s sake. Plus, they couldn’t fence or contain her, and they work all day. Even though Cathy said John considered going to pick her up anyway, he decided against it. I knew all this immediately, and yet selfishly, I wanted them to go get her. Trixie was the main reason Clare would go outside and lounge, waiting for that little wagglebutt to show up. Utterly devoted to her dogs at home, she needs the joy a dog brings to make being stuck on a hillside in Ireland with her parents a feasible venture. I feared she would see this place as cold and unforgiving, with the little pockets of joy easily squelched or ripped away. Imagine my joy when, perhaps emboldened by Trixie’s absence and no longer chased off by her patrols, Alec’s new puppy arrived at our grassy knoll and took up her newly claimed territory. We call her Cookie because she is chocolate and tawny, and she is obviously quite young, maybe six months or so. Like Trixie she is super submissive and scared, and she doesn’t like to be away from Alec’s yard too long, which is probably for the better. She nibbles our hands and cries because she is so happy to be scratched and held. Clare has begun teaching her to chase the tiny tennis ball, and for a while there she was getting good at returning it until she realized it is much more fun to run in the opposite direction with her prize. Clare quickly righted that train by offering shards of a cracker upon the return of the ball, and now they are back on track again. Unlike Trixie, Cookie doesn’t immediately come tearing up the driveway when she hears our sliding doors open, and this is probably because she is all the way over at Alec’s house where she belongs instead of camping out just outside our door, so this means we never quite know when we are going to see her. But when we catch a glimpse of brown streaking through the yard or standing at the door, I always yell out to Clare: Brown Dog! and she come clumping down the stairs from her garret to find a few moments of joy scratching Cookie’s ears. A few days after Clare saw Trixie on the website, she was watching Instagram stories and saw Trixie on a pack walk with the group of dogs waiting to be adopted. She was bouncing along with meadow, tongue hanging out, ears pert like satellites. It makes me happy to see her happy, and I’m hopeful she will be adopted. We had dinner with John and Cathy on Friday and Cathy reported that Trixie has a Reservedsign by her photo, which means things are looking very good for her indeed. It also told me a lot that Cathy is following Trixie’s journey, that our heartbreak was not singular. We keep checking the site to see any updates, but for now it’s enough to know that she’s with people, happy, and has a hopeful future. May her new owner train her gently and keep her safe. In the meantime, we will take our pockets of joy with Cookie, but I understand now how farm life prepares you to shield your heart. It’s a skill that I don’t think I’ll be very good at, but one I must learn in order to keep my balance here at Reavilleen. UPDATE: Trixie has been adopted to her forever home! Happy Days.
It’s a handy little function on my iPhone. Rather than trying to remember if it is daylight savings in California and/or Ireland and then counting backward four hours then switching am to pm, sometimes I just click the little black clock and up pops my preset time zones. It occurred to me this morning as my cell dinged with a Facebook message from my dear friend Joyce in Camarillo, California, that it is rare my phone dings before noon due to the time difference. I clicked the clock and saw that it was 1am in the Golden State. This got me thinking about all the times I have awakened due to jet lag or storm sounds outside and, not being able to sleep, turn to my ever-entertaining friends: Facebook or Instagram. I never fail to be shocked by the amount of people awake at ungodly hours.
Little green dots floating next to their names tell me that while I am eating my breakfast in Ireland, one of my friends 6000 miles away is awake for some unknown reason. I have begun to take note of the night owls. Who is peering into a screen at midnight or three am or any hour in which the moon is on patrol? And why? Some are easy to figure out: the writers who wake and sit in front of their computer whenever the muse comes calling. She doesn’t care if it’s pitch black and wailing outside, or that you are tired from a day of slogging through humanity; she’s insistent. But the others? Very few of my friends are new mothers now, with most in our mid-40s or 50s, we are more likely to be suffering from insomnia than up, bleary-eyed, feeding an infant. A lot of decisions are made in the thin hours when sleep is elusive, hours when the pillow no longer has a cool side to be found, and the orange numbers of the clock become a midnight sun. My friend Amy and I have taken to sending long, rambling messages to each other in the middle of the night, missives I dubbed pigeon posts because it was a little like sending random notes out into the dark tied to the legs of a carrier pigeon. Snippets of observations, a selection of silly photos, secrets about family and friendships, they are all ripe pigeon post fodder. She is up in the middle of the night because she’s a teacher and milking the long, curriculum-free moments of summer for all they’re worth before the semester closes down on her again. And maybe a little bit because of insomnia, but I’d like to think she’s playing fast and loose with the clock in a blissful game of self-indulgence. My other friend Kerry has been jetting around the world this summer, giving her family experiences of a lifetime. A long-awaited bucket list safari to Africa put her in a similar time zone as me and she would send clips of videos with the sounds of Africa, because I asked for it. Anyone can take amazing photos of the big game, but who can say they’ve really HEARD the screeching of hundreds of exotic birds, or the roar of a waterfall, or the melodious sounds of an African singing? Her messages would come in at a time when I knew everyone else in Cali was asleep, dings that meant I was about to meet a lion peering at me from the trees, or be dazzled by the sound of thousands of wildebeests trampling through the Serengeti. Aside from the fact that I felt loved and thought of, I was glad that one of my people was awake when I was and experiencing the wonders of the world. It’s comforting when you are this far away from home to have a friend on your axis of the clock. We are maniacal about sleep in this family. I was always a poor and tentative sleeper. I couldn’t nap well as a child and remember always being in a perpetual state of tiredness that often affected my mood. So it was that I became a parent serious about sleep. We sleep-trained Clare at six months old, largely out of necessity as I was back to work and needed long hours to devote to grading while she slumbered. Fear of her being exhausted like I often was also led me to want to shape her sleep, and my research into how the brain heals itself during sleep further provoked me to try to build her from the cellular level up. I would often admonish my college students about their poor sleep hygiene, reminding them that when they slept their brains were tidying up the day’s neural pathways. There’s a reason you feel fuzzy headed and spacey at the end of a long day. Hundred of thousands of new connections have been made, and there are also a lot of broken neural pathway dangling. Sleep science shows that when you snooze those messy connections are pruned and proteins are rearranged to make the brain clear and stronger for the next onslaught of information. So why do people strain the natural rhythm of their bodies and stay awake long after even the bats have decided to return to roost? I think we are a tired society, and this makes for short tempers and poor decision making. Luckily I have all of our phones on night mode because when we wake in the morning in Ireland, our phones are Christmas trees lit up with notifications from the other side of the world. A few days ago I woke to a text from a friend, Julie, who was at a birthday party for a colleague of hers, and the band that was singing just happened to be comprised of a gaggle of people who knew Tom and I. I’m not sure how she found out they knew us, but she sent a picture of everyone peering from across the pool and smiling and I laughed out loud at the wonder of how small this world is. There I was lying in bed in Ireland in the dark wee hours and there she was at a birthday party with a random group of my friends singing in a band. It’s little connections like this that have buoyed me throughout this trip, which has admittedly been one of frustrations and small grievances. But that’s not something to dwell on when I’ve got all these little red dots dancing that need to be attended to. It’s nine in the morning in Ireland and my husband is making breakfast BLTs and there is soon coffee to come. I have pigeon posts to send and real letters to write, too, for some of my friends know that paper is queen and words written by hand will endure longer than the fleeting digital messages we zing around. I love to think about the fact that my day is advancing just as most of my people are entering REM sleep and flirting with dreams. I feel like the keeper of the sunlight they have not yet had the pleasure of meeting. And for my insomniacs, writers, and random net-surfers still awake: go. to. sleep! |