the order of the universe

This post was started way back in July - I wanted so badly to share what my beautiful cosmos flowers meant to me - how they had affected me this summer - but couldn’t find my way into articulating my strangely deep feelings about this common-enough flower, part of the daisy family, named after the Greek word ‘kosmos,’ or universe, that symbolizes order, harmony and peace. All perfectly lovely things to know, but it felt silly to make so much of it. So I put the post away, watched the cosmos peak and start to wane, the foliage become droopy and yellowed, then brown, enjoyed the last burst of flowers as the plants surrendered to the elements, and moved on, not thinking much more of them until this past week and the birth and death of a sweet baby donkey. The cosmos had one last gift to give in order to help me lay her to rest.

The first frost of the season came on September 30, and few of my flowers escaped. It was an unexpected, abrupt end to my summer of flowers. The following night, our donkey Hazel gave birth to a foal, a little girl. All summer we suspected she might be pregnant and a few weeks ago, we had a vet ultrasound her. She told us she found no heartbeat, that she was simply fat. I admit to feeling skeptical - Hazel’s figure didn’t look “fat” to me in the way our older donkey Tru carries weight - it looked swollen just as a pregnant woman’s belly looks. I assumed, however, that if she was near full-term, the vet would have found a heartbeat, so we didn’t expect a baby for some months, if there would be one at all - a happening that was in truth so frightening to me, I didn’t like to imagine it.

But early on Friday morning, Dave went down to the sheep pen to check on Jane, who had been acting a little slow the last few days, and noticed something in the donkey pen. A very small, dark shape - the three grown donkeys gathered around it. It was a baby, still wet, and hardly able to stand.

I was full of fear as I walked down to the barn, the full Harvest moon bright in the western sky, patches of frost on the grass path. I think I knew the first time I saw Emmy, that she wasn’t all here. She stood still, her too-big head bowed a little as Hazel nudged and circled around her. She never became more with it, not that morning as I worked to help her nurse, not that afternoon, even after we managed to get her to drink a bottle of Hazel’s colostrum mixed with some colostrum replacer. Not the next day, which we spent coaxing and encouraging her, trying to get her going. She remained subdued, distant, and fragile. So, so fragile. 

I wouldn’t have named her, I’ll admit - I wanted to save myself that grief at least - but Nettie was determined, and right, in giving her a name. Emerald. It isn’t what I would have picked, but none of what happened is what I would have chosen. None of it is fair, or makes sense, none of it is what anyone deserved - least of all poor baby Emmy or her mama Hazel. I wanted so badly to give them long, happy, healthy lives together - it’s what I want for all our animals here - and there was definitely a part of me that wanted it not just for the animals, but for the ethos of Sweet Haven. I wanted to have a sweet family unit, to show what an animal sanctuary could nurture - I wanted a success story I could share, and to put it more candidly, that I could market. 

I suspect few of us are pure, even in our acts of charity and kindness. I know I give people flowers because it makes them happy, but also because it makes me happy, because it helps me feel better about myself, gives me a sense of identity and purpose. That’s why I care for animals, too. I love them, yes. I always have loved animals and I love them now more than I ever have - love more of them and harder because I’ve made it part of my life, accepted it as a calling - but not purely out of love - some of it is obligation, and some of it akin to self-sacrifice, a way to make peace with my inner critic, who constantly tells me I haven’t done enough to really be a “good” person, that perhaps suffering in the name of something good will purify me.

I’ve always thought animals were nearer to pure than humans. I can remember trying to explain that to my parents as a small child. And having spent the last five days with baby Emmy, I feel it’s just as true as I ever did. Emmy was a completely perfect soul, in a body that wasn’t built for this world. She didn’t seem to have any survival instinct, not even an awareness of her own body, really. She was here but she wasn’t here, in the grit of it, as we have to be to survive on this planet. 

Nettie was able to minister pure love to Emmy and Hazel without dread or grief, and witnessing her open, joyful heart was a beautiful balm during a time that felt extremely sad and dark.

I’ve never dug a grave before but I wanted to dig Emmy’s. It’s been warm, almost hot the last few days, and the ground hard from months without rain. I watered the spot between my old Petey cat and sweet Lilly goat so it would be softer. It took several hours to dig out the packed, tacky clay soil between trips down to the barn to comfort Hazel and trips into the house to fix Nettie’s lunch. I thought of the folks who had hand-dug most of the graves in the pioneer cemetery behind our house, and I wondered if any women had dug graves for their loved ones. Of course they would have had to sometimes, I thought, there would have been no one else to do it, or maybe they wanted to, as I did. Emmy’s grave didn’t need to be large, she was hardly bigger than our biggest cat, but I wanted to dig it as deep as my arm would reach. I don’t know why but that seemed right somehow.

Just as I knew when I got up Tuesday, that I wanted to make her a funeral wreath to wear. I went out to the garden in the half-dark in my pajamas, as I’ve done so many times over the summer, and found that underneath the toppled cosmos plants, there were still just enough flowers blooming for Emmy’s wreath. So I picked her snowpuff cosmos for peace, phlox for sweet dreams, white snapdragons for innocence and purity, ammi for sanctuary, and Sweet Annie for eternal love and wove them into I think the most beautiful flower crown I’ve ever made. There is something ethereal about it, just like Emmy, perhaps because the flowers themselves are so near to death.

Nettie chose one of her baby blankets to wrap her in and I lifted her onto it and placed the funeral wreath around her neck. She looked beautiful, not as beautiful as she had in life, but sweet and peaceful. I took a few pictures even though I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look at them. I let Hazel smell her baby one last time, and then I carried her up to her grave and laid her down to face the setting sun. It was hard to fill the soil in around her and I don’t know if I could have done it without my dad there to encourage me. In a few minutes she was under the earth and I believe I felt something like peace, or at least relief that nothing harsh or violent could touch her now - that whatever stardust she was made of would slowly and peacefully cycle back into the universe through the roots of plants and the petals of flowers that will grow over her.

pig love

For several years, I’ve dreamed of pigs. I can’t remember now, how I started to think about them so much, or how my friend Daisy the pig came into my head. I remember I thought up a little rhyming poem about a pig who lived in a terrible dark, noisy, smelly barn, and then she magically grew wings one night and flew away to a little pink cottage with a bathtub, and the last line was “and every morning she woke up, smelling like a rose.” That’s the beginning I remember.

Soon after, I wrote a very loooonng story about Daisy and then I started drawing and painting her and sculpting her from cotton, and then there came Harriet the pig and her chicken friend Florence, and many many iterations of flying pigs and piglets….. but I’d begun to worry lately, that perhaps I wouldn’t like a real pig so much as the pigs I’ve invented. And so when we discovered two pigs nearby who really needed a new home, and we talked about whether we could provide that for them, I had misgivings beyond those of the resources it would take to keep them. I wondered if I would actually like them, much less love them.

Our first meeting with the pigs didn’t settle my fears. Rudy was much bigger than I’d imagined he would be - and hairy - and well, quite masculine, which I realize I’m using pejoratively, but maybe you know what I mean. He was nothing like the dress-wearing piggies I’d been dreaming of. Mabel was smaller and less intimidating, but I admit I didn’t immediately fall in love. I really didn’t, and that bothered me for several days, even as we prepared a place for them and I asked for your help in funding the expense of their care. I kept thinking of Rudy and his long tusks and big bulky body and how I was afraid he might snap my fingers when I fed him the treats he received for sitting. But one image that kept coming back to me was how when he sat for his treat, his face upturned and waiting, he had smiled. And it was a real smile, a sweet smile. He was not a pretty pig like the ones I’d painted, but he was sweet. I really believed he was, tusks and manliness and all.

And I was right. I knew, after their first few hours here, that I needn’t have worried about liking or loving them. Like Lilly goat did when we brought her here two years ago, they made the place seem more like a home - they fit into the family just like a piece that was missing. I was so relieved, and so happy we decided to put their pen next to the kitty coop, so that I could hear their grunting and talk to them from the garden. After just a few days, I felt like we’d always kept pigs. I loved the pigs. I loved REAL pigs, Rudy and Mabel pig. And then we sent them off to the vet, thinking we were being responsible to take care of some of the issues right away - namely, that Rudy needed to be neutered and have his tusks trimmed, and Mabel’s feet needed trimmed. I really didn’t have any misgivings.

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Sometime around midday, I gather our rabbit Sniffles a bouquet of fresh things to eat. I was coming back to the house with my little forage when I noticed a great blue heron flying over the barn. We see herons fairly often, but not usually right over the farm, and this one was flying towards me, low, so low I could see the dark stripe over its eye. I watched it flap its wings slowly, slowly, glide in a half circle, and land in the top of the oak tree behind the garage. I stood still, watching it, wondering what it might be doing here in the middle of the day, when normally we only see them in the evenings, at a distance, flying back to their nests. It perched for a minute or maybe two, then lifted its wings and flew off towards the creek, trailing its ungainly legs beneath it.

In the house, Dave had happened to see the heron, too, as he passed an upstairs window. I remarked that I thought it was strange, maybe an omen - and he laughed and accused me of being superstitious. I don’t know if I am, really. I think I tend to look for symbols, something that started when I began writing poetry and making art - symbols are helpful, because they can communicate things without extra words - and they add meaning and order in what is otherwise a chaotic and random world.

Rudy didn’t come out of sedation like he should have. Six hours after his surgery, he was still unconscious and the veterinarian was not very optimistic about his chances. We were shocked, heartsick that we’d not realized what sort of risk we were taking with his life. We had to decide if we would leave him overnight at the clinic or bring him home, which might not be possible if he didn’t rouse. Thankfully, he did - he seemed to know Dave’s voice and after a few hours of sitting with him and talking to him and shaking him awake, Dave managed to half-lift him into the trailer and bring him and Mabel home. It was a long and terrible night.

I didn’t want to go out in the morning - I was terrified of what I’d find. Finally, I forced myself out the door and was greeted by the sound of Mabel’s grunting, and as I squinted into the shade of their pen, I could see him - Rudy - standing up, his tail wagging back and forth. In the grass of the orchard, was this path through the dew. I don’t know what made it - of course my imagination invented a pig spirit or fairy who visits pigs in trouble and who must have come to be with Rudy in the night. Like the heron, I needed it to be a sign.

Rudy was up that morning, but he was far from his usual self, and as the day went on, I became more and more concerned because he simply wouldn’t eat, and drank very little. In many cases where the sedation continues, the animal regains consciousness but because they can’t be made to eat or drink, they eventually shut down.

In the evening, a little disturbance came through, bringing a few rain clouds without rain, and also a rainbow. Without that rainbow, I think I would have despaired - how long can a pig survive on a few vegan cheesy puffs? - and about an hour later, we had success - Rudy ate his pan of oatmeal with banana slices and drank some water and I think I felt like Noah must have when the dove returned with the olive branch - that the world wasn’t ending, that there was a promise of better days to come. The next morning, he was waiting for me at his empty food dish.