The Farm: A Mini Model of Mortality

Starling's newest little rescued kitten (so small that he had to perch on the side of the food bowl to reach the cat food) was here for five days. 

Long enough for Starling to name him Eddie. 

Every morning she would rush out before it was quite fully light to scoop him up. "Can he just come in for scriptures?" she'd ask. Then upstairs she'd go to give Hans the pleasant wake up of a kitten being held close. She'd sit him in her lap (or set him on the floor in front of her--only for him to run right back into her cozy lap) in the living room while I read morning scriptures and only reluctantly place him back outside (often with a small bowl of milk) when it was time for breakfast. Once school was out, she'd run back behind the house to find him again--before even removing her backpack or coming inside.

And then, two days ago, he went missing.

The kids occasionally try to accuse me of not liking animals. 

It isn't true. 

I'm not particularly fond of holding animals. And I do pooh-pooh the acquisition (and accompanying responsibility) of more animals. (And I am logical enough to feel that we cannot collect cats with impunity!)

But I love seeing or being near animals. (It actually brings me a great deal of genuine joy watching cows amble past our large front window or having Nelly and Holly run up to the fence--hoping I have something to offer them--when I am out walking the perimeter of the alfalfa field.) And I cannot bear the thought of any animal suffering in any way. (I feel stressed thinking of dogs kept in small runs, hen houses being too hot, or cows having to stand in the snow all winter. It's always been that way. My dad comforting a sobbing me on a houseboat in Lake Powell after the hook got quite badly stuck in one of the fish we caught. My brother Aaron taking me hunting only to recall my nature and think better of it--opting mid-hunt for a small picnic with me before heading home.)

So, as if the needs of family and children aren't enough to lose sleep over, last night I lay in bed--sleepless--thinking anxiously of Eddie and fretting over all of the things that might have become of the helpless little creature and praying for him as much as I might pray for a child I was worried over.

As I lay there my mind began swirling with images:

The tiny, lifeless piglet I carried over to the spare chicken coop and put under a heat lamp--hoping somehow it would pull through.

The kids in the goat shelter--rubbing struggling Emmy's body and praying over her difficult delivery. Mike at the laundry room sink--asking for more towels--while gently washing clean the dark, fuzzyy body of one of the little goat triplets we would have to bury with its two stillborn siblings.

Goldie carrying a goat (that could only barely lift its head) to the car in a rush to the vet--hoping for some remedy for his suffering--only for the remedies to fail.

The kids searching the farm--after a despair of white feathers were discovered--for our missing dewlap geese.

Another of Starling's baby peacocks gone.

Praying that big, beast-like, well-loved loved Pig was only sleeping as I went anxiously towards her prostrate form in the front pasture.

...

But, I didn't only think of those things. I saw them all woven in with:

Mike greeting the kids at the bus stop with a pony. 

The mother hen--desperate for a baby--successfully raising the little chick with the crooked beak that Mike put under her.

Starling bottle-feeding Kristy the goat.

Mette and Mike out walking Holly and Nelly.

A speckled cow and her nursing calf always at the fence edge--as if genuinely interested in where we are going to or coming from--always watching us come up and down the drive.

The months of Pig running after the kids everywhere they went on the farm and of her flopping joyfully onto her side every time they'd scratch her with a broom.

It feels almost as though stepping onto the farm placed me in some sort of little biodome. A tiny, enclosed bubble where I could watch an encapsulated miniature version of all of mortality--with its little tragedies and triumphs--play out. 

And not just in animals. In the flower beds I over-fertilized to the point that every lovingly-placed flower withered completely away but also in the pumpkins that grew in the pasture of their own accord--a small surprise offering from the farm. In the several-thousand-pound cement trough that Mike and Anders spent hours putting in place and arranging on Saturday--getting both a skid steer and a tractor stuck and unstuck in the process--only for it to stay dry most of the week as we wondered whether we'd gotten the pipe angle from the pond drain too high and would need to rearrange everything ... only to go be greeted yesterday to the almost unbelievable sight of the trough full to the brim--functioning perfectly after its initial worrisome delay.

Somehow living here I feel more aware of life's passing seasons, and joys, and sorrows. I feel more than ever aware of the swift rushing of time--of how beautiful a life is, how beautiful and how rapidly shifting and gliding onward. It's as if I can increasingly see everything at once. The beginning of an understanding over past, present and future all being before God. 

For example, it's Conference Weekend. My kids are all gathering here to be together for it. And I can already see them: spread about on couches and the floor, working on puzzles or clothing patches, coloring, married couples falling asleep on each other's shoulder, etc. 

But I can also still see:

My mom in the kitchen peeling potatoes for our between-session lunch/dinner (conference on the kitchen radio) or sitting in one of the big living room chairs embroidering our temple aprons.

My older married siblings scattered about the living room--working on photo albums and holding babies while watching the Sunday afternoon session.

Windows open and a sense of grown-upness and satisfaction as I turned on the first session of conference as a married woman on a lovely spring day in our little apartment on Harrison Blvd.

Three little kids gathered around a dial-up computer on our bedroom floor in Washington--wavy lines moving across the screen as the audio-only played through.

Babies in my arms and Legos all over the floor as I watched in our Pleasant View house.

Mike working on the antenna at the cabin trying to find conference for us there. 

And I can almost see:

More married kids and grandkids increasingly crowding in here with noise and toys and toddlers needing naps. 

And kids finding it easier to watch from their own home with their own kids. 

And Mike and I here watching in the quiet we longed for during the years or so many little ones ... and will only find strange once it arrives. 

...

All of it makes my heart swell with some sort of a strange "Wait! Stop for just a minute! Let me make sure I've taken at least this stage in! Let me make sure I understand all there is for me to understand and know right now before sending me beyond it again!"

My heart swells and expands with that feeling so much that if my ribs weren't there to stop it, it might keep swelling until it burst!

But anyway. Enough of that. Perhaps in some inexplicable way I will learn to take in all of it even as it's spirited into the past. Who knows. We shall see.