Eminence Front

I pulled back the door and got a splinter in my finger, the wagging one. The door to this particular stall of the barn was steaming from the warmth of the morning sun. Me-d had not yet grown into herself enough to be consistent with the feeding, so naturally, it was added to my morning to-do list; feed the rabbits. This barn has been many things over the years, in our short tenure, it’s been Kabuki’s horse stall and the Toasty, Prunotto and Chloe tribe’s caprine suite, but we keep rabbits and rats in here now. Well, we don’t keep anything, as in a zoo, so much as we are more into the active friendship and loving part of animal husbandry. We try not to eat what we grow and we enjoy the room-share of our space with a bevy of smallish and medium sized domesticated animals here on my farmette, the Me-f. It’s not a business anymore, our Me-f, but now that my baby has become a girl, we surround ourselves with plants and animals to learn by doing and to become better humans through care-taking. Although, we try not to feed the rats. The rats are free to go. Nevertheless, they stay and they multiply, like rabbits. They love it here. This is one of the things nobody tells you about living in the rurals; Rats. People and childrens’ books have this in common, they love to talk about country mice, the cute, ocean eyed mouse and her friends with hearts of gold and nibbling. We are not a storybook. We are 4-H people. We have rats. Rat-ganistan. On this particular morning, I didn’t see any rats, but, I didn’t see Cookie either. Missing right there. There, in this brand-new-missing, where a Cookie should be, there was a fully formed hole leading me back to where the river burns down. Motherhood. I would have to be the one to tell her. Motherhood is chock-a-block full of this type of duty. And, so it was on this dry and sunny morning looking into the barn where Cookie was supposed to be, I gave God the finger.

My daughter, Me-d, is 15 now. She will be free one day soon. She’s growing at an accelerated rate. Like a weed. I love it that she is a sea thrifty perennial narwhal of a teenage girl. She seems to know who she is and above all else, she is loving and friendly, still. I like to take credit for keeping her little for as long as possible. That was what the mystic told me to do. When she was a baby there were some scary medical things that perforated our perfectly protected family plot. Me-d had these things called seizures that happened to her. We did all the technology we could about it in a wide variety of hospital type places but, for good measure, I also took her to a mystic. I wanted a magical mystical mood when none of it worked and when the future think got too heavy to keep calm and carry on alone with science. I turned to God then, but nobody answered so I turned to the hippies. My neighbor turned me onto some herbal solace. The remedy medicine was for my worry, not for my daughter, my actual Me-d-icine. She sent me for psalms at a mixing shop for magic. It was a short distance from our home as the crow flies, but the trip is a gorgeous meandering meditation of about 30 miles where there are no billboards or slogans. Although I was worried, I also found some good nothing in the empty time that is the gift of driving through back roads. Anyway, once I got there I was given the name of an energy worker, a doctor who lived near the ocean in the back of a school bus. This particular healer was recommended by the apothecary’s cashier and I because I had exhausted both prayers and science, I felt primed for some magic. I needed help to heal my baby. If you’ve ever seen a baby have a grand mal seizure, here’s a tip; don’t. Go back in time and choose any other way forward. It’s too hard to unsee it and the memories of it can untie the ground where you thought you were standing, strand by strand until the underneath lets go of your feet and you can’t hear the outside calling.

This is what the octogenarian mystic told me about my daughter, then age 2, after he spent 50 full minutes in silence with his hand gently laid across her forehead. He breathed in deeply and while he fiddled with a pen sized instrument he exhaled a soft whistley sound as he shone a blackishblue light upon the soul of her foot ~ he turned to me and said “Let her be a child as long as possible. She has the weight of the world upon her shoulders, give her everything and time”. From the perspective of the here and now, with a daughter who has a solid set of 15 revolutions around the sun time stamped on her story, a healthy body and a beautiful mind, I am grateful for that advice. Mostly, though,I am awed by the bioluminescence that is my Me-d who is still very much her own life and original work of art who wears the mark of life’s rich pagaent on her left foot. She can have all the time in the world if I can steal it for her. Begin the begin.

There I stood at the barn door looking at an empty hutch. I needed a miracle or just to think like an animal. I compromised with myself and recited the 4-H pledge; I pledge my head to clearer thinking, my heart to greater loyalty, my hands to larger service and my health to better living for my club, my community, my country and my world. WWCD? I got on my knees and peered around. My, my, my. My oh me-generation. Even when trying to be selfless it circles back to me-oh-my. A life well lived is a life less self-aware, full of trade-offs and other hyphenated-things. Things in-service. Responsible things. I think I forgot the latch last night. I am the cause. Can I fix this? If I cannot, maybe my husband can after all isn’t that what marriage is all about, shared responsibility and power tools. Ah hem.

I have a hyphenated name as a result of being a married feminist. This is by choice, I think? When I entered into marriage for the second time it was by the way of love and not stupidity like the first time. For one thing. I knew what we wanted. We, the betrothed, were already parents after all. I of sound mind and body, made the very old school decision to assimilate into him, into my husband, Me-h. I had already made the really big choices, life. Check. So, why not consciously decided to hyphenate my name. After all, he made the same promise in reverse, to do the same and to add my family name to his for her sake. Fates intertwined through generations of story. Mega-Mix. Maybe. This is the marriage choice I made from a place of being wide awake in spite of being sleep deprived. Together, we had already asked for and received a baby on purpose and for reals. It, the fetus thing, was my favorite thing I had never wanted to do until one day when I suddenly really did and forever-there-after loved it the very most. It was all biology and travel alarms that initially and surprisingly set off my lady parts clock and all the PH strips pointed in the same direction. All eyes fell upon that fertile carbonized mystery, way up beyond the stars. That very same little spec of stardust that was holding onto that very same little slip of fate as the marriage one. The one with my name on it. The one with his name on it. The one that got delivered to my address, here, at the superfund site of my 39 year old body. She, our daughter, was born out of an Orbit of Profound Perfection and she greeted me after 77 hours of mystical deliverance with a yelp that was translated for me to understand that she wasn’t saying thank you. She meant ‘feed me’. JK. She is my favorite flavor. She is larger than life. I’m always on the lookout for something bigger than myself but on this particular day, kneeling in our little ramshackle barn, I needed to find something smaller.

Cookie had been free to roam for a while, unattended, inside the barn but, “we” always tucked him in at night with a click of the latch. That’s probably what did it, the sound of imprisonment that turns bitter after the sweet taste of freedom. Me-d often took both rabbits out for walks and playtime. They seemed to enjoy it. Seemed to. (I see you dog people) There were plenty of unguarded moments for escape and yet, they always stayed close to home aka food. Cookie was a big rabbit, like 7 lbs! That’s too big to be picked up by a hawk, and, fast, so fast, like a rabbit! Life’s rife with demands for love and feeding and you get to know that here on Me-f. So, I stayed down on my knees and examined all four corners of the stall once more and then looked around again and then again, under buckets, behind hay bales. No sign of Cookie. He was gone. No sign of struggle, No clues. Not even a tiniest tuft of white fur near the hole in the door. My mind wandered to the wood pile next to the gate where I’d seen a suspect. I suspect the weasel. He’s got a heart shaped face that is perfectly offset with a countrified titmouse innocence and round wet eyes perfect for charming victims into a false sense of cute. Siri, do weasels eat rabbits? Yes? Ok then, yes yes, I suspect the weasel in the Kabuki barn with the candlestick! J’accuse! Oh, how would I ever deliver this news to my lovely trusting, loving, concerned and caring zoolinguist? I’m not, I am going to lie. #Motherhood

No. I don’t need to lie. Sometimes people forget. It was perfectly plausible that Cookie had not heard the latch and made a break for it. I’m certain, it was freedom calling. Yes, and, Cookie simply answered the call. Cookie came and went through the looking glass, the one on the other side of the flip side, taunting his fellow jailmate, Nigeri that sleek juggernaut of a Havanian black satin gigalo. The two of them were one rabbit short of a fluffle after Aurora left and they argued a lot, but we pretended it was love. Once Nigeri sliced open one of Cookie’s balls and we spent a nail biting 14 days in between vet advisors about expensive surgery we would never pay for vs. euthanasia we would never commit. His testicle swelled to the size of a grapefruit…picture that, a grapefruit attached to a bunny. His t-est-icle. But, in typical Cookie fashion, he healed swiftly, his ball deflated in spite of the inflation that is the small animal hospital business. He did it without intervention or complaint and went back to the business of humping whenever he got a shot at it. Cookie was like that. Grab life by the balls, no matter the cost.

I watch the hills at dusk and I see the jackrabbits dart from thistle patch to tree. I will wait for the second coming of you great rabbit. I hear you Cookie and I’ve got a mega-mix with your name on it in my mind’s eye. I see you in my dreams in that circular clearing under the great Oak playing bob-stones and getting answers from Elil-Hrair-Rah, the prince with a thousand enemies. My human prayer for you little Hrairoo, is this, watch out for the lendri, this California hill country is full of them.