I went away, and something terrible happened. I’m not even sure what it was.
Here’s how it started: I went to Amsterdam for work. In my other life, I teach high-level executives to give speeches. I work with an old comrade and friend from California, who kindly rescued me and gave me a job after I walked out on my abusive ex-husband, my two small children in tow. I was, at the time, homeless and jobless and stranded in a strange country. The lifeline that Peter threw me was the one thing that enabled me to survive and support my kids. I was desperately grateful.
Peter’s company, Stand & Deliver, is based in California, and he sends teams of trainers all over the world to do lightning-fast presentation trainings. We work in two- or three-day chunks once a month, flying into an airport, going directly to a hotel, working 12-hour days and then flying home. The work is interesting, adrenaline-charged and completely intellectual, and a million miles from the slow, steady warmth of the farm. The rooms where I work are lit with over-bright lights – the hotels are luxurious but strangely sterile – the airports are marvels of arid plastic and steel.
I love what I do, although I was riddled this time, as I always am, by guilt at leaving my family and the farm. It’s too much work to leave on Rich’s shoulders – the double school run, his own work, the animals to be fed and milked twice a day, the shopping, the cooking. It’s a two-person gig. And for me to bow out for an entire week seems horribly unfair.
But we needed the money. The farm, with all its rich resonance, doesn’t produce an income, and feeding eleven goats, two calves, two pigs and twenty-four sheep doesn’t come cheap. So after much discussion, we agreed that I would take the job.
I went, I worked, I came back again. I was gone for five days. I worked hard and well, successfully coached some executives, fell into bed exhausted at the end of the over-stimulating days, and came home. There were banners welcoming me home on the farmhouse windows, and I handed out the duty-free chocolates I had bought. It should have all been fine.
But something was wrong. For days after I came home, I felt crippled by the most overwhelming despair. Suddenly, nothing meant anything.
I remembered all the projects that had engaged me so completely – the soap, the sourdough, the yogurt, the kefir – and I couldn’t remember why it was worth bothering. I was tired, surely. But it was more than that – it felt like everything was too much trouble, like there was no point. I couldn’t find the way back in.
It was as if some corroding acid had been poured over thousands of small fragile root tendrils, that were creeping their way across a wall, linked things together. And all the root filaments had shriveled, disappeared. All of my tiny farm projects were no match for the corrosive cold of the outside world, with its weight of ambition, speed, and lethal competition. Who cared about sourdough? There were careers to be made, battles to be fought and won – and it’s difficult to argue the merits of kefir to someone who has to give a presentation to the CEO the next day.
It might have been hormones – it might have been fatigue. All I knew is that when I left, the room of my life was warm and brightly lit – and when I came back, it was as if the lights had been turned out. Same room, but all dark.
I fought down the edges of panic and carried on. Slept as much as I could, waiting for the flavors to come back. Did the rounds, marked the calendar, trudged through the school run. The to-do list was frightening – all the things that had been undone while I was away, plus the expenses and summation and invoice that needed to be generated for the trip just completed. A book deal was falling apart – my parents wanted to take one grandchild on holiday, and leave the other three at home. Everyone I turned, everything seemed like the most impossible mess.
Yesterday, I got up knowing that I had a million things to do. Taid’s birthday is coming up – we are planning to have the entire family around on Saturday. Gifts to be purchased and a meal to be planned. An urgent work assignment needed completing. But first I had to feed and milk the animals. And unlike executives, there is no negotiating with animals. Sighing, I pushed my unwilling feet into my wellies, pulled on my waterproof trousers, and trudged out to the barn.
The sunlight was dappling the rough grey stone of the building across the farmyard from the house. Water poured from the mouth of the stone lion fountain. There was an edge to the breeze, and two red-tailed kites, carefully nurtured back from the edge of extinction, soared and dipped over the muted blue of the sea. I took a deep breath, and went on to the barn.
I tipped the pail of vegetable peelings into the pig’s trough, topped it up with pig pellets, and filled the other end with water. The pigs rooted through the vegetables happily, grunting and squealing. Their pleasure made me smile in spite of myself.
I carried on into the barn, passing the ranks of familiar, beloved goat faces. The two Anglo-Nubian pedigree princesses, Conkers and Seren, lay regally at the back of their stall and looked disapproving. Lola, stroppy but glistening, leaned on the wall like a dance hall girl in a saloon, demanding a scratch behind the ears. Athletic little Toffee hurled herself against the reinforced bars of her stall, trying to jump out. And placid Glenda gazed out with the assurance of a queen bee, waiting to be milked. I talked to them and turned on the radio while I fed the calves their milk, watching them root around in the buckets to suck out the last drops.
Pulling hay out of the stack, I looked down into the eyes of a tiny black kitten, crouching spitting and snarling behind the hay. We have a community of barn cats who live with us in dignified symbiosis – we feed them, and they keep the rats away, but they are not pets. We don’t generally handle them, unless they are ill or injured. This one, though, I reached down and picked up so that it wouldn’t get crushed by the hay. I stroked it until it calmed down, rubbing it behind the ear until it began to purr and lay, relaxed and contented in my hands. And then, for some reason, I felt my eyes burning with hot tears. I stood there holding the kitten and cried for maybe a minute. Then I put the kitten down, wiped my face, and got on with the feeding.
I tipped the right amount of food into the right bowls, (some get soaked beet shreds, some prefer dry, all very complicated…) distributed the bowls, and let Glenda onto the milking stand. She jumped up neatly as always, tucking her nose into the food bowl as I leaned my cheek against her warm, silky flank. I could hear her stomach rumbling as I milked her, the warm milk squirting and foaming into the jug under my hands.
I began to feel, in some small part of my mind, comforted.
I gave them all fresh straw, fresh water, swept out the barn and went back inside. There were things to be done on the computer – urgent deadlines to be met – but first I found myself, almost automatically, measuring out four liters of milk to make cheese. The milk had been stacking up since I had been gone, and the oldest bottles were starting to go off. I strained the kefir grains out of the kefir, used the kefir to blend up a smoothie which I stashed in the fridge for an after-school snack, added fresh milk to the kefir grains and put it back on the windowsill to ferment.
It was strange – for the first time these things didn’t seem like a massive effort, or something unfamiliar, but like something that I just did, automatically. It was easier to do it, than to not-do it. I put the thermometer in the cheese pan and added the cheese starter.
And somewhere, in the washing of milk bottles and the adding of rennet, the straining of the kefir and the stirring of the cheese starter, life started to flow back into the tendrils and roots of the vine of my life. I couldn’t tell you exactly what, but something shifted. The acid depression started to let go its grip, just a little and things started – just started – to seem possible again….