Her face fell. The assumed disappointment should have been my purported relief. I knew the look, I had made it countless times. A mix of unexpected misfortune, a momentary surprise shooed away by denial, its heels followed by the dread of truth.

Something’s wrong, I thought. It was reflected in her face. My heart sank, overcome with yet another loss. It’s for the best, I reassured myself. The prelude was all wrong.

In what position was I to become a mother? Toiling in separation from my first husband, his rage grew by the day. He despised me; I had become the whore, the bitch. It was all my fault and he made sure I knew it.

The other man, a misguided affair. A folly of distraction. He had told me, he was leaving her, too. We would be there for each other.

The lies continued with the latter, along with the sex. Ultimately, I was tolerating one so I could have the other. My mother raised me better than this.

It’s for the best, I assured myself again. There’s simply no heartbeat, same as the affair. It fizzled out before it could become something, the spark smothered under a cheap blanket of reality. I knew what came next. The majority of cells would soon expunge, the small remainder left, reabsorbed, so not to fester.

Her face flushed, filled with incongruent joy. She smiled wide and turned the ultrasound screen towards me. Congratulations! The pixels screamed back truth.

Not one — there was two. No longer me, now I was three. Two hearts flickered primally within me.

Twins!!, the clinic employees cried. Strangers shed elated tears as they hugged me, like family. I walked to my car in an impromptu parade, showered in verbal ticker tape of congratulations and blessings. Reminders of my luck peppered with the occasional wish, if only He had been with me for the big surprise.

Which one? I smugly thought. Savage or Sancho?

A He to throw it all off balance. A He to turn my miraculous trinity into a blasé suburban square.

I faked a smile and willed generosity for the strangers and their obtuse excitement for me — for us. I was exquisitely familiar in the art of holding reverence for an undeserving other. I waved goodbye, the car windows hid my tears. I called my mother.

I was 30. Three. Zero. Those digits somehow simplified my decision. I could choose — 3 or 0. Was it ever a question? Three is a balanced number. The Trinity. A Trifecta. My trinomial factor of truth. A 180 degree horizon constructed by the sum of 3 interior angles. A congruous isosceles, each side integral to the life of the others.

What daringly vast beauty I would find.

My blessed balance.

My unexpected prime.

I love my goose. Truth. One of many unexpected truths. Ten years ago, if someone had written out, “Jessica’s Truths”, I would have politely looked the list over, tossed my highlighted blond curls over my slight shoulder, giggled in their face and waved them off. Assured they had the wrong gal. Truth, happiness, and fulfillment often come for me when I’m looking in all the wrong places.

Historically, personal life lessons don’t come without a fight. I usually hold out my assent entirely too long, refusing to surrender until life has beaten the truth into me. Not because of my lack of attentiveness with a tendency towards wavering curiosity, but rather because of a formidable stubbornness. My internal locust of control has always been on the strong side, unfamiliar with submission. Instead, I’m really good at, ‘I got this’. I am on MY path. Hold my beer, stand back, and watch me fight. Watch as Life continues to serve me up a familiar feast — a hard to swallow truth that the best things often come when you give up the illusion of control.

For many of us, the idea of taking the back seat is damn near impossible. Living in the drivers seat is often our last hope as we speed deeper into the crumbling reality all around us. At times I have been so broken, drowning in the consequence of a meticulously controlled poor choice, that I had no fight left to give. Eventually, I would run out of gas before I had ever touched the brakes. Whatever God, Devine Creator, Mother Earth, Allah, Universal Energy… I give the fuck up. A clichéd Jesus take the wheel, someone please step in and make better decisions for me, starting with which brand of toilet paper to buy.

Indistinct from others’ path in life, my road has left behind stories. Stories, I am told, some enjoy reading. Stories laced with self-deprecation and layered with initially hidden humor. Ironically, for most of my life I would have dissected each and every individual response. I would have ruminated whether you were laughing with me or at me. Thankfully, this is not the case anymore. At least not on my good days. Laugh away: at me, with me, for me. Give me what you’ve got. My small snippet of reflection will take all of it, with the simple hope that you will take something in turn.

The first half of this story is one of love. A story of the love I have for a goose. The same goose I begged my husband to either kill or re-home for months upon months. How a goose went from my feathered nemesis to my friend and protector in one afternoon. The second part of this story is a juxtaposition of the first. The second story is one of anger and fear. It’s a painful thing to admit, a complete disclosure of my dark side. A tale of the time my anger and fear overpowered all rational thought and control. Less than a year ago, in a fit of rage, I was moments away from murdering a 45 pound Tom Turkey, strangling him in cold blood.

My family’s recollections of the exact events differ. The tale comes in two versions, both begin on my first trip to a petting zoo when I was 2 years old. As my parents pushed me around in my stroller, exposing my growing brain to new experiences and novel beings, an animal walked up to my stroller and straight up jacked my bottle of apple juice. They took it right out of my tiny chubby hands. In one version of the story, the thief is a goat, in the other, a goose. It was also the early 80’s, so stop judging my parents for filling my bottle with teeth rotting apple juice.

With the gift of hindsight and a recent intimacy with goats and geese, the perpetrator was most likely a goat. However, my early memories, along with the visceral fear and scorn I have for the species, leads me to believe it was a goose. The goose stole my bottle. The goose ignited my rage.

My mother recounts the vignette as her first encounter with the untempered tenacity of her first born. I admit, there is a deep seeded anger that has always resided in me. Luckily, this side of me is rarely indulged. With each year, I develop a greater control of the beast. We are beginning to have a mutual respect for one another, a cooperative effort to strongly live a loving and honest life. An agreement on the intention to leave a space better than it was upon arrival. This agreement has come with time, tears, and numerous missteps. Most people would describe me as friendly, empathetic, easygoing. Ask my Mom, she will tell you, “Jessica is such a nice person… until she’s not”. She recounts this story as the first time she witnessed the darkness I am capable of. Ask her and she will tell you a tale of the cataclysmic rage that emanated from my tiny body, the death wish I had on my face for that criminal goose. Of my self-imposed mission, whatever it would take, at all cost, regardless of the causalities, to get back my damn bottle of apple juice.

35 years after that first encounter, I agreed to, encouraged even, the addition of an entire flock of geese to our farm’s roster.

Why? Geese are mean. Geese are mean and loud and territorial. I was on the fourth batch of chickens I had raised from birth to maturity. I anticipated the peeping box of puffballs arrival at the local post office. I would pick them up; hoping they all survived the trip, recovering the weak ones with sugar water and extra attention. In the weeks following I would pick off the poop that clung to their fuzzy butts. I talked to them and carried my favorites around in the front pocket of my hooded sweatshirt. I fed them a balanced diet of chick scratch, diced veggies, and earthworms from the garden. I added a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to their water because I read somewhere it boosted immunity. I would love them and help them grow; rewarded by a promise of farm fresh egg for my family, after 6 months of daily attention and devotion.

Then, I would lose them. All of them. One by one at first, other times a half dozen would be lost in an overnight massacre. I was tired of raising free range, well loved, and individually named chickens to a seedy dinner buffet, the patrons, a local pack of coyotes. The pack was relentless. They silently dug under the fence in the dark of night. Other times, they killed in full daylight. One afternoon, I caught a particularly large coyote in the coop, enjoying an afternoon snack of chicken. I ran towards him, shouting threats of disease and pestilence, waving my arms above my head. From a sitting position he leapt, easily clearing a 6-foot fence. Looking like a dire wolf, he calmly retreated back into the forest.

Our dogs, the most obvious solution, were of little help. They reliably slept through the feasts, just on the other side of our property, tucked away warm in the garage or under a piñon, in a deep sleep of oblivion. We reinforced the chicken run fencing and posts. We tried to stay one step ahead, only to find out the coyotes had figured out how to nuzzle open the latch and were letting themselves in through the front gate. I spent hours searching the internet, looking for answers. Searching, “how to deter coyotes”. The result was a death count of chickens nearing the triple digits, a fence lined top and bottom with barbed wire and gaudy solar powered Christmas lights that blinked year round, and a dozen fuzzy wind socks of dollar store tinsel, blowing in the breeze. As a last ditch effort, I secured dozens of felt wicks every 10 feet around the coop’s perimeter fence. I saturated them weekly, soaked them every 7 days in genuine wolf piss, expensively auto shipped bi-monthly to the front gate a la Amazon Prime. My chicken coop had become a weird cinematic mix of an old Western, a Hallmark Christmas comedy, and a smut film — “Butch Grizwald and the Golden Shower Kid”. Sadly, the coyotes around here are apparently into that sort of thing. Creepers.

In the hours of internet searching, I noticed several hobby farm and home steading bloggers swore by the power of the goose. They were hailed as protectors of the chicken realm. I was truly at my wits end. Geese are mean and scary, and I was down for whatever.

I called the 8 of them the Chinese Mafia. The majority were Brown Chinese Geese. Dark brown to light tan feathers, long graceful necks, a bulbous top bill protrusion crested between their eyes. It was quite the site. Drive up the ¼ mile dirt road, which alone is not for the faint of heart or cars without a decent clearance, only to be greeted by a brassy chorus line of fowl. Honk honk honk. Flap Flap Flap.

The Chines Mafia settled into farm life and kept to themselves. They stayed on my good side, well away from humans. They were a true gaggle of geese, hysterical to watch. They had a strict hierarchy, loud opinions, and spent the daylight hours comically patrolling the property. It was a roaming herd of neurotically vivacious burglar alarms. Make noise they certainly did. Keep away the coyotes they did not.

Sadly, not long after they arrived the coyotes started up again. The Chinese Mafia dwindled in numbers while the coyotes dined like kings. Of the 8 original members only one survived. Ironically, she was the underdog of the group. She was not even the same breed as her gangs’ namesake. She was French, a slow and stocky Toulouse Goose. She looked as if she had waddled off the page of Mother Goose and into our front yard. In the group hierarchy she was the runt, the lowest rung on the totem pole. She had been the last to eat and the first one to be pushed out of the way. She was the follower, the grunt, the proverbial B.

Before you start to feel too sorry for her, I do believe the maltreatment she received is the sole reason she is still with us. As her aggressors were picked off one by one, she survived. The abusive extortion galvanized her, she was left her with an inextinguishable desire to persevere. Her life was filled with dreams of revenge, driven by pure fucking anger.

On the morning I discovered the final victim of the mafia murders she was in the chicken run, her dead, half-eaten comrade lay at her side. The French Toulouse Goose, stood proud with her chest puffed out, every single one of her feathers in place. Not because she ran and hid. She had been in the middle of the fray. A large tuft of coyote fur stuck out from the corner of her orange beak. ‘Don’t tell me to eat cake’, cried her beady eyes. She had survived a revolution.

I myself had a newfound respect for this goose. How could I not respect such resolute belief in a cause? I began to foster feelings of liberty, equality, fraternity. Unfortunately, this respect was in no way reciprocated. Neither vanquishing the coyotes nor humming Marseillaise during morning chores appeased her wrath. Her anger simply found a new target. I became her Antoinette. Her rage was displaced, onto me.

Being attacked by a goose is absolutely terrifying. Geese can expand their wings horizontally to an imposing diameter, more than double their height. With outstretched wings they beat the air with enough speed and strength to create thunderous waves of sound. Thump. Thump. Thump. It sounds of war drums. Their feet are orange reptilian webbing stretched between toes, vestiges from the time of dinosaurs, each digit terminates in an evolved raptor claw. Geese hiss, rather spit primeval warnings, hithhh, a serpentine tongue protruding from their beak. They do not have what I would call teeth. Rather, the inside of the bill has a minuscule serrated edge, imperceptible to the naked eye. A snapping triangle trap of steak knives. Geese are scary creatures. Especially when they bite.

After the initial bite, the real destruction comes. With a quick jerk of their long neck they twist the trapped flesh nearly 360 degrees. First a pinch, then a squeeze, finished off by a deadly twist; and it happens lightning fast. Should you find yourself on the receiving end and reflexively move away from the source of pain, as any neurologically intact person would, the assault becomes 10 times more damaging and 100 times more painful. Essentially, it’s an epic titty-twister from your obnoxious big brother, after he has lunged towards you, making maniacal sounds, armed with grandpas rusty pliers.

We had one goose left, she had survived a recent societal upheaval, and I was her new nemesis. She could smell my fear.

My husband, on the other hand, was a muse. She would lovingly rub figure eights around his legs the mornings he went out to feed. She made noises, but never hissed at him; instead she honked excitedly, wiggled her butt, and shook her tail feathers. Literally shook her butt feathers as a greeting. This simple act reframed a lifetime of music for me. Did Nelly realize he was rapping about a damn goose? Does Puffy know? Ray Charles would have seen that, right? The Blues Brothers?

That single goose gave my husband more appreciation and affection than all three of his beloved dogs. Understandably, he was hesitant to get rid of her.

“She needs to go!” I told him. “I’m living my own personal episode of Fear Factor just getting from the house to the car in the mornings.” We tried keeping the goose in the chicken run, but the more we restricted her movement the angrier with me she became. Locked in the run for a few days, all would seem well, until she would unknowingly escape, only to jump out from behind a tree, coming at me, full speed. Hissing and chasing, pinching and twisting. She needed a new home. I was drawing the line. I was done. Done and done.

With a final retort, my husband convinced me to try one more thing. He swore up and down that he could teach me how to be her friend. Yes, her friend. I laughed him off. Only after he framed it as a marital challenge and placed his bet on the table, did I accept. My motivation to prove him completely wrong was strong. I was certain I would never win with the goose but I knew I could win with him. The goose and my history was already written. I knew how this would end.

There was a good deal preparation on my part before I jumped in. An outfit, or costume rather: canvas bib overalls, Hunter boots, Carhart jacket, and leather gloves. I stopped short of dusting off my full-face motorcycle helmet, but you bet your goose-pinched-ass, I seriously considered it. It was the middle of summer and there I was, dressed in a bizarre incarnation of garb similar to what is used to train police attack dogs, I stood gilded in my very own goose bite suit. In full kit, I walked through the kitchen towards the back door, briefly stopping for a swallow of courage from a bottle of whiskey. I went outside to face what I was certain would be a painful demise encircled by a trivial silver lining, a marital bet won.

“It’s easy. You just have to show her who’s the boss.” He said. “She knows you’re scared of her. So don’t be. Show her you’re not scared.” It was advice straight from the pages of some archetypal bullshit self help book, “Believe it and it will be”. Thankfully the rest of my husband’s advice was applicably concrete.

“Grab her by the neck with one hand and hold her beak shut with the other. Now hold her neck right below her head, so she can’t turn back on you to bite. Ok, good. Now show her you’re boss. Nothing too rough, but lead her around a bit. Make her walk where you want to. Now take your other hand and put pressure on her back. Make her lay down, rest on her belly. Good, now pick her up. Keep one hand around her neck and use the other arm to hold down her wings. Nice, now pick her up and walk around with her. Set her down, shake your butt and honk back.”

Yes, I grabbed that goose. I shook my ass. I honked back. I’ll spare you the play by play and profanities of the afternoon. The above is paraphrased from my personal step-by-step guide, How to Make Geese Friends and Influence Farm Fowl. Making friends with and gaining respect from a goose definitely does not happen within the space of one simple paragraph. I squealed and ran away in fear, multiple times. I called for an embarrassing number of time-outs. I cried a few tears of fear. I cried more than a few tears of pain when she got a good one on the inside my left wrist between my glove and jacket. But, at the end of it all, all-be-damned. It worked.

I showed her who had control, who was the boss, and somehow, I gained her respect and affection, all in one downright horrifying and weirdly productive afternoon. Some creatures just like it rough, I guess. Who am I to judge what kink she may be into. Maybe she liked giving up control and just wanted me to take the proverbial reigns for an hour or two. Pick her up, hold her down, cover her mouth, and push her around a bit. Kind of weird and out of my comfort zone, but since that summer afternoon, the goose hasn’t shown me an ounce of anger or wrath. Dare I say, the love she has for me exceeds the love she has for my husband. She has nothing but love for me. Nothing but love. Shake your tail feathers, Lil’ G, ’cause Mama is the boss.

Two years later, Lil’ G is the first to greet me in the predawn hours when I leave for work. I hear her ‘Honk Honk Honk’ over the rustle of her shaking feathers before my horse can get out a loving good morning ‘neigh’. If I crouch down on the ground to greet her she climbs up into my lap. I pick up her 20 pounds of feathers and sass and we stroll around the yard. She will go for short runs with me up and down the driveway. We share apples. I fill up two kiddy pools in the summer, one for my kids and one for Lil’ G. I love that goose. I cannot thank my husband enough for not rehoming her or letting me eat her for Christmas dinner. I can now admit all my prior ill will for the creature without shame. Prior to our reckoning, I’m fairly certain she had wished the same for me.

My tail of poultry trouble does not end there. Last summer we added turkeys to our farm, two females and one Tom. They assimilated nicely. No problem, until there was a big one. The only explanation I had for Tom’s sudden change in attitude was the season. It is the only way I can explain why 9 months of complete apathy towards me morphed, seemingly overnight, into extreme hostility. Spring was coming, along with its promise of warmer weather, flowers, and baby turkey making. My loving coos and back scratches of affection no longer looked platonic. I was testing the borders. Come spring he thought I was moving in on his ladies. Come spring, I was the competition.

Geese were, in my honest opinion, the most terrifying of all fowl. That is until I was attacked by a 45 pound Tom Turkey. Male turkeys are not just pomp and feathers. Tom’s have 1 ½ inch long talons, spurs is the proper term, protruding from the back of their legs. And they have weight to throw those daggers around with. Furthermore, in addition to the renowned gobble, they can produce a cacophony of sounds. The strangest to me is the drumming sound. It comes from an air sack deep inside their puffed up chest. It’s an eerily low rumble punctuated with a sharp staccato spit. The closest thing I can compare it to be the loving content sound of a purring cat, peppered in contrast by the angriest hiss they can generate. The turkey purr-spit is disconcerting, a rapid cycle from one extreme to another. The noise has two translations; the first being a pickup line when courting ladies, the second is a war cry. It’s the sound they make just before they attack another male turkey. It’s as disconcerting and confusing as it sounds. Come spring, Tom spoke his message to me often, and it certainly wasn’t a pick up line. Thankfully, I had my trusty Lil’ G. “Gannnso!!!” I would yell when I felt a pending attack. It would usually happen when I was feeding the flock or gathering eggs. I could sense his presence, his strutting and preening, the pacing and pawing at the dirt. The low rumble would emanate from his chest. “Gannnso!!!” I would call out. Honk Honk Honk. Thump Thump Thump, she would come to my rescue, her wings outstretched, and put herself between Tom and me. She would chase him away, pulling out tufts of turkey feathers if his retreat wasn’t quick enough. She was not just my friend she was my protector.

The threats continued through the spring and into the summer. I had hoped it was a seasonal fever and with time he would get the hint that I was not trying to take his ladies. No luck. His anger and aggression towards me only grew. He could smell my fear.

The kids were in their beds napping. Our youngest was one year old and the twins four. It was the rare and glorious occasion I got them all down for a nap at the same time. I hooked the baby monitor to the waist of my jeans and went outside to get some chores done. The coop needed cleaning. I had let the flock free range on the property that day and was by myself in the run, raking up old shavings and shoveling poop into the compost pile. I cleaned out Lil G’s pool and filled it with fresh water.

He came at me unannounced; it was an ambush, a total cheap shot. I felt a sharp pain in my right calf. I looked down and saw a rip in my jeans, the cut extended into the flesh beneath. A thin rivulet of blood ran down my leg and into my boots. I turned around, rake in hand, to face my attacker. It was Tom. That jerk had come at me without warning and was about to come for more.

“Gannnso!” I called. “GANNNSO!” My protector was out of earshot, enjoying her R&R on the other side of the property.

He came at me again, this time he was completely airborne. His sharp claws thrust forward. I imagined it was a similar view to what a field mouse sees in the moments before he’s snatched up by a hawk. I tightened my grip on the wooden handle of my rake and blocked his attack, an improvisational and ghoulish game of turkey bunting. I knew all it would take was a small amount of offense on my part; one good smack and he would be done for. But what if I missed? I could justify one smack out of self-defense, but what if it didn’t end there? One smack would probably only hurt him and I would have to finish the job off with a few more. I may have been backed in a corner of the chicken run by a zealous Tom turkey, and yes, i was considering my options, but I was not the type to bludgeon an animal, even one that had just drawn blood and continued to attack. I simply couldn’t do it. It wasn’t in me.

And then it hit me — It’s just like the goose.

“Why hadn’t I thought of this before?!? I’ll show this Tom turkey who’s boss and end this seasonal feud once and for all. No only will he stop fighting me, he will like me. He might even learn to love me!” I thought. I pictured the three of us strolling down the driveway to open the front gate for arriving guests. Lil’ G on my right and Mr. T on my left — Roll up! This life couldn’t get any more Gangster. Damn it feels good to be a Farmer.

I crouched down into position just like I had the summer prior. Both of my arms outstretched, one hand in front of the other. “You got this,” I told myself. I tried to talk down my growing doubt; my fear heightened by my lack of protective clothing and preparation. He lunged at me again, this time I caught him by the neck. He fought back with a weight and strength that surprised me. There is a big difference in the fight of a 20-pound goose and the fight of a 45-pound turkey.

I would get hold of his neck with my right hand and try to gain control of his body with my left. He revolted. He twisted, wriggled, and pulled away until I lost my grip. We both tumbled backwards in the dirt. Before I could recover and get back up on my feet, there he was, barreling towards me in riposte. Drum Spit Drum Drum Spit. His emotionless eyes, pupils dilated, focused dead ahead. Drum Spit Drum Drum Spit. My husband away, my protector goose not responding to my calls for back up. Drum Spit Drum Drum Spit. This was it. There was no plan B.

I’m not a big girl and this was quickly becoming my first fisticuffs. Of my many poor life choices growing up, fighting was never one of them. In the past I had witnessed the occasional combat safely from the sidelines. I preferred the cheap seats. Even at that, the fights I had seen had been little more than drunken, half-hearted, hair pulling, cat-fights. I had little experience with the act of inflicting physical harm on another. Naively, I had assumed anger was the primary emotional motivator for violence. I was wrong in my assumption. I now know the catalyst of violence is not anger, but fear.

I was trapped, too angry to give up and frankly too scared to run. My leg ached, my sock soaked up the ever-slowing ooze of blood flowing from my open wound. I felt an internal sympathetic dump, time had abruptly slowed down. Suddenly, I was keenly aware of the details. I felt each imperceptible increase in the rate and strength of my heart, beating within my chest. My limbs tingled in anticipation of his next move. It was fight or flight and I was starting to get fucking scared. When I felt he was gaining the advantage I let go of my choke hold and tossed him away from me. The fight increased in ferocity with every point of contact. “He must be a little scared of me by this point,” I thought. Nevertheless, I would toss him back and before he hit the ground, he was ready for more. Each time he came back, more determined, more defiant. Each time he came at me harder than before.

He eventually got close enough to inflict more damage. I felt the hot sting of a claw as it cut the flesh inside my left forearm. With that, something deep within me snapped. I have a temper, one I am familiar with, but this was different. This time I saw red. Complete mind-numbing turkey-hating red. Something switched on inside me; a destruction I didn’t know I possessed. I became someone who, only minutes ago, it was simply not possible for me to be.

I came back to the fight willingly after that, furious, vicious; dust and feathers flying, talons and bleeding limbs flailing. My plan was failing miserably and I was in too deep to rationally back out. My hand around Tom’s neck was the only palpable advantage. I felt my grip tighten, the rings of his trachea opened and closed at my will.

“Who’s the boss now?” I screamed at him, increasingly irrational. I tightening my grip around his bald neck. “Yeah. Tom. What? You can’t make me bleed if you can’t breath.” Once again he slipped out of my hold. My power was momentarily lost; I felt the fear return as the tussle for control followed. “Just give up! You’re not gonna win, Tom. Who’s the boss, you bastard? You think you scare me? You think you can push me around, come at me from behind, cut my leg then my arm with your dirty ass nails. You think you can be a dick to me day-after-day-after-day?” I could feel him gasp, battle for breath, his conduit of life closing off. “Who’s the boss of who, you little shit? Huh? I’m am!” I pushed and pulled his feathered body, jerking him in indiscriminate directions. He started to submit, relinquish the fight for control. “I’m the boss, Tom!” I sensed my impending victory, his body no longer struggled. “Who’s your fucking boss now?” “Who’s the bo…

YOU THE BOSS, MAMA! YOU THE BOSS!!!

The reverie of blind turkey choking rage was brought to a complete halt, cut short by a sweet voice. There was Leo. Up from his nap, the baby monitor facedown in the dirt, unclipped from my jeans during the scuffle. There he was, just outside the coop, my first-born baby boy, standing on top of the feed box. He stood there, as tall as his slight 4 year old frame could, his chubby fingers wrapped through the chicken wire, his cherub face aligned with the fence to optimize his view. He had a ringside seat to his mother’s full-blown maniacal homicidal rage. Mama vs. Tom Turkey — Featherweight Title Fight. There was my biggest fan, cheering me on.

Rational thought painfully crashed back into my consciousness, humbling me with the disturbing truth. I had been moments away from a forever TKO of Tom Turkey. I was terribly close to choking one of our farm animals to death.

I tossed Tom away from me a final time, harder and farther than before, and made a run for the gate. He was dazed, coughing and hacking to breath. Yet he was alive. Still with us, his hatred of me legitimized.

Tom’s end result didn’t change. He ended up in the freezer a few weeks after the fight. He was the beautiful centerpiece of our Thanksgiving feast this year. In hindsight, I am thankful for his life and the unexpected lessons it brought me. I am thankful he shared his healthy and delicious 45 pounds, fortunately untainted by an emotional brine of fear and anger. Ultimately, I am thankful his life was taken quickly, humanely, and not in a fit of anger.

My end result has taken longer to set. It has an unpleasant taste, a hard to swallow reality.

How do I accept the knowledge that I am capable of what was an unimaginable act?

At times, giving up control of my life has resulted in tremendous fulfillment. Submission has brought me otherwise unobtainable realization in life. At other times, giving up control equals impending demise. It can be how the crazy lady chokes you out. One of Life’s grotesquely beautiful dualities. Reflection upon the end result is only possible when given the gift of hindsight. Living a life full of truth and honesty, lovingly making choices, without full knowledge of the chapters or ending. Therein lies the hard part.

Leo and I have had many talks about the importance of being gentle to all creatures. How Mama makes mistakes, sometimes. Why it’s important to think about what emotions we are feeling and to reflect on our choices in hopes of making better ones in the future. We come up with ways to deal with scary feelings like anger and fear, ways that do not include violence against farm animals. I’m not sure if these talks are for the benefit of the child or the parent. With any luck, we will both continue to grow from them.

As someone way smarter than Tom or myself once said, “Know Thy Self”. With a commitment to growth and ongoing goal to do just that; I must admit to something. I am still overcome with proud delight when Leo casually reminds me, “Mama, you’re the boss.”

I walked out the Emergency Department doors and into a breezy warm summer night that caused my forearms to erupt with goose pimples. The juxtaposition of eminent excitement, a dawn of new experience, against the quiet and inky night was not lost on me. How could the world be asleep when all of this was happening? Adrift in an ignorant slumber, what critical moments of a strangers life had I missed?

The helicopter was minutes out. An undetermined emergency minutes from landing, from becoming real. I felt in on a deep secret, a monumental event was unfolding for somebody out there. Come morning, family and loved ones would start receiving the phone calls and text messages. At best, visits to the hospital would begin, bouquets of sympathy sent; at worst, bouquets in memory of.

There, in the darkness, I was privy to a stranger’s intimate and evolving truth. Lives are saved, lives are lost, and all the unimaginable in-between in the middle of the night when most of us are sleeping. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in, breathed in the expectation the possibilities, attempted to blow away my nervous doubts, to stay focused on the present. To listen to nothing more than the warm summer wind as it whispered its’ promises across my exposed skin. I listened for the telltale staccato thump of a nearing helicopter. I could hear it, just barely, over the lowly automobile hum of highway traffic just over the hill.

Click, click. Beep. Slide open, slide closed.

I was startled from my moment of solitary anticipation. He was a Respiratory Therapist. Experienced. Old. His once navy scrubs were threadbare along the shoulder seams. His white hair pulled back into a thinning ponytail at the nape of his neck. A thick shock white goatee, hinted at what the hair on his head had once been. I had wondered if he ever capitalized on the winter holiday season, a Santa side-hustle. He walked past the ambulance bay towards me. Taking a mid-shift break for a respiratory treatment of his own. A break from doing good for others, from treating the sequelae of someone else’s choices. He allowed himself to indulge in his own ironic vice.

“Nice night.” He said to me.

“Sure is.” I replied back.

“Whatcha waiting for?” His words held in his mouth, their exit regulated by pursed lips as he lit his cigarette.

“Oh, you know. We have a helicopter coming in.” I said, trying to not let my excitement sound like a child counting the hours until Christmas morning. “Just out here waiting. I wanted to watch it land.”

Well that sounded lame,I thought. Not that I was trying to impress the old man. Rather, I was trying to keep my cool. Look as experienced and nonchalant as my mid 20s self dressed in scrubs emblazoned with the words “Student Nurse” could.

Both our gazes directed upwards on to the dark, moonless, southwestern night sky. For a few minutes we stood shoulder to shoulder staring towards the South; I stood in a silence of camaraderie.

“Well,” he said, pausing to exhale the smoke in his lungs, “I thought they’d be here by now.”

“Oh, they don’t look too far away.” My right hand raised, arm outstretched. I pointed to the bright light, 45 degrees off the horizon, hovering amongst solitary stars.

There was a quick twitch in his cheek. From my peripheral vision, I could see his wrinkles momentarily deepen, as he suppressed a cough, an internal reflex fighting against his willful inhalation of toxic smoke. I sensed a momentary suppression, deep in his chest, as he returned his gaze upwards upon the incoming glow.

“That’s their landing light, right there.” I continued on, matter of fact.

His gaze stayed fixed on the inbound helicopter, the promise of life or death. He took another deep drag, finishing the last of his cigarette in one deep inhale. His head nodding approvingly up and down, up and down. The exhaled smoke mixed with the smell of New Mexican dirt and piñon.

“That,” He said, just as matter of fact. He dropped the butt and stamped it out with the toe of his well-worn white Brooks tennis shoes. “That, is what we like to refer to as the planet Venus.” Not waiting for a response, he pivoted away from me and walked back inside.

Beep. Click, click. Slide open, slide shut.

ThumpThumpThumpThump. My hair was blown by a ferocious force behind me. The individual strands lashed across my face. My arms, just recently caressed with a gentle warm breeze now burned hot with embarrassment. ThumpThumpThumpThump. The helicopter came over the hospital from the North; it’s light shining from behind, lighting up my burning red teacup ears. Small pieces of gravel and sand were kicked up by the wash and bounced off the uncovered parts of my skin. It passed over my head and lit up the parking lot with a blinding light. It brought end to the anticipated arrival with an abrupt final decent to the helipad

I covered my eyes with my forearm until the engine shifted into shut down and the main rotor brake squealed. The blades slowed their rotation. I looked up as the flight crew opened the machines side doors. Implementing the final phase of the patient transport. The red helicopter shone, breathtaking, gleaming, as it reflected the surrounding parking lot lights. As the deep quiet of night recovered from the momentary assault against tranquility I looked upwards. 45 degrees up off the main rotor blades in the night sky, there she was. Venus shone bright as ever.

She came in fighting. Proceeded by a loud rant of hate and profanity that far outweighed her slight frame. Men in uniforms brought her to the hospital. Four Police Officers and four Firefighters. She was restrained on an ambulance stretcher, kicking, screaming, and fighting with each and every malnourished intoxicated cell in her body. It took all eight of them to hold her down.

“If it takes this many of them to control a 4’11” skinny drunk chick, how many does it take to change a light bulb?” I thought to myself, immediately followed up with, “Have you heard the one where it took four Cops, four Firefighters, and a Rabbi to pull an angry drunk out of the bar?” I smirked at my bad jokes, my own internal amusement.

She had a spit mask over her face. A mesh flour sack of sorts, with an elastic tie on the open end to hold it in place. Elastic, lax enough as to not choke the wearer, mesh fine enough to render any purposeful attempt to project bodily fluids unsuccessful.

“We’ll take her in Bed 6”, the charge nurse ordered.

Her wrists and ankles were tied down with thick leather straps. There was no possibility of escape, a fact she was either oblivious to or completely unaccepting of. She screamed, contorting her body in painfully unnatural ways against the restraints. She appeared to believe it was truly possible to bend and angulate her way out of this one. She fought as if her life depended on it; as if she believed wholeheartedly that getting out of the ties would let her finally escape the pain.

“Why doesn’t she just give up?” I thought. “Why fight something so obviously futile.”

Two hospital security guards joined the entourage of men, escorting the wailing woman to Bed 6. The room was sparse and institutional, a square utilitarian cell. A metal bed frame in the center, bolted to the concrete floor. A plastic mattress dressed up, hospital linen on top. It required the strength and control of the entire group of men to simply transfer the drunken tornado of a woman from one bed to the other.

“You’re up, Grasshopper”, the charge nurse barked. The authoritative clomp of his cowboy boots echoed through halls of the department. He thrust two syringes of drawn-up medication into my hand.

“Up for what?” I asked apprehensively.

“Get in there and help that drunk lunatic calm the fuck down. That one there is Haldol and Ativan.” He said pointing to the first syringe. “The other one is Benadryl. Drop that B52 on her crazy ass,” his southern drawl thickened. “Get ’em deep in each of her thighs, but don’t let her kick you in that pretty face of yours. I ain’t got time for any HR paperwork tonight.” With that he stomped off, seemingly comfortable with my ill-equipped ability to implement the task at hand. I knew how this worked. I could either figure it out or fail his test.

From the supply drawer I pulled out an alcohol pad and two Band-Aids, the latter immediately felt superfluous.

“Excuse me,” I announced my entrance into the room. “Pardon me, officer, right behind you. Sorry, coming through.” I squeezed my small frame through the group. The groups’ strength felt even more oppressive when it was contained in one small room. “Sorry, so sorry, pardon me. I have some medicines for her,” I explained. As if I owed them an explanation, a justification for my every movement. I waded through a sea of epaulettes, patches and brass, and slowly made my way to the foot of the bed.

Her fight was stronger than ever. Her head thrashing left to right, she spat verbal insults at one man, then the next. Accusations and allegations; the mere subject of which made my cheeks burn hot red. With the constant twisting and writhing she had managed to wiggle the spit mask up her face. Her left eye and forehead were now the only parts obscured by the weave of the mask. No longer hidden, I saw the anger in her curled lips. Flecks of spit collected at the corners as she shouted words of venom.

And then, Silence. Complete. Sudden. Silence. Mid sentence, mid accusation, the cataclysmic tirade came to a screeching halt. I stared at her from the end of the bed, flanked by strength and authority, syringes at the ready in my unsteady hand. I was poised, set to intervene. Ready to medicate a mad woman, a mad woman who was suddenly and inexplicitly slightly less mad. The woman flexed her neck slightly, her movements limited by the 4 point restraints, she managed to pull her head up off the mattress, far enough to make eye contact with me standing at the foot of the bed and stare me down.

“You!” she spat belligerently. “You, girl. I know you.” With a quick jerk of her head she flicked the mask the rest of the way off her face and onto the cold floor. This sudden silence, cut by her direct acknowledgement of me, stopped us all in our tracts. I heard a nearly inaudible crunch from an over starched uniform collar as all 10 men followed her lead and turned toward me.

“Hey girrrl!” she said again. Her voice was no longer full of hatred and despise. Even more unnerving, she sounded rather happy. There was excitement with a hint of surprise. It was as if she had run into an old friend from her past, a long lost cousin she hadn’t seen in 20 years.

No one said anything. My eyebrows rose high above my wide eyes, disclosing my disbelief, exposing my inexperience.

“Haayy, yooooou!” She drunkenly sang out, louder this time, as if I somehow missed her first greeting. “Don’t I know you from AA?”

My face, already flush from the virile stares, turned hot, growing an ever-deeper crimson red. I wanted nothing more than to turn and run out of that room. “What the fuck is she talking about? Why are they all staring at me? AA?? Not ever. For what? I’m not like her, never will be. My god. My coworkers don’t think, no, they can’t. I obviously don’t. But then again, why wouldn’t they? Do they believe her? Why are they all still staring?”

“I just knew I knows you”, she slurred, not needing a response to validate her reality. “What’s your name again, sister?” she asked through a toothless smile.

“Jessica… My name is Jessica.”

“Well, Miss Jessie. Thank god for a familiar face, ‘specially with all these fuckers around.” As if to clarify whom she was referring to, she let out a low growl, looked up, menacingly scanning the circle of male faces before looking back to me.

“Girl, let me tell you,” she snickered as if she had a secret to tell. “I fell off. I fell off hard.” She giggled. “Not lying. I did. Girl, you know howz it is.”

“No! No, I obviously don’t know.” I thought. “No, Girl, I have no idea, ‘howz it is’. What I do know is, I’m not an alcoholic and you’re not anonymous.” The circle of uniformed faces, each adorned with their own novel combination of shock, amusement, judgment, and confusion. I suppose each of them was retooling their previous assessments of me, drawing freshly updated conclusions of my character.

The good girl in me wanted to scream my truth, or at the very least, laugh it off. “Oh no! No, no, no. She is obviously completely mistaken. I have never been to AA. I mean, no judgment, that’s a great thing for those who need it, of course. But addiction is not my problem. I passed my new hire drug test just weeks ago…. Are you kidding? I do not know her and she most definitely does not know me. This is obviously a case of mistaken identity.”

I burned with a need to clear my name. First impressions are a very real thing. I was a recent addition into a well-formed hierarchy of medical personnel, and where I fit in was still under question. Within this group, rumor, innuendo, and ones reputation spread fast. I was a professional or rather, I wanted people to see me as such. I desired nothing more than to clear my name, to quell their judgments, to reconcile the confused and questioning stares of strangers.

I averted my gaze below the waves of conflicted faces. I looked back at her. Her bloodshot eyes, slightly crossed, were now filled with recognition. The unknown pains of her life were now accompanied by the safety of familiarity, the security of friendship, albeit a misperceived one. The most basic of all human needs: recognition, safety, security, and friendship. Who was I to deny her something so fundamental?

With a deep breath of resolution, I pushed away my pride and accepted the checkered misperceptions attempting to quantify my character. To define me. In that uncomfortable breath, I humbled myself to who she needed me to be.

“It’s good to see you too, Girl.” The words came out matter of fact, dry, as if I had held them in my throat a little too long.

“Next time, you don’t need to fall this hard”, I said, the honesty slowly returning to my voice. “Can I give you some medicine to help with the hell of a hangover heading your way?”

“Hell yeah, Jesssssie. Nurssse Jesssie.” The consonants were drawn out and sloppy. Her body relaxed into the plastic mattress and she laughed at what I assumed was a joke of her own internal amusement.

“It’s gonna be all right, Girl. I got you.” I reassured her. “Let’s get you a little more comfortable.” I started to clean her skin in preparation for the injections.

“But first.” I paused. “First, promise me we’ll be seeing each other at next weeks meeting.”

Less than a year for the goats and it hadn’t been much longer for us. It had only been two years since the twins and I had moved from a small apartment in the city to our forever home with Papa. It was a fixer upper in the mountains, surrounded by acres of wildlife, piñon trees, wildflowers, and so much potential. I was ecstatic. I was also completely out of my element.

My husband has an uncanny ability, a talent if you ask him, of acquiring free farm animals. I love that we can provide a happy life to dozens of previously displaced ragamuffin beasts. Nevertheless, hand-me-down animals rarely come with much warning and are never accompanied by a proper set up. The proverbial cart before the horse, or in this case, the goat before the fence.

“This shit always happens when he’s gone.” I mumbled to myself. Without fail, surprises on the farm occur when my husband is away, and with him his knowledge of all things farmy-ranchy. Life knowledge gained from a childhood of chasing chickens, milking cows, building barns, driving tractors. I still take extreme comfort knowing he has solutions to my future farm crises. Yet, without fail, when I need his experience the most, he will be away from home; at work, at the grocery store, just out of cell service. I am starting to notice this is not random coincidence. Our animals are not oblivious. Not only are they aware of his movements, I dare say, they track them. Trouble always comes when he is just out of reach.

“Hey… Psst. Hey Rosie goat, it’s me, Bubba. Man is getting ready to take the little humans to school. Based on my bovine estimation, that gives us a solid 45 minutes to infiltrate the garden. That fresh kale sure does beat the heck out of this dried grass mix. You with me? Don’t worry about her. Woman has nothing on us. She’ll just scream and cuss and wave her hands above her head, all crazy like, just like she did last time. Heck, worst case scenario, she’ll cut open a whole bag of sweet feed in attempt to get us out of her garden. It’s a win-win either way. This breakfast mission will be a success, we just have to stick together.”

Honestly, my overall naiveté is likely the catalyst for the proverbial shit to go down around here. But where’s the fun in admitting that? I’d rather maintain some pride by personifying the animals as characters in Oceans 11. My garden, the banks vault holding millions of dollars in cash and diamonds. George Clooney a calf named Bubba. Brad Pitt our angry goose. Julia Roberts my chestnut mare. Once the amusement in creating movie parodies runs thin, I try to reframe my frustrations as Mother Nature throwing a rural challenge at a resourceful city girl. A stubborn city girl with an inability to walk away from a challenge.

Growing up, my family was of very modest means, yet the upper echelon of money and society surrounded me. I was a poor kid in an extremely affluent town and growing up in this dynamic taught me many things. How to appear to be something you are not, how to blend in with a crowd, how to fake it till you make it, or at least appear like you have. It has taken many years of maturity and reflection, but I am thankful for how I grew up. Of many things, my childhood developed my gift of adaptability. However, in no way did it prepare me to wrestle an asshole goat and a strong willed calf, born only months ago, yet already outweighing me in pounds and sass. No, my childhood definitely did not teach me how to get all of that out of my garden, away from my ripened tomato plants. Jerks, I tell you.

It was just the three of us at home that day. Papa was in the middle of a 48-hour shift at the fire department. I helped my twins, Leo and Ava into their mud boots and we went outside to investigate. It didn’t take us long to find her. A four-year-old Nigerian Dwarf goat who had been named Mama by her original owners. She was 3 feet tall with perfectly symmetric horns and a impressive tuff of curled hair under her chin. She was pregnant and we expected her to deliver the baby kid early the following month. The due date was nothing more than an educated guess. You see, the magic had happened when she spent a few nights at the neighbor’s farm. By the time we brought her home, the fence was patched and the seed had been sown.

She was resting on her fore knees under overhanging branches. Her eyes were open wide, a look of shock and disbelief across her brown and black blazed face. I imagine, in the moment, we looked as similar as two different species possibly could. I told the twins to stay where they were, as I hunched over, maneuvering through the dried low hanging branches of a dying juniper bush.

I came along side her moments before the first one slid out. Mama let out a cry and with that the baby was delivered. Like an over ripe avocado, gift wrapped in slimy saran wrap, it plopped unceremoniously into the dirt. Intuitively, I scooped the dark shape up off the ground and started to dry it with the sleeves of my jacket. The creature opened its eyes; bright blue marbles cut in half by black rectangular pupils. The two bright eyes shining, that black and brown fuzzy face, she was breathtaking. The baby goat took its first breath. Life. New, beautiful, life.

The momentary trance of amazement and catecholamines was soon broken by another cry, this time the cry of a tiny human.

“Maaaaammmmma!!” Leo shouted. I turned back to the twins, the trance broken. “She is POOPING another one!” Ava just stood there in silence, a half step behind her brother, her mouth parted slightly, her large dark raisin eyes open wide.

The twins were already intimately familiar with the cycle of life. In less than four years on this earth their general concept of anatomy and physiology had far surpassed what mine had been as a college freshman. They were little hungry sponges, brains thirsty for knowledge. Their minds assimilated facts and information with enviable ease. It was a constant game of toddler Jeopardy with these two, and I was getting used to losing. The teacher of their 2-year-old preschool class had expressed her surprise and delight that the twins referred to body parts by their proper name. When one would get sick with a cold, they would tell me the inside of their bones were busy making white blood cells, the “The NewTroPhil”, to fight off the bad germs.

I was the one in the family to flinch and look away when we watched Papa slaughter a duck for dinner. I had shrieked. Leo had made a calm and rational comparison to, “a very very VERY bad bloody nose”.

They had watch me learn how to humanely end the suffering of a fatally injured chicken. When Papa butchered a deer, the twins had felt the crepitus of broken ribs and crackle of subcutaneous air across the flank of the hanging carcass. We had even played a macabre game of: What’s That Organ and What’s Is Its’ Job. They played surprisingly well. The following spring the twins, plastic garden spades in hand, had helped me dig shallow graves for baby chicks that did not survive their first few days in this world.

Unlike their cousins and many of their classmates, Leo and Ava had no questions about where food came from. Each animal on the farm was given a name, and forever referred to by said name, even when a piece of them was pulled from the deep freezer and served for dinner. At times this was disconcerting for me. On one occasion, I insisted, mid meal, all three of us leave the lunch table and go outside, so I could show them that one of our beloved canines was not the source of our hot dog lunch. “No, we are not eating one of our dogs.” Man’s best friends were all accounted for, and strangely, I was the only one horrified with the assumption that one of our fur babies might well be absent.

The cycle of life! This was a significant moment in all of our lives! Twin baby goats! Two of them!! One boy. One girl. I, a Mama myself, had helped goat Mama deliver unexpected twin babies into this world, and had done so with MY twins at my side. I was surprised and scared and alone, yet determined to make it work, to love and protect my… I mean, her offspring. The warm serendipity of it all shone down on me that afternoon though the piñon trees. It was perfect.

In the quiet depths of my conscious thought, I pondered how this would be one of countless memories, poignant moments my children would look back on and credit as experiences that built them into the loving, strong, formidable individuals they had become. Or rather, the people I dreamt they would someday be.

This was why I wanted them to grow up on this land. This very moment was what it was all about. This moment mattered. That warm spring day, crouched under the crop of trees with my kids, delivering her kids, was momentous, life affirming, full-circle, pure beauty. At least, there would be beauty, as soon as I dried the bloody and viscous bodily fluids off the second baby goat while Mama ate what I assumed was placenta.

As I mentioned, the goats on our farm came before we had the appropriate accommodations. There was no cross fencing. The barn was a work in progress. It was currently a two-sided, wooden, cabriolet shelter of sorts. That spring all of our animals; a handful of goats, a cow, a goose, and a gaggle of chickens, all inhabited the same 5-acre enclosure. It had been idyllic to see creatures of all different shapes and sizes cohabitate. An egalitarian co-operative homestead à la Charlottes Web. I was still inexperienced and had yet to learn the depressing actuality of combining the living space of different species. A reality filled with endless incantations of disaster, increased potential for disease, and even death.

As the shock of the successful delivery waned, something I had read months ago floated into my thoughts. It was something I read in, Farming and Homesteading for City Girls and Dummies, or whatever that book is. My memory of it was vague; it had to do with warm water and molasses. I need to get some, and now, I naïvely thought. The newborn kids could be hypoglycemic. Or maybe the molasses tonic was for the mother goat, she must be in need of re-nourishment. A warm molasses and sweet feed martini, shaken not stirred, a push present of sorts — farm style. Hand in hand, Leo, Ava, and I walked back to the house to mix up a postpartum cocktail in a mason jar.

His body was lifeless, his fur still looked sticky wet in spots. His legs splayed unnaturally on the ground. The abrupt flood of tears blurred my vision and wet my cheeks. A dark afternoon cloud passed over the sunshine. The piñon trees cast a cool shadow, rescinding on their recent promise of spring. A life gone just as quickly as it had come.

“NOOOOO!” I screamed. The gut-wrenching sound that came from me was unnerving. It was guttural, primal even. I could feel it originate deep in my gut, it grew larger, rising up through my stomach and lungs, pushing angrily up my throat, raging to escape, to be free of all restrictions. The sound escaped me, leaving behind feelings of deep seeded loss and regret. The warm Mason jar dropped from my hand and I fell to my knees, innately needing to create a space of protection and safety around the small creature. I examined his limp body, his splayed legs, half open eyelids, the surprisingly large tongue protruding from his parted lips. In vain, I searched for any possible signs of life. I wondered how I would modify CPR for a goat; it couldn’t be that different from the countless chest compressions I had performed during my years working as a ER Nurse. One push with my index and middle finger and I knew all was futile. His tiny frame collapsed under my touch, his body broken. A life extinguished, crushed out by something bigger, stronger. A misplaced step of one of the other animals and all was gone.

“No, no, no, no!” I cried again. He was just here, taking his first breaths, clumsily trying to stand, just moments ago.

“Mama? Why are you crying?” Leo asked.

I choked back sobs. Swallowed the tears. My motherly instincts were to save my kids from such painful realities of this world. Assure them horrible things did not happen. Make sure they knew they were safe. Fight away the childhood nightmares, dreams of small things running from giant hooves, descending from above, crushing anything unable to get out of its way.

“Ava. Leo. My babies.” My voice cracked. “One of Mama’s baby goats is dead.”

“But why?” asked Leo.

“I’m not sure exactly.” I stammered. “His body is, well, he is very broken. I think one of the bigger animals stepped, well, they stepped wrong. It was an accident; they didn’t mean to hurt him. But he is very hurt. He… He is gone.”

My vision went blurry. Tears welled, and the flood was on the brink of return. I turned away from their chubby and innocent cherub faces. My gaze fell to the ground, focusing back on the lifeless shell. He was no bigger than my hand; there couldn’t have been more than a few pounds on his tiny body.

I closed my eyes. Pull it together, I told myself. Snap out of this. I reminded myself this turn of events was nothing more than an accident, a sad reality of life. What originally had felt so serendipitous and life affirming had taken a sharp detour southward. This tragic outcome was in no way a reflection on my own personal reality. It would all be okay. I was okay and most importantly, my kids were okay. We had made it. This was nothing more than a part of living this life. It came with the choice of raising them in this increasingly comfortable yet still painfully unfamiliar way.

The internal spiral of my dark thoughts was broken by the warmth of two sets of small hands, lovingly placed on my shoulders.

“Don’t cry. It’s okay,” assured Ava. “You’re okay, Mama,” she whispered.

“Yeah, Mama. Don’t cry,” Leo echoed. “Don’t cry Mama, because Baby Goat is in heaven.”

“You’re right. You’re right.” I sniffled. “He’s not hurting. He’s not just gone. He’s in heaven.” Still, crouched on my knees, I turned back towards their beautifully innocent faces. “Baby goat is in heaven.” I assured again. The words avowing the poor creatures fate momentarily hung in the air.

“Mama?” Leo spoke. His tone changed. It was unexpectedly matter of fact, deeper, abruptly void of any and all of his previous sweet reassurance and empathy. He was suddenly straightforward and serious; he looked directly into my puffy red eyes.

“Sooooo, now what?” He asked nonchalantly. “We gonna eat him?”

“If I find it on the floor at the end of the day, it CLEARLY is not important to you and I WILL throw it in the trash.”

Throughout our childhood, Mother would threaten my sister and me with this. 30 years later, I cannot recall if this threat worked as she had hoped, but I do remember how it made me feel. The impending demise and loss of my things, the foreboding fate of my childhood chachkies, those emotions are crystal clear. Naturally, as of late, I have recycled the threat with my own children.

In the evening, at the end of a long day, after the warnings and threats and subsequent bargaining with the children, during the final sweep of the house collecting unclaimed kid clutter, my husband walked into the living room, a concerned look on his face. In his hand he held a pair of underwear pulled from the trash.

With incredulousness and the slightest whiff of piety he stated that I too left my underwear on the floor sometimes and the location of one’s underwear certainly does not constitute throwing them away. He’s an adult, not a child, and the same rules I have for our children should not automatically apply to him. I should at least ask him to pick stuff up before putting it in the trash.

No, my dearest, I explained with all the forced patience my fatigue would allow. Indeed, I did pick them up off the floor but that is not why I threw them away. It was because the boxer briefs had long been stained with memories, now immune to washing. If that was not reason enough, there was a dime size tear up the mid-seam that if said item was worn again, would provide decent ventilation to the area between his balls and butthole. THAT was why they were in the trash.

His gaze directed downward at the thinning poly blend, stained with the byproduct of days upon days, fraying at the seams, encircled by stretched elastic that had long since given up on returning to its previous way of life. “You don’t want them for a cleaning rag?”

On the rough days, motherhood and marriage have me commiserating with underwear.