My Gentle Barn (15 page)

“Good for you, Daisy,” I said. “Good for you.”

But the love story that moved me the most—filling me with awe and perhaps a bit of envy—was that of Grandpa Goat and young Emily. Grandpa, who had been crippled when he’d arrived, had regained his ability to walk, thanks to an expert in animal massage. During this period, a young goat named Emily joined our barnyard. Vibrant and fit as a fiddle, she took a shine to the elderly Grandpa. This was not simple camaraderie; it was absolute devotion. She would sit by Grandpa’s side and groom him and nibble on him, and when he got up and made his way slowly around the barnyard, she followed his every step. She was completely and madly in love.

Unfortunately, as Grandpa Goat went from old to older, he began to slip back into the crippled state in which he’d arrived. I made a big, fluffy bed of straw for him, and he stayed in that bed nearly all of the time. Emily, of course, stayed right by his side. One night, at two in the morning, I heard a terrible bleating coming from the barnyard. I had
learned my lesson from Katie and Zoe, and so threw off the covers and went immediately to check on the animals. Grandpa had fallen from his bed and could not get up, and Emily—unable to help him—was beside herself, baaing frantically.

Grandpa could no longer even get up to go to the bathroom. I cleaned his bed throughout the day and added more straw to keep it soft for his achy body. But finally, one day, I knew the time had come. I couldn’t in good conscience let him go on living like he was. I explained to Emily that it wasn’t fair to keep him there in this condition, and I told Grandpa that I was going to help him out of this body that no longer worked. Emily was young and fit, and I figured she would find another goat to befriend, but after the difficult morning when the vet and I helped Grandpa out of his misery, Emily took to Grandpa’s bed and wouldn’t get up.

For a week she stayed in that bed, and there was nothing I could do to cheer her up. One morning when I came into the barn I froze at the door and stared at Emily, holding my breath. She was not moving. I went to her and laid my hand on her side. There was no life in her body. “Emily,” I said, as though I could call her back to this life. But Emily had already gone.

I called the vet out and he did an exam and found nothing; there had been nothing medically wrong with this young goat. She had simply died of a broken heart.

In addition to the grief I felt, I was struck through with awe at having witnessed a love so deep that a young girl had laid down her life for it. I had never loved like that—at least, not another adult human—and I wondered what it took to love someone that much.

That summer, Scott and I decided to give it another shot. Perhaps it was because—with the summer break from working with the at-risk kids—I had a lighter schedule and thus was a bit more available, not
constantly on a mission. Or maybe it was simply that each of us, in our separate thoughts, always had hoped to make things work. Whatever the reason, it was nice to have my husband back, nice to be a normal family again.

It was a few months into this period of harmony in my household that a new volunteer named Chantelle came to the Gentle Barn. She had a fiery red mane and bright blue eyes and fancied herself a witch, but she assured me she was the good kind. We clicked right away and began spending a bit of time together outside the Gentle Barn. One day Chantelle invited me to her place for tea. Her bookshelves were lined with rocks and crystals and dusty old books, and there was a spicy-sweet smell in the air. As she poured me a steaming cup of tea she named all the herbs in it, some of which I’d never heard of. She brought Jesse some apple juice and I lifted him onto my lap.

When she sat down opposite us she said, “You know I have psychic abilities, right?”

“No, I don’t think you told me that.”

“Well, I want to do a reading for you.”

After only the shortest hesitation, I said, “OK, sure. That sounds fun.”

She reached for my hand and I thought she was going to read my palm but she just held my hand across the table and closed her eyes. After a long time just sitting there, she said, “I’m sorry you felt so alone during your childhood. No one really got you. No one understood except the animals.”

She was definitely telling my story, but I always spoke quite freely about my childhood. Perhaps I’d even told her.

“Simon was especially there for you,” she said.

Now,
that
got my attention. I was sure I’d never mentioned my childhood dog to her.

“The Gentle Barn,” she said, and I sat up in my chair, waiting for what would come next, but she didn’t say anything for a long moment.

Jesse squirmed on my lap and I set him down on the floor, hoping he wouldn’t pull anything off the shelves. “It’s OK,” she said, and she took my hand again, “there’s nothing breakable.” At this point Chantelle opened her eyes and fixed her blue gaze on me. “You don’t believe anyone will ever
really
understand what you’re doing with the Gentle Barn. But all that’s going to change one day. Lots of people are going to understand; more than you can even imagine.”

I felt a welling-up in my chest, sadness and hope all mixed together.

“In fact,” she said, and again she sat silently for a moment. Then: “Oh! There’s going to be a man.”

“A man?”

“Yes, in seven months. A man who will love animals right alongside you. He’ll share the Gentle Barn with you. A true soul mate.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “I’m married.”

I wanted so desperately to share my world with Scott. After Chantelle’s reading, I began asking him to please, just this once, come and spend a little time with me in the barnyard. Scott got annoyed, and I didn’t take the cue to back off; I pushed and he went over the edge, and in the early spring he moved back into the guest room. I ran out to Buddha for her soothing hug. Embraced in her warmth I spoke to her of my grief and despair and my sense of failure.

“Why on earth do I even try?” I said to her. I could feel the tears making tracks down my barnyard-dusted face. I pressed my cheek against her neck, letting the tears soak into her soft fur. “I hope you don’t mind,” I said to her. “I hope it’s not too much of a burden for me to come to you like this.”

Buddha stuck out her long, sandpapery tongue and licked my elbow.

This would not be Scott’s final good-bye, not yet. He would stay under one roof with me for another year or more, and we would try
more than once to reconcile—to fit our mismatched dreams together. We both wanted to make it work for Jesse, and we each wanted to make this life match what we had envisioned when we’d gotten married, but it was as though our dreams were from two different jigsaw puzzles, and there would never be a true fit.

Shortly after Jesse turned two, Scott’s parents—who didn’t know yet about our off-again, on-again separation—suggested we put our son in preschool so he could learn to socialize with other children. In my opinion he seemed too young to be away from home like that, even if only for part of the day. But I relented, figuring they knew more about child-rearing than I did. Still, it was heart-wrenching to leave him crying in the arms of the caregiver.

“He only cries for a few minutes,” the woman would assure me. “Five minutes after you leave, he’s playing with the other kids.”

“OK,” I would say, trying to feel reassured. But it never got easier to hand him off and drive away.

We did, eventually, fall into a daily rhythm. After I dropped Jesse
off at preschool, I came back and fed the animals and cleaned up the barnyard. My groups arrived at eleven or one. After the group was over, I addressed any medical issues with a vet. Then, bursting to see my son, I’d rush off to pick him up and spend the rest of the afternoon giving him my undivided attention. When Scott came home, he took over with Jesse so I could feed the animals dinner.

As organized as this sounds, I am not, and never have been, a left-brain person. I have only a loose grasp on linear time, dwelling more naturally in the fluid world of the heart and the present moment. I still often got caught up in the heavenly atmosphere of the barnyard, waking with a start as though from a dream to greet my arriving group or run inside to give Jesse a bath. The business aspect of the Gentle Barn was also beyond my grasp; my nonlinear brain shied away from numbers in general, whether attached to a clock or a dollar sign. It never occurred to me to create a business plan; I didn’t even know what was supposed to be in one. Neither had it ever entered my mind to consult with someone who did have business savvy. Although I had formed a board of directors when I’d established the Gentle Barn as a nonprofit, and although the board members loved the Gentle Barn and wanted to see it succeed, none of them had a solid business background.

For the most part, the Gentle Barn and I traveled forward flying blind, relying purely on instinct to guide us. And somehow everything kept falling into place. That didn’t mean I didn’t worry. There were only small trickles of money coming in from various different sources and I never knew if there would be enough. We only asked a $5 donation per person at the door on Sundays and the same for field trips. Although I had a set price for a ten-month period for the probation camps and foster-care facilities that visited, most didn’t have the money, so I opened my doors to them for free. Because the Gentle Barn had begun appearing in the media, we did start receiving occasional donations from people who had read about us or seen us on the news, but I had no idea how to make more of that happen. With my trust fund just about
gone, Scott and my parents came in to pick up the slack with loans and gifts, but I wanted the Gentle Barn to be self-supporting.

So when I learned that one of my new volunteers had a background in corporate America, I started asking questions. Jay had first come to the Gentle Barn to bring his eleven-year-old stepdaughter to volunteer. They came every Friday, and before long he was working right alongside her, helping with whatever tasks or projects needed doing. Eventually he began showing up on other days too, to offer more help with feeding and cleanup or with fixing things. I was surprised at how good Jay was with tools. He looked like he’d never held a hammer. He had manicured fingernails and no calluses, and every hair on his head was in its perfect place. I found out that he’d been a vice president of marketing and had been laid off when his company had taken a nosedive. He was spending his time volunteering as he searched for a new job.

After Jay saw that I fed the animals fruits and vegetables to supplement their diet, he showed up the next time with a big box full of fresh produce. “All organic,” he said as he set the box on the kitchen counter.

“Wow, thank you!”

“Thank Whole Foods,” he said. “It’s all donated.”

It had never occurred to me to ask for donations from food markets. I had always paid for the produce I fed my animals. Apparently supermarkets over-ordered produce as a matter of course and had to throw good stuff out daily.

Jay began to make the rounds to five Whole Foods Markets and filled his van with organic produce that was only a day or two old and still looked beautiful. We’d sort and prep the produce, putting out the greens and grapes for all the animals in the barnyard, and then fill big bowls with the rest of the produce for the pigs. As we worked I’d ask him all kinds of questions about running a business and promotion and marketing.