Of Uncles And Equines

My favorite uncle, the husband of my grandmother's sister, was that rarity: a schoolmaster who adored kids. Early in our acquaintance we cast each other in roles which we never tired of playing: he as a devil (un dimoni!) and I as his intended victim. He only actually chased me once. After that, he merely had to look at me sideways to send me fleeing with terror and delight down the long dark hallway of my parents' Barcelona apartment. But this was just our urban entertainment. In the summer, we had my grandparents' entire farm for our adventures.

One summer my grandfather got a mother/daughter pair of donkeys to work on the farm. I don't remember the daughter's name, but we named the mother La Reverències ("Curtsies") after her habit of suddenly bending one of her knees.

My uncle one day got permission from my grandfather to take my visiting boy cousins from Barcelona and me to ride the donkeys on the threshing floor in front of the barn, which sat far from the house on a slight rise beyond the vegetable garden and the wheat field. A bare flat space, the threshing floor had been baked granite-hard over the centuries by the sun and the enormous stone rollers that crushed the wheat at harvest time.

My grandfather agreed, with the proviso that my uncle ride with me, to prevent accidents. So while my cousins took turns riding the younger donkey, my uncle and I got on La Reverències. The sun was beating down on our heads, the cicadas were going full blast, and the sky was so clear that I could see the Pyrenees in the distance as we made our way round and round the threshing ground.

The sun, the cicadas, and the slow clip-clop of the donkey's hooves had me in a kind of trance when, out of the blue, La Reverències curtsied and my uncle and I tobogganed neatly over her neck and crashed to the ground. It could not have happened faster if the donkey's neck had been drenched in olive oil. I can still feel the hardness of the ground on landing, and hear the laughter of my cousins as my uncle and I dusted ourselves off, while, nearby, the culprit munched serenely on some tufts of summer-dry grass.

La Reverències, left, and her daughter, right. Between them, my cousins and I, in our summer espadrilles. In the background, the back of the barn. Both my cousins and the donkeys seemed like giants to me. When did they shrink so much?

My other uncle, my mother's youngest sibling, was barely out of his teens when I was a toddler. He lived with my grandparents, rode a big motorcycle, hunted partridge and quail in season, and had curly blondish hair and a small straight nose. In the summer, the sun would turn his face bright red.

One evening, he and I were leading the carthorse from the barn back to the stable, which was across the courtyard from the house, for his dinner of oats and hay. As a special treat, my uncle said that I could ride the horse, on the condition that I hold tightly on to his mane. This was a first for me, and I was thrilled by the motion of the great beast, the smell of horse sweat and the prickly feel of his hair on my bare legs. The sun was going down, a cool breeze had come up, and in the pear trees that bordered the path a nightingale began to sing. Inspired by the bird, my uncle also broke into song: Oh Susana, no llores más por mí/Con mi banjo y mi caballo a Alabama me marché...

Then, perhaps carried away by the beauty of the evening and the prospect of dinner, he gave the horse a friendly slap on the rump. The usually lethargic beast misunderstood and broke into a trot. My uncle ran alongside, looking terrified, and I tried to hold on, but the sudden jolting and the sensation of my seat losing contact with the horse were so disconcerting that I lost my head, let go of the mane, and flew through the air and into the arms of my uncle, who fortunately had excellent eye-hand coordination and whose face, I noticed, had turned beet red.

He set me down, caught the horse, stopped to catch his breath, then squatted to look me in the eye and whispered, "Do not ever tell your parents what just happened."

And this, if my parents read this blog somewhere in the cosmos, is the first they'll hear of it.                                                  
                                                     

Spring Babies

Every year at this time I am overwhelmed with desire for animal babies.  I miss the goat kids that used to make the place come alive with their hopping and jumping and general delight at having landed on this amazing planet.  I long for a little donkey, one with big eyes and long soft ears and tiny hooves that I could take on walks and perhaps, when it was grown, even ride side-saddle like the little old black-clad women I used to see on the roads near my grandparents' farm in Catalonia.

Failing a donkey, I would love a couple of geese.  I am perilously close to getting a couple of goslings, the kind that would grow low-slung, bulldog-like bodies with gray backs, white bellies and bright orange beaks.  To me, a goose waddling and honking in the yard is the very essence of country living.  What holds me back?  The lack of a pond and of adequate fencing, and the mountains of poop that a pair of geese would produce.

Short of a goose, I could get more hens.  I was at the feed store picking up grain last week and there they were, the year's shipment of day-old chicks, cheeping and running around under the heat lamps.  What kept me from scooping up a half dozen and taking them home?  Only my near fanatical belief that a peaceful, healthy flock is a small flock, and that I owe it to my hens to keep their numbers low.

So I've become resigned to the thought of no new babies at the place this year.  But that's not quite right. There is new life here after all. 

As if to reward me for my restraint the potted lemon tree has just presented me with eight little  lemons.  This is the tree that, as you may recall, I had so much trouble shaping and acclimating           ( http://mygreenvermont.blogspot.com/2013/02/shape.html).  I was surprised and grateful when it suddenly covered itself in blooms, then dismayed when most of them dropped off.  But I became a dedicated pollinator (I was going to write "husband") to the remaining few.

Every morning after breakfast I would pick up an old watercolor brush and tickle the innards of each flower, hoping that I was doing it right.  The petals eventually dried and fell off, and I kept peering at the base of the pistils, looking for the slightest swelling that would tell me that I had succeeded as a bee.

After days of looking in vain, I decided to enjoy my lemon tree for its foliage and abandon all thoughts of a crop.  Then suddenly yesterday there they were: deep green and less than a quarter-inch long, but definitely lemons, my own little lemons in whose procreation I had played an active part. 

I feel such a fatherly kind of pride in every one of them, that I'm not sure I'll ever bring myself to make them into lemonade.

December 7, 2008 "Subverting Simplicity"

The question came up in conversation the other day about what I would do if I had lots of money. And for a while, I couldn't come up with anything. Does that mean that I have attained perfect happiness? Maybe. But what it really means is that I live in Vermont. And because I live here, money for travel means nothing, for who would want to leave this place? A fancy car? The only thing you need in a car in Vermont is all-wheel drive. Otherwise, all cars look the same under a thick coat of mud and road salt. Gorgeous clothes? The only requirement is warmth, otherwise the same answer applies as to cars. And so on.

I did eventually come up with something, though. I would fence-in the front field. And why would I do that? Because in that field I would put... a donkey. Not just any donkey, but a Miniature Mediterranean Donkey (MMD). Or rather, two--donkeys are herd animals and are happier with a friend. I want a couple of MMDs because they are tiny (36” or less at the withers), friendly, and adorable.

And because they remind me of Spain. When I was growing up there in the 50s, you could still see them all over the countryside. They were the poor man's horse, eating little and working hard. During the long summer evenings I used to stand in front of my grandparents' farm house and watch the little old women, dressed in black, black kerchiefs on their heads, riding their donkey back to the village. They sat bareback and sideways, as confidently as if he were a kitchen chair, and on his croup they balanced a large basket filled with grass, to feed the rabbits that would in turn feed their families. The women nodded as they passed by, “Bona nit!” The little donkeys quickened their pace at the smell of the approaching village. And I wished that my grandparents were poor, and kept a donkey.

Heading Home

Now I wish I were rich, and could afford one. I can see myself riding it to the village store for the NY Times. I would dress in black, scarf and all. I would save gas...

But my simple life would get more complicated. There would be farrier appointments, a worming schedule, hay to shop for, grain to buy, brushing and grooming to be done, and quality time to be spent, plus training, of course. I can see myself, on a cold, snowy night like tonight, having delivered a hot dish to the hens, trudging across the yard to the shed with a bucket full of steaming water, spreading hay for extra bedding, hading out extra grain, and for my reward, the gratitude in those dark, liquid eyes.