A Bag of Onions

Posted by Holly at July 5th, 2008

Maybe here is how to do it. I’ve just washed the kitchen floor again. When I lived alone, before I was married, I swear I didn’t have to wash a kitchen floor more than once every two weeks. Okay, I did work outside of my home every day and rarely cooked except once in a while for company so the floor didn’t get much use. But still. I do it here more than twice a week and, truth be told, it could stand it every day since we both track in dirt, mud and hay strands. But, since I do do it, I just figured out a new pattern that leaves me off in my office while the floor dries where I can do any number of things of interest solely to me like play Mah Johng on the computer or … write! Oh, the cleverness of me. Please, let it stay a little damp and grey out – as it is now because, after all, it is July 5th in Oregon – so the floor takes a little while to dry.

I am sure, if I had been married into this life 40 years ago, I would have invented the consciousness raising movement on my own; not the equal pay for equal work part, though, because Jim’s rate of pay is way too low for this kind of labor. I’m not complaining; although I realize it sounds dangerously like that. Really, I am just an observer and commentator on my current life, which, curiously enough, is filled with aphorisms deriving from the farm.

Jim lives and breathes by the weather forecast during haying season, listening to the computer voice forecast on the car radio many times a day and tries to figure out when he can be making the hay, not only when the sun is shining but so that it will sit out there in the field while the sun is still shining so it doesn’t get wet, moldy and rendered unusable for the original intent of feeding the horses. I wonder why he grows the hay, actually, instead of buying hay while the sun shines and save himself the anguish and frustration of the pesky weather and the vicissitudes of old equipment that falls apart frequently.

Also not complaining, I wonder why there needs to be an early bird to catch a worm. And there are. They start their singing just about when dawn is arriving which, at this time of year, is before 5 AM. I assume they are catching worms and I understand Jim’s urgency to get out of bed and into the vineyards because there are a lot of them to prune and trim and train and cajole into producing lovely grapes. Farm work revolves around the amount of light available and I get that. After two plus years of marriage, Jim sweetly brings the thermos pot of coffee and leaves if for when I do wake up because my brain does not gather itself into a thinking sphere until several hours later.

We did get up together every two hours for two weeks and then once a night for the next three weeks while we feeding the filly foal who was so sick. The only way I could really make it work was to put my clothes on the floor next to the bed not only in the order of which I would put them on but also in position. That way, with my sweat pants set up accordion style, for instance, I could muster enough cohesive thought to get into my clothes, out to the barn and perform the rote tasks involved in mixing the formula, filling the monojet syringes, and mixing up the medicines we gave to Ellie until she was strong enough to hold her own and began eating her feed.

It was a revelation to see dawn every day from that direction. My only previous experiences with dawn were returning home after a night of stepping out to jazz clubs when I was dating a NY newspaper jazz writer.

So here it is the Saturday of the July 4th weekend; day of rest today (if you’re of my Jewish faith) or coming (if you’re of Jim’s Catholic beliefs) and I’m feeling a little guilty sitting here and writing this because, by now, the floor in the kitchen is dry enough for me to go out the door, into the garden, take the hoe to the weeds and distribute used hay on the aisles between our 50 plus tomato plants to keep the weeds down. Don’t tell Jim, I did sneak in 45 minutes to watch the end of an old movie on TCM while I was making the bed and putting away the laundry….

Posted by Holly at June 24th, 2008

I did think I would have more time with less to do in it once I left the workforce. Now I think I want to go back to work simply because I probably used my time more efficiently with a job outside of the home; in this case, farm. It does seem as if I never just sit down to read something or write something without the looming, sinking feeling that there are a thousand little tasks that need to be completed that will, truly, run out of hand if I don’t do them. None of them tasks I wake up in the morning just dying to do, either. I mean, really, who WANTS to empty the dishwasher (again; didn’t I do that just yesterday?), do the laundry (again; didn’t I do that just yesterday?), iron (again; didn’t I do that just six months ago….)?

And my to do list is much shorter and less urgent than Jim’s. It almost seems like, for him, before he can actually DO anything, he has to fix the thing with which to do it. Today, he came into the kitchen clutching the tip of a grease gun and a little zerk through which he could no longer push the grease. He needed the greased zerk so he could run the mower to cut the hay, quick before it starts raining again, wets and rots the hay before it can spend five days strewn on the ground drying. Determining he needed a new tip, new grease ( a case), new zerks and a new hub for the gear box on the wheel of the 469 haybine - what am I talking about?? - I went off to the local John Deere store to acquire said items.

Usually, my initial trip with my list of things needed, meant to save Jim time by my going so he can fix something else he needs to do something else, uses up time because there is always some one thing or more wrong with what I get. Partly it’s because I don’t intuitively know what I’m looking for; partly it’s because Jim says “go get me a sawsall blade, it’s about this long. I need one for wood and one for metal” and it turns out there are 20 or 30 different sizes and shapes and some are for wood, some for metal but some are for both. We spend a lot of time on our cell phones when I go off to buy supplies and equipment. Today wasn’t too bad except I got the wrong size hub for the gear box.

Finally, though, Jim is out there on the mower and I am heading to do any of the following:

load the lunch dishes in the dishwasher; hand-wash the pot
set up a pea trellis using bamboo stakes and curly willow twines
water the wild flowers and sunflowers I planted
remove some of the garden debris from a couple of days ago before I start a new pile
cut the heads on the tons of parsley that has gone to seed
dead-head the iris down the driveway
pressure wash off the floor of the teahouse so I can treat it with oil and protect the wood

Probably shouldn’t be sitting here writing this but it is really the one thing no one else will do unless it’s I.

Posted by Holly at May 19th, 2008

Surely someone is thinking about how to manufacture vehicle fuel out of weeds. And, if not, then the scientists and innovators working on these projects have not spent sufficient time in a garden or even tiny plot of dirt including those that exist in the cracks of sidewalks. Weeds are everywhere and they are relentless.

I can see how people have a zen attachment to pulling them up and out. I do feel huge satisfaction when I get their roots to come up in one piece and when I finish a section and see how ordered it is, how the desired plants seem to breathe better and hold up their heads a little higher. I have to approach it in sections because if I look at the entirety of any area we have, let alone the farm as a whole, it is overwhelming and I immediately go inside and start to read my email. If, however, I just get down in there and start pulling, pretty soon I can let myself look around and see that something has been accomplished. This inspires me; for the next few minutes anyway.

Just that little section is so revealing. It just looks like dirt and weeds at the beginning but, quickly, the earthly inhabitants start scurrying as their homes are disturbed by all the yanking and rolling. Ants begin to flee; the longer bugs with the armor that looks like an anteater start utching themselves through displaced dirt to find new cover; bees that seem to have been silent suddenly start buzzing thrillingly close to my head. I believe the bees are checking out my activity to see if I pose any danger to them. There aren’t as many worms as I would have expected if ever I had thought about it. The ones that are there are usually very small and don’t make me jump. Now and then a big one shows up. I saw one that was about a half inch in diameter just yesterday. Worms and snakes probably have gotten a really bad rap but it works. They are slimy and seemingly without charm. Still, there is something remarkable about the ingenuity of their bodies to burrow and squirm.

Above my head, on the opposite end of the charm scale, the birds sing away, gentle bell tones on a still day. There is the occasional surprising sound. I looked up this morning to see who was hammering on one of the birdfeeder posts only to realize it was a blue jay pecking the floor of the feeder. It was loud. I thought it was the woodpecker we hear outside of our bedroom and, sometimes, in the chimney. That bird is so loud we did think it was someone hammering on the outside of the house.

The people-produced sounds are infrequent here compared to a city existence. Regularly, trucks from the rock quarry above us run up and down the road and, since the sound buffer of the berry plants is gone, we hear each one. I can tell if they are heading to or from the quarry and I can judge their distance from the turn to our driveway by the pitch of gears changing. It’s not unpleasant. Today I heard a plane overhead, very high and very loud. Seemed like it was traveling slowly, too, as the sound hung in the air.

Unfortunately, some of the weeds are quite beautiful. The one Jim calls retch and I call kvetch, is lacey with a tiny purple bloom that looks like a miniature iris. This one shows up as a circular weed – it’s amazing how many are circular – and sends out its runners from one middle point. Finding the middle often results in a whole bunch of the stuff de-entwining from its plant host, the one you want to grow without a weed companion. I think we should actually encourage kvetch growth in the working areas on the way to the barn where not much planting is going to occur and where the term hard-scrabble comes to mind. A carpet of lacey green with small purple iris-like blossoms might be just the thing there. I know, of course, it would take hold and be everywhere it isn’t already so that’s not a workable idea.

Another one is what I was pulling out this morning. It looks a lot like the alfalfa Jim grows up in the pastures for the horses. It’s a soft feeling leaf with a tenderly beautiful green color. Never mind that it is just everywhere in the freesias and tiger lilies and will eventually overtake them. I pulled out a lot of it this morning but I know it is only temporary as it is impossible to get the entire root system out.

Talk about roots, those really prickly weeds that are plague in the rose garden have thick, hard roots that hang on to the earth as if they were fending off an enemy. We put shade cloth down over the rose garden, cutting out holes for the rose plant. I could hardly believe the vigor of the weeds growing sideways under that cloth heading directly for the holes. The cloth had bulges. I spent a good two days pulling out those weeds – and a lot of other ones under there – only to go back the next day and have new bulges. How do they grow so fast?

That latter is what led me to think about them as fuel. I Googled weeds as fuel and discovered there is something called jatropha that is gaining a lot of attention as a biodiesel. The list of countries in which jatropha can grow is pretty big – nearly 110 and all over the place – Africa, Asia, North and South America and Australia. Puerto Rico is on the list. Maybe if they put together a huge jatropha industry they will be granted statehood. And, maybe, then they won’t want it.

Anyway, it has heartened me to know that there are solutions to our terrible crisis of the environment. A segment on a recent CBS Sunday Morning taught us that the LED has tremendous possibilities for a future lighted by solar energy.

None of this will be aided by my rigourous weeding except that it makes me think about it. Just like getting the job done one small weedable section at a time, I am reminded that I can help by recycling one more can, leaving off the lights one more hour, combining my trips and saving gas, and in a million other small ways that might just add up.

Weeds unite and help to power the world.

Posted by Holly at April 30th, 2008

First of all, I sat down to write about our Passover Seder and looked out the window to my left to see the dogwood blooms - a deep fuschia color this year - contrasted against a steely sky that has just sent down a shower of hail stones. It is April 29th and we are still suffering the slingshots and arrowheads of winter. In fact, on the day of the Seder when the sky was, again, sending down hailstones, I thought about the ten plagues to be enumerated that night and wondered, as I have so many times, is this a message from God? Will there be some kind of admonishment on the next plane of existence that we didn’t pay attention to what he was trying to say to us? On the theory that it could be possible, I would also have to say back to him that I spent a lot of time here on the early plane wondering why he had to talk to us in parables and signs. Why didn’t he just say it outright?

Which of the four sons would I have been had I asked any of those questions at the Seder?

For the third year in a row Charlie and I were the only Jews. We were nine at dinner this year: the Evans family (with 10 month old Finn who found the Afikomen early in the evening), our neighbor Dave who grew and ground the horse radish and Father David. Quite a group.

Passover is the best of the Jewish holidays in my opinion and that of many other Jews in the world because of the food. It was only upon entering into this mixed marriage relationship that I discovered that Gefilte fish and Matzoh Brie’s may be an acquired taste. It’s true that the fish has a distinctive odor so I always try to make mine a couple of days in advance of the Seder so the house clears out. For my first Northwest Seder, over two dozen years ago, I wanted to make my own fish so I called my grandmother to get the recipe. My dad was on the extension phone writing down what she told me. I wrote it down on my end of the conversation, too. My dad asked for clarification at a couple of points in the recitation and, finally, at the end, he was so intent on getting it right that, when my grandmother said to uncover the pot halfway for the last half-hour of cooking, my dad asked which half of the pot! We laughed over that for years and years.

When he sent me his hand-written version, he wrote at the bottom: “You think it’s easy?”, referring to the difficulty of transcribing a method of cooking used by so many grandmothers around the world - measure by eye, test texture by hand and add flavors by tasting. It’s the same recipe I use today only, as I learned that year, it’s impossible to get the Brooklyn version fish in the Northwest. So now I use sole, salmon and halibut instead of whitefish and yellowfish, whatever they were. Amazingly, it still smells the same.

The menu was a little different, too. Instead of roast chicken and brisket, we served deliciously broiled salmon (marinated in orange juice) and Boeuf Bourguinon that Jim made. Everything else was traditional.

I confess that I don’t clear out all of the chametz from my house anymore. Instead, I sell it to Jim for $1. That makes commingling with a non-Jew much easier. I sold it to him on the morning of Passover while we were standing at the sink brushing our teeth. I could see he thought it was amusing but also wanted to do it for me. I bought it back a week later, no interest.

This year, I decided on a centerpiece that was a little different than the usual flowers. This was partly because there was nothing in bloom in the garden, it was so cold, save a few small flowers. Cindy brought me beauties and I used those in a pretty vase on a side table. The real centerpiece was the Red Sea parting made possible by the clever use of those little hand-help personal fans and some sheer red fabric, formerly a curtain. It worked very well.

The Seder was delightful. Charlie led it, everybody read their appointed parts. Charlie and I recalled family moments for everyone including how long it used to take to get through the Seder. That, of course, was in the days when there were 25 at dinner each night of the two Seders and also when my grandmother would buy 100 dozen eggs for the duration of the holiday. Two of her Passover specialties, breakfast treats, required many eggs and we all clamored for them every day. One is the Matzoh Brie mentioned above. This is Jewish french toast made with broken up matzoh. It’s fried just the way you would bread french toast but with a lot of cinnamon. I think it is delicious and, along with matzoh farfel cereal, my favorite breakfast during Passover. The day I made one for Jim, the last day of the holiday, he politely and silently ate until he looked up and said “Is this how leftover matzoh is used up?”

Oh, well. He isn’t perfect.

Next year, if not in Jerusalem, at least more Jews at my table.

Posted by Holly at April 30th, 2008

My orange cat, Koufax, loves me. He sits in my lap, relaxed into the crook of my arm; so relaxed that it doesn’t even seem as if there is any weight on my lap. He doesn’t weigh very much, it’s true, but he is so comfortable in my arms that there is no resistance. Every now and then he reaches up with his tensile front paws in a big stretch. Honestly, he strokes my hair or my cheek. Then he reaches up with his mouth and kisses me…two little kisses with only his lips and one nibble. His six toes on each front paw make it feel as if he really holds hands.

He should probably have been named Campanella instead of Koufax because his paws do look more like catcher’s mitts than a pitching glove. He was named by the Brooklyn-born father of the woman I got him from who got him as a kitten. Her dad was a Brooklyn Dodger fan and, maybe because of his sandy color, named him Koufax for that famous pitcher. It’s quite okay with me. I even taught him a baseball trick involving sitting on command and then waiting, with a tempting pile of catnip in front of him, for me to say four words: ball, ball, ball, strike. On strike, he was allowed to have the catnip. This he did for years until I moved on to other pleasures and stopped practicing with him. He’s going into training soon, though, now that his nemesis Gemini, the dog, is learning how to read (he lifts his paw when I hold up a piece of paper that says PAW on it. Lots of doggie cookies are involved.)

My son will tell you I owned Koufax even before I saw him once I heard that name, being a die-hard Brooklyn Dodger fan myself, still waiting for them to return to their proper home. There are a lot of us. I once worked for Prospect Park in Brooklyn, the park that Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted considered their masterpiece because of the natural terrain with which it was endowed. There’s a statistic that one in every seven Americans has roots in Brooklyn and I once had the idea that if I could raise $1 – one dollar – from even one tenth of those people, it would yield millions for the park. I used to float the idea whenever I was at a party or in some public social gathering and I would come back to the park with a fistful of dollars from enthusiasts. Once, on a Friday night at my crowd’s usual hangout, Sardi’s, I went into my shtick about the $1 and the park and one friend said he would give me five single dollars if I would dedicate them toward rebuilding Ebbets Field.

I actually own Campy’s autograph and Sandy Koufax’s on a little fold-out card, about 5 x 7. It says Your Dodger Pals on one side and Your Other Pals on the other. Campy and Koufax are on the Dodger side, numbers two and three. Above them is Ramon Jackson. On the other side is Carl Furillo, Johnny Colon, Henry Mandell and Gladys Gooding – the only person to play in Ebbets Field, Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds. She played the organ at the games. I don’t really know who Johnny Colon or Ramon Jackson are and Henry Mandell is not a ball player. He was the president of the Men’s Club when that organization at Union Temple, the reform synagogue in Brooklyn at which I grew up, hosted an annual Orphan’s Breakfast that my dad ran. The words in these sentences are archaic today, a throw back to a time that was both more peaceful and more opaque, in which we didn’t think about labels the way we do today and were careless in the way we categorized people. Still, the intent was sweet – give a breakfast to support a bunch of kids who lived communally because they had no families; bring the kids together with everybody’s heroes, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Sam Levenson, the great comic – and another Brooklyn kid - used to MC the breakfast.

Still waiting for the Dodgers to come back to Brooklyn gave me the opportunity to root for the team in whichever city I was living. In Seattle it was the Mariners. In New York it was the Yankees (or, the Mariners East). I’m back to being a Yankee fan, now, since I live in a state that doesn’t have major league baseball. How can that be? It’s a shocking absence, in my opinion.

I love baseball. It carried rules for life when I was growing up about working hard to excel at something, about fairness and how you were chosen to be on the team according to your ability and not everybody got a chance to play and it didn’t scar us for life. I learned about courage with the Dodgers and Jackie Robinson. Baseball is remarkable for creating memories of a childhood. We – or, at least, I – recall sweet moments with my dad who would patiently explain to me that, yes, the players on the opposing teams were really friends off the field. Something I think about whenever I see two players, today, on opposing teams exchange hugs before or after a game. Baseball crosses genders. In 1955, the magical year, my mother was the only mother who had a transistor radio when we all played on the street after school and the moms watched from their bench position. My mother wanted us all to be able to listen to the games during the year that was finally Next Year. I once commented that there seemed to be more women at Mariners games than men. I looked it up and, statistically, Seattle does have a high population of female sports fans. Growing up, there was a woman who lived on the ground floor of our apartment building, with windows facing the courtyard, who rang a cow bell whenever a Dodger hit a homerun. I wish I actually remembered what that must have sounded like the day Gil Hodges hit four of them in regular innings in one game in 1950.

It might be spring on the farm today – finally after a long and wet and cold spell - and I might be headed up into the vineyard to prune grapes, but I can tell you I wish I were at a ball game. I’ll be listening to the sound of the crack of that bat in my head all afternoon. And, later today, Koufax goes back into baseball trick training.

Posted by Holly at April 23rd, 2008

Wow. This was definitely a grape day. We have grape days and horse days on the farm and this one was spent in grape activity. First, it’s the middle of April and it’s freezing here. Reminds me of one of my favorite Jame Thurber passages, paraphrased here: The world’s at sixes and sevens…middle of July and the dogs are sticking to the sidewalk. Except it’s the opposite: middle of April and it’s so cold the buds on the trees are barely able to lift their little hats. We went to a Chehalem Mountains Winegrowers meeting last night and, while talking about how all the vineyards will be full and fruity in September for a planned event, someone said that was if we ever got bud break! Jim has had to prune the entire vineyard in cold weather. I helped on the only really nice days we’ve had. Clever.

I’m throwing around these terms quite professionally now, if I do say so myself, and I learn new ones all the time. Yesterday the word was ratchi … the spine from which the little grapes hang. This is something you don’t want to get into your pressed material in the early stages of winemaking but, not to worry, they separate pretty nicely with a destemmer. We’re way far away from that part of the process with the 2008 grapes. It’s so cold we may not see bud break, leaves and actual grapes for a long, long time. You always think a season or so ahead or behind of where you are, it seems. All through the winter, as Jim was pruning the vines, he was thinking not only about the number of branches and possible bunches he would get this year, he was trying to make decisions about which buds would become next year’s new arms. God, it was cold up there in the vineyard where the wind comes out of the west and there no trees nearby to cut its billowing path. I was glad to be up there, though, the couple of days I could stand the weather because it makes me feel a part of things. Jim has taught me how to prune - on the top arms you want the buds that are pointing upwards and will eventually cuddle up to the upper grow wires. Obviously, then, on the bottom you want the buds that grow downwards. If only the plants could read that page in the book and direct their buds accordingly. The vines and branches, however, are pretty, well, viney with twists and turns so an up bud may not necessarily look like that in real life. Nonetheless, I have learned how to make the choice and gamely nip off the unwanted buds, cutting through them on a diagonal so the node doesn’t push out another bud. Still scary stuff, however. The thought of ruining a plant is like an undercurrent in my mind at all times. We hit on a nice rhythm the last few times we were up there together with Jim doing the right side of a plant and I the left. That way didn’t feel so terrified. Still, I do a certain amount of talking to myself when facing a plant, repeating the rules to follow - top/up, bottom/down; every other bud; leave about four inches between them; four or five buds on an arm and on this side. Watch the ones near the crook as one of them will end up being next year’s new arm.

Today was so cold and rainy that even Jim couldn’t stay up in the vineyard. So we bottled last year’s Chardonnay. Bottling is way more fun than pruning and most other jobs because you get to taste and can persuade yourselves, since you’re winemakers, that drinking wine at 9:30 in the morning is okay. Last year, we bought a bottler but not the mechanized one. It is a lovely table-top piece of equipment with five stems through which wine flows into bottles. The bottles sit on a ledge that, through adjustment into notches, regulates the amount of wine that flows into each bottle. Clever and attractive. The flow into the stems begins with a siphon. The first time Jim tried it was last summer when family from California was visiting. Family is Jim’s niece and great-niece who is 9 years old and who had a friend with her. We always have a wonderful time when Michelle and Kate are here and, with the addition of Maddie, it was especially fun. The weather, then, was great so no one minded being out and doing whatever there was to do. Actually, everyone in Jim’s family is pretty outdoorsy so weather rarely stops them from anything. I, on the other hand, was raised to think the outdoors is just a way to get from one tall building to another or as a valuable view from a New York City apartment. (That’s not entirely true; I spent countless hours in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden but only knowing the security of a tall building was quite nearby.)

Anyhow, on that bottling day last summer, Jim started the siphon the old fashioned way. Not quite having the hang of the new bottler, the siphon kept fading, wine stopped flowing, Jim kept re-starting and, because he thinks he is invincible, he kept swallowing the wine that inevitably ended up in his mouth. Winemakers learn early on to spit not swallow. He was so drunk by about 11 AM that morning that it was all I could do to walk him into the house without his falling over - we kind of goose-stepped our way in with Jim tilting dangerously in one direction or the other. Never was he completely upright. He spent the day in bed, was riotously funny, doesn’t remember any of it and was mortified to learn that the two little girls were collapsed in endless ripples of giggles on the floor outside of the bedroom listening to him rant and rave at length about nothing in particular. Later on, it was a teachable moment about the perils of overdoing.

On this bottling day, today, it was a more sedate and mature process. We did taste first, of course, to decide for sure that the wine was ready to be bottled.Neither of us swallowed. We weren’t tasting very much, however, and held our own. The Chardonnay was deemed ready so we went to work. Today I was the corker of the 180 bottles we filled. The corking machine is totally hand operated. It’s a tripod. Put the bottle on a little round holder on a big spring; push down so it’s positioned right under the cork hole; put in cork, pull lever down, feel the satisfying swerp as the cork is pushed into the bottle. It’s a Ferrari and the only one I am ever likely to drive.

This wine, 2007. we will drink and give to family and friends. We’re in the middle of the bonding process right now so we can sell wine as of the current vintage presuming we get bud break, I didn’t mangle too many of the vines and future bunches, wasps and birds don’t eat all the grapes, we don’t have continuing weird weather or any other unforeseen challenges and obstacles AND we have the courage to become commercial!

Last night Jim had a brainstorm about the name of the vineyard so we’ve renamed it A Blooming Hill Vineyard. It will, more accurately, be officially renamed once the paperwork is completed to undo the old name and assign this new one. I filed the paperwork on line today and got an email almost immediately telling me there was an error and I could file. I called. The name, they said, is already taken. What? Yes, there’s a vineyard called Blooming Hills Vineyard and this is too close. But that’s us, I told them, and we want to change the name. Oh, well, in that case you’ll have to fill out a cancellation form and then resubmit the new name form. Of course, there are fees to cancell and reapply. Okay, okay. It will be worth it. I like it - A Blooming Hill Vineyard. Has the ring of a new blog name, too, so maybe I’ll do a companion piece to A Bag Of Onions!

Oh, and did I mention that Jim is putting in a second vineyard below the house where blackberries were formerly raised? Yes. And those grapes will be ready to become wine when Jim is 82….Nice, for a little retirement hobby.

Posted by Holly at March 20th, 2008

It’s pretty exciting to see the piece I posted on the New York Times’ Runway blog a couple of weeks ago generating comment.  I’ve been getting a real mind-kick ever since and I was pretty ticked at the beginning that Jim went up into the vineyard to prune and forgot to turn on his phone.  Then I thought I was starting to be a little like The Flying Nun the year she won an Oscar and wept aloud that everybody liked her.

So I got to thinking about the attitude that I might not matter because I live on a farm in Oregon; but, wait, am I not the same consumer Mizrahi, Martha Stewart and Moschino decided to launch lines for in places like Target (yes, yes, I know – Tarjay) and K-mart?  Isn’t fashion a business?  Aren’t the designers and retailers trying to turn a profit?  Doesn’t that mean they need the likes of me to buy whatever iteration of their work they put out?  Fashion/style/art may not apply to me because I live on a farm.  To be fair, farm Carharts got that little boost on Sunday in the lead article about in the NYT Style section about the young, hip partners who left New York City for the joys of the manure pile in Tivoli.  I’m sure the writer and editors were tickled to find such urban/exurban pairs on which to peg their story and get in on the earthiness without losing any of the NYT smartness.  Okay, so I didn’t know anything about living in the country, let alone a farm, when I first moved to the Northwest (the equivalent of going from NYC to Tivoli or to Mars, for that matter) and used to make mistakes like wearing sparkly ballet flats to go to my son’s Cub Scout events on the tops of little mountains) I did discover you can wear Carharts and pair them with boots like my ones with the polka dots or the little horses I wear now that it’s mud underneath my feet and not the city sidewalk. It is also true that the first time I did wear overalls (since I was a kid anyway) was the night before my wedding to Jim and then because he had been teasing me about getting me to do that.  I wanted to surprise him and wear them to a party in our honor thrown by neighbors in their barn (100 years old, historic, beautifully restored – the horses actually live outside so they don’t sully the beautifully hewn timber with poop).  When Jim saw me in my overalls (I also had on three-inch heels but they were in a thoughtfully chosen complementary black and pink country plaid) he decided to give me my wedding/birthday present right then, to wear with the overalls, diamond earrings.  Change demands new style.  Or is that style demands change?  I’m not sure but I am sure that the commerce of style, fashion and journalism is one reason the NYT is happy to send me my subscription to the doorstep of the farm in Cornelius.  (Thank heaven to the doorstep, by the way, so Jim can pick it up after giving the horses their nice alfalfa breakfast bale we personally grow in the pastures, moving 40’ pipes around to irrigate; which is often when I am happiest I have the boots with the polka dots.)

There has to be room for the likes of me to revel in the art of fashion and style even if I am unwilling to pay the outrageous price.  Going through my own head is the argument that great art means great prices but I’m not going to buy into that, either.  I was in the Portland Art Museum a few weeks ago where I saw, in the modern art wing, some fabulously interesting pieces and also some outrageous and cheeky works. The one that propelled me to unleash my own inner sculptor was a rectangular block of marble sitting on the floor in the middle of rice. It was called Rice House.  The rectangle  looked something like a building, maybe a rec-hall or dormitory like the horse wranglers used in old Westerns.  This was a solid block of marble, however, no inner lives depicted.  It happened, that at the time I saw that, Jim and I were having our bathroom vanities redone with granite tops and above the counter marble sinks, replacing the faux marble and the ornately carved gold-tone faucets with decades of dried toothpaste in the grooves (1970s taste and popular when the original owner built this house.  We love our bathrooms now, no more bending over when we brush; no more poorly aimed toothpaste on the faucets.)  I could hardly wait to get home from the museum so I could take a leftover corner we had of the granite and surround it with rice.  I used brown to complement the Moroccan colors in the granite, put it in the window in the stairwell and called it Rice Mountain.  It was a great piece of sculpture until the cats discovered how much fun it is to move the rice (sort of a Who Moved My Cheese comedy production) and spread it all over the place. I vacuumed up the rice, revising my artist’s statement as I went.

I’m poking mild fun, but it’s because we seem so seriously manipulated down the path of spending more to become fashionable and stylish. I want to think about fashion as art.   Some of it I love; some of it I hate; some is just too ridiculous to consider.  See the Style section on Sunday where underwear that reaches down the thigh has become part of someone’s fashion statement in Paris.  And, by the way, has anyone noticed that on the streets of New York, Florence, Paris or Cornelius most people are wearing drab-from-the-washing-machine clothing?  (Well, okay, maybe not on Cornelius’ streets although that underwear statement must have made a quick impression because there was somebody at our little Fern Hill Community Club annual spring event – potluck, a lot of corned beef from good old family recipes, a lot of casseroles, a lot of good old families present – because, in this crowd of mostly people who have had plenty of significant 0 birthdays and are comfortably retired, one youngish neighbor was wearing men’s boxers over green tights).  Even in the picture of the Beaux Arts café in Paris from where Bill Cunningham must have been observing the plumage, the people sitting there looked more like they were in an old silent and colorless film than in impossibly chic Paris.

The gap is in perception.  Yes, I live on a farm in Oregon – 40 acres, 4000 sq ft house

– where my husband breeds race horses and where we make Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris,

Chardonnay and Riesling in our little winery.    I may not fit the customer profile but

what I don’t want is for fashion and style to be held out to me as exclusive, not for

my ilk on the one hand and a temptation with the subtle message that I could be in

the inner circle, of course, if I chose to spend the money.  In ten thousand years you

can’t make me believe shoes, a sweater, a painting, an apartment is worth anywhere

near the prices attached to them.  I do completely agree with another blogger on the

site, however, about the quality and ethical difference in $15 and $150 pants.  My

Fred Meyer basic blacks are already pilling…

Posted by Holly at March 13th, 2008

I’m so glad I get the New York Times delivered every day because I am through and through still a New Yorker.  Or, maybe, I’m an Old Yorker because I barely recognize anything about my city that bears resemblance to, well, anywhere else.  When I first moved to the Pacific Northwest, in fact, over a dozen years ago, I wanted to write a book called Living In America For The First Time; New York Is A Foreign Country.  I still believe that and just a sail through today’s paper alone confirms it.

It’s pretty exciting that there’s a Sunday and Thursday Style section, now.  I love it and was dismayed, almost panicked, that Cathy Horyn has been banned from the Armani and other fashion shows, momentarily fearful that NYT coverage of fashion would end. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/fashion/shows/13banned.html?ex=1363147200.  It is, after all, the only place in the newspaper where they really run the comics (that stuff in the Sunday Magazine isn’t funny, although it is comical).  I mean, really.  That picture at the front of the article, two of those women look like they are sharing the same chair they are so thin.  And the people showing off the clothes of Opening Ceremony, are they not well?  Jim asked if his mother had bound the guy at birth.  Why does he look like a statue?  And the woman in the next photo, I thought she was, frankly, a cleaning lady who put on her worst housedress to clean the office floor.  And then, inside, the story about the Critical Shopper http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/fashion/13CRITIC.html?ex=1363147200 slobbering over men’s shoes that cost $2080?  He was funny about it, saying if he was going to spend over $2000 for shoes he wanted the cobbler to be Daniel Day-Lewis, hand-sewing them on his feet and looking longingly into his eyes.  DD-L, for my money was so disgustingly violent in There Will Be Blood that I will probably never go see another film he’s ever in.  But, then, I didn’t let Angela Lansbury into my living room for decades after The Manchurian Candidate so maybe I’m just too sensitive.  But, back to the shoes, when I first looked at the picture to that story, I thought it was about organizing a closet and that those shoes were old, already worn in.  I got a really good laugh out of that one, when I figured out they are new, because I have shoes that look like that now.

Let me tell you about my closet out here in the real America, in Cornelius, Oregon.  First let me tell you that there are a lot of people here who engage in productive activities and commerce, people who have lived all over the world including Mexico (migrant workers) and whose shoes also look exactly like those in the picture and who would gladly, willingly, sell theirs for half the $2080 tag because that would buy a lot of what they really need.  But I digress.  My closet.  On the top shelves I have all the shoes I rarely wear anymore – 45 pair of high heels including a couple of designer labels I got at DSW.  One of my favorite pair is a simple black, very pointy toe, very high heel.  I got them in Florence in a little, down-a-stone-stairway shop on some side street near the teeny apartment my son was living in for a while.  A friend of mine – and my son’s godmother - had instructed my son on exactly the Prada shoes I was supposed to look for when I got to Florence.  I did look at them.  And then I bought the really soft black leather ones at the down-a-stone-stairway shop for $35.  Anyway, now they sit on the top of my closet along with the tweed ones, ankle-strap ones, ones with bows and buttons and flowers that stick up.  I love my shoes but I have a rule that I won’t spend more than $50 on a pair.  And it has to be some pair, at that.  I did spend that on a pair of sling-backs with sequins that I wore to my own 60^th birthday party.  I wore them, again, when I got married.

Let’s talk sequins for a minute.  There was a cardigan in the Sunday Style section that had a price that must have been a misprint - $23,000.  Twenty-three thousand dollars.  Come on, is that a joke?  I think I annoyed Jim because I kept pulling out things I own with sequins or beads on them asking what he thought they were worth.  I do have this lovely hand-sewn, sequined jacket I bought at the Columbus Ave. flea market for $20 about twenty years ago.  Can I sell it as both hand-sequined and vintage and make anywhere near $23,000?  If so, it’s available for whoever wants it because that amount of money would actually pay for my mother’s caregiver for about 20 weeks and would be money I didn’t have to take out of my retirement account; and, really, out here in Cornelius I don’t have that much call for a black hand-sewn-on-sequin jacket anyway.

Not that I wouldn’t wear it; I would, because it gives Jim a laugh.  More than once he has actually said to me “You’re not going to wear that, are you?” at which point I have reminded him of a friend of a friend who, in her wedding vows, thanked her new groom for NEVER saying “You’re not going to wear that, are you?” Besides, literally every time he has said that someone we don’t know in a public place has come up to me to say I LOVE what you are wearing.  And I have designer clothes.  My late husband’s mother used to be a seamstress for the fashion designers and NY Times fashion writers.  I have one gorgeous, gorgeous jacket she made in the 50s out of original Rodier fabric.  If I ever finish wearing it I’m going to frame it and hang it as incredible art.  Lots of my clothes are fabulous and unusual.  None of them make me look like a piece of wrinkled spaghetti.

Now, to be fair, we buy a lot of our clothes at Bi-Mart, the lower-end, membership-shopping club.  This is not Costco.  You get a lifetime membership for $5 a couple and that gives us two cards in two different colors.  Mine is yellow; Jim’s is green.  I have recently lucked into three suede-ish shirts – two in a camel color and one in turquoise – that I love.  I thought of them this morning when the Critical Shopper described a shirt the color of plaster (I liked that) and striking “the perfect balance between tailored and unfinished” and costing $2200.  Twenty-two hundred dollars.  Have we lost our minds?  Mine cost $13.98 and were on sale at that, which is why I bought three.  Mine get to the unfinished point really fast living on a farm.

But, back to my closet.  The high heels are on the top because I don’t wear them very often.  I do have work-boots that look a little like the thousands of dollars ones.  Mine are pink and were an extravagance.  I knew I would be wearing these workbooks for years and really wanted a pair that lasted so I bought Timberland.  They are at the top end of my price boundary.  They have that lovely worn-in look like the ones in the picture.  I will sell them to anybody for $500, right now, as is, not worn all that much.  Size 9.  Original laces with the little Timberland tag still on.  I’ll pay the shipping.  I have Crocs.  Wait, that’s not true.  I had Crocs but one got stuck in the mud the day we were trying to float the dock back into place before my son’s wedding. (And don’t even get me started on the cost of weddings depicted in the Sunday Style section….).  Now my Crocs are knock-offs (sorry, Gloria Vanderbilt, knock-offs are all the real world can often afford.) that I get at Goodwill (although they are new) or Payless for $8.  Just as good and I can have them in as many colors as I want.  Right now I only have yellow and turquoise but I plan to change that as soon as the weather gets warmer and I start wearing them again.  I just bought some great suede moccasins – two pair of black (because I wear black most and figure I’ll wear them out), one dusty blue and one camel.  I think I will look great in my black slacks I got at Fred Meyer for $38 (less 40%), my Bi-mart camel shirt and the mocs.  The shoes cost $9 a pair but I did order them through the mail so I had to pay shipping.  I’ve got little patent leather flats, polka-dot flats and two fetching pair of brown flats I totally love.  One is casual with a chiffon bow and the other is dressier with a brown feather pouf.  I got them at Payless.  And now I wear knee socks so I am determinedly making a fashion statement with them.  Watch; they will become the next big thing.

That’s enough about my shoes.  My clothes tend to be more farmy, now, than anything else.  There are three or four pair of sweats, one pair of fleece lined black nylon pants that are too big on me but I like them because I can throw them on over the sweats when it is really damp out.  I got them to wear cleaning out the barn.  (Read my blog www.abagofonions.com  entry on horse poop. That’s another book I want to write – My Life Is Horse Poop.)  I have pants and sweaters to wear on a farm.  I also have some velour pants and some velvet ones and things with interesting decorations and in colors I like, because, well, we’re still newly-weds and it’s fun to look a little alluring.  Jim always comes in from the day – with hay all over his Bi-mart corduroy jacket – and goes in and changes to his evening jeans and a nice sweater.  Most of his sweaters come from California, where he lived and where a wonderful woman who worked with him gave him a new sweater every year for Christmas.  They all look a lot a like.  We had dinner at a roadside tavern (literally) last night with three booths, six tables, a bar and video lottery.  It was Wednesday night and that’s the German dinner, which Jim really wanted to try.  The owner, Hans, came to talk to us because it was our first time in, I think, and he told Jim he really wanted his sweater.  Anyway, I try to, at least, brush off some of the pet hairs and straighten up for dinner, too.

I went to a fashion show, once.  It was Tommy Hilfiger men’s wear and I got there because a man I was dating – who had moved back home to the Northwest somehow got selected on some early internet gamble as a winner of a trip for two to New York, a hotel stay and tickets to the show.  (We actually always felt he was selected the winner because other people they had chosen couldn’t meet their requirement of flying to New York two days hence and we could just pick up and go.  The young publicist who arranged it with him had desperation in her voice and huge relief when he accepted the prize.)  My date was, at the time, walking with a cane, was quite robust (to be polite) and definitely over the Tommy Hilfiger age limit.  The hotel they put us in was one of the new, Asian, boutique hotels in the West 40s.  My friend couldn’t get up off the low-to-the-floor futon bed without rolling onto his knees and having me help hoist him up.  Not a pretty sight.  We asked if Tommy Hilfiger would let us move to the Yale Club and pick up the tab.  They agreed probably because the savings in price for just one night was our airfare from Seattle.  The fashion show was a riot.  My friend actually dressed rather well, I always thought.  He usually wore gray slacks, a nice looking shirt with white cuffs and collar setting off the solid or color stripes of the shirt, a blue jacket and an ascot.  He had the ascots but he bought most of his clothes from Haband, a catalogue of which I don’t expect most of the New York Times writers have heard.  He once got a certificate from Haband announcing him as A Customer of the Year.  He framed it and put it on his mantle.  Tommy Hilfiger style he was not.  We attracted quite a few glances as we glided/limped into the tent at Bryant Park, I can tell you.  And I was enthusiastic during the show, attracting even more attention with my obvious reactions to the fashions.  No mystery as to what I thought, I can tell you.  The best part of the show was getting a goody bag – big opaque plastic that said STYLE in white lettering, a bunch of TH products, and a very cool memo book with the same opaque and STYLE lettering.  I still have the bag and occasionally use it to tote groceries.

I am not chiding or poking fun at the writers.  I like the new way journalists write from their own lives.  The point is, whose lives are they writing for?  Who in the heck are designers designing for?  Does it really matter what any designer designs or what shows up in the NYTimes, except as HIGH HUMOR for the rest of us out here in the world where the thought of spending thousands of dollars on a blouse, skirt, suit or men’s work boots that, by the way, lace up diagonally (I can just see Jim trying to deal with that when a horse or twelve have just gotten loose and are running amuck in the vineyard and he’s trying to get out of his (Bi-mart) cozy slippers with the sheepskin lining – yours for $300, right now, no questions asked)?

I think not.

Posted by Holly at February 28th, 2008

So today I picked up two tons of lime.  I got each ton in a big white bag that looks

exactly like ones you sling over your shoulder to carry groceries.  I also bought six feet of

new hose for the back-up weed killer and bug sprayer, returned two packs of swedges

that are not big enough splice caps for the 12 gauge wire in the vineyard and went to

John Deere to pick up a new nozzle for some one of Jim’s farm things.  Okay, I did stop at

Fred Meyer and I did buy one skirt.

In between trips and planting the ten rose bushes we bought for Charlie and Alexis’ wedding last July that will now form a beautiful and permanent rose garden out back under the St. Francis statue, I checked my emails and got one from my oldest friend.  “I’m in Paris now…” she wrote.  I could only guess she didn’t spend her day on a farm or, if she did, it was only as a houseguest in some hundreds of years old quaint farmhouse with a fabulous meal at either end of the day.  The juxtaposition of that life and this life was vivid today.

And I’m not complaining.  We don’t have to force spring here, as our democratic presidential contenders spoke of the new dawning possible; spring happens on the farm almost so fast you can hear the smacking sound of buds opening as if they were lips ready to gulp the morning dew.  Jim woke up a couple of mornings ago and, when I asked how he slept, he told me not well because he was having spring anxiety.  Ah, but the smile at the corners of his mouth told me a different story.  He is at his happiest and best right now when, even though there is a ton of stuff to do, his hands are in the dirt, on the vines, around the tiny seeds he starts in the greenhouse.  He moves fast.

Today’s tasks involving the tons of lime were for the new vineyard.  Jim took out the acres of blackberries over the winter and took down dozens of trees – no small feat – in order to claim the field for the next vineyard.  The grapes won’t go in until next year while the soil renews itself and Jim tends it.  Part of that process is to plant winter wheat and today’s application of lime was to feed the earth; I thought to improve the nitrogen levels but Jim told me it’s to neutralize the acidity levels and improve the Ph.  Now I could have just written that as if I knew of what I spoke but that would have been such a lie that anyone nearby would have to get out of the way of the lightening.  I know so little.  Still, I was pretty impressed with myself driving our big truck to the ag store to get the lime.  I had my comeuppance with the last load as I steered the truck onto our road and that gigantic grocery slid forward into the back of the cab.  In the split second of the sound, and as I understood what was happening, I had visions of it sliding right through the cab’s window and burying me underneath.  But it didn’t.  Then, as I turned into the driveway – and, by the way, making each of those turns at about 3 miles an hour (how fast can you go anyway, with a ton of lime on your back) – the sack slid backwards against the tailgate.  New fear:  2000 pounds of lime lying at the bottom of the driveway.  Surely my fault.  But nothing bad happened, I was saved and the day continued.

Planting the roses was a much easier task and we’ll delight in seeing them from just about anywhere in the back of the house.  Unless the bug spray worked today in its two doses, I’ll be watching them from inside because there are so many boxwood beetles they fall on your head if you walk out a door.  I hate them.  But I also hate seeing them scurry when I smash one of them.  I wonder how the ones in the vicinity know there’s danger.  Do they see me flick at one and recognize danger?  Frankly, the only thing that makes me feel a little better about killing them is that they, individually, have a pretty short life span anyway.  They do have lovely red wings.  They’re like the rats and roaches in New York City.  Even the baby ones of those horrid creatures are cute but not enough to make them less detestable.  When I get too homesick for New York, I make myself remember the rats and roaches and then I don’t feel so bad.  I was so determined not to import roaches to the Pacific Northwest when I moved out here that I had a roach motel in and on every single carton and every stick of furniture and I moved in December so I knew the cold interior of the truck would freeze any remaining life right out of them.  I haven’t seen a roach out here so I guess it worked.

Mostly what we have here in the critter category lives out of doors.  The gophers and moles plague Jim all season.  They build these elaborate tunnels with mountain top holes at the surface.  They eat roots.  They must love grape vine roots and alfalfa roots because there are zillions of those mountain tops in the vineyard and the pastures.  The dog spends a lot of his time in spring when he’s up in the vineyard with Jim with his nose in those holes.  Sometimes we’ll see him actually go on point.  Now and then he gets one and delivers it to the porch.  Thanks, Gemini.  Today I found the remains of one in the vicinity of the new rose garden.  I must be getting used to this life because I didn’t scream.

Well, I know I’m getting used to this life.  What’s not to love.  In the mornings Mt. Hood rises from some primordial mist and in the evenings, now longer and longer lasting, it glows as the sun sets behind our house and casts its last rays on the mountain as if it were Theda Bara or Sarah Bernhardt making a final Hollywood appearance.  The crocii are up, the daffodils have their heads up but not yet out, the tulips are beginning to stretch through the earth.  When I rake the heather, it’s like brushing a head of beautifully curly hair that suddenly gets all springy and shiny.  Even though it isn’t Paris or even New York with a view of the Chrysler Building outside of my window and even though I still think the neighborhood could benefit from a corner deli where we could get a bagel or bialy and coffee, it is good here.  And pretty soon we’ll be able to go out in the garden and pluck tomatoes right off the vine and pop them in our mouths.  No matter how good almost everything else is in New York City, its dwellers will never taste that pleasure.

Posted by Holly at February 22nd, 2008

I had a really terrible dream a couple of nights ago; highly unusual for me since my dreams are usually vivid, long and a lot of fun. So this one surprised me and woke up my husband with my dream crying. It was about our dog and one of the horses. In my dream, the dog was the dog but looked like MJ, Jim’s lovely old white mare. There are photos of him winning horse competitions with MJ. I dreamt that Gemini, now a dream dog-horse, was captured by people in big vehicles – really big vehicles; one looked like a huge half-moon shaped sanitation truck and one was a big box shaped trailer on a truck bed. The captured animal was injected with something lethal and forced into the box trailer. I was too far away to get there in time to save him and kept shouting for him to run. He was rearing but the men and the injection were too strong for him.

It was awful. I dreamt it on a night when Gemini actually went off to play at a neighbor’s house. He rarely runs afar and never for very long. He has a couple of dog pals around here and one has been around more frequently because her master is working with Jim. It happens that they live nearby and Gemi went over there after dinner. I phoned down there and, sure enough, they had just sent him home. I didn’t like it one bit that he was out and vulnerable, if only to his own instincts to sniff and explore the territory. So that was on my mind.

I think the horse association came from the loss of one of our horses a few weeks ago. This is the largest animal I have ever lost. This one was the oldest of the horses at 26 years old. She was the one everyone thought I could safely and comfortably ride if I were to try that because of her gentle and trustworthy nature. Her end came quickly. One morning Jim came in to say she was not well and he thought she might have a bowel obstruction. This is terrible for horses; well, for anyone, but very complicated and fairly common in horses. Jim scared me into being careful early on in my acquaintanceship with the horses by making sure I understood how dangerous it is for them to swallow anything other than their grain and hay and juicy apple or carrot treats. Some hard object was missing and Jim speculated that it might have ended up in the horse’s belly. Then he described the possible consequences. He probably knew he was making the point so I would never forget it. It worked.

I have, by now, seen horses ailments and injuries enough to know this horse was hurting and to know Jim is so experienced that he could diagnose and treat her – at least in the early stages of a crisis. He’s taken some horses all the way through a crisis to cure more than once in just my few years with him. The most amazing to me was DeDe, our not quite year-old beautiful filly named for the double diamond on her forehead and the fact that she was born on April 25^th, giving her a diamond birthstone. One day out in the pasture, DeDe got separated from her mother for a moment and started running around in wild circles until she jammed into a fence post and ripped the skin on her foreleg. It was a big and gaping wound with her glossy brown coat hanging down limp and damp. Every other day Jim cleaned and dressed that wound. He had DeDe’s complete trust. I held her most of those days, nestling her head in my shoulder while Jim ministered and I can say she barely moved an inch and never complained. He was able to heal her and allow the skin grow back together so it isn’t even obvious where that injury was. Jim made sure he imprinted on DeDe moments after she was born, touching her, talking to her so she would know him, know his voice and trust him. And she does.

When the senior mare’s decline began, I knew Jim was worried but also that he knew how to handle her and what to try. He wanted to get her walking and drinking water. She wanted to be lying down most of the time, rolling on her stomach. He did get her up and, once or twice, she got herself up; cause for some joy and a sense of fleeting relief. On the second morning, I was out in the barn with Jim and asked if I could do anything. He said I could walk her in big circles around the arena and make sure she stopped to drink. He had put down blankets for her to lie on and a bucket of water. She didn’t want to walk much but Jim showed me how to get her going by turning the opposite way. Every time we made the arc around to her water, she made a big point of stopping for as long as she could, not even drinking as much as putting her nose down in the water. I thought it was a smart way to get a moment’s rest. Her eyes were watery and teary. And they looked sad to me. I walked her for about 15 minutes, frankly thinking she just really wanted to be lying down.
Jim and I had to go somewhere that day and left around 1 PM. When we got back that afternoon, he went out to the barn and, a few minutes later, came in to tell me the horse was gone. A horse gone, just like that. Such a big and sweet creature. I was glad I had spent time with her that morning.
It’s a different relationship and different kind of loss than I have experienced with dogs and cats. The cats and dogs do more with us in our lives. Not that the horses don’t relate to us, they do; but, the others play with us, toy with us, love us in a much more evolved way involving games and responses. Horses do have special relationships with people; certainly ours do with Jim but, and maybe this is the big difference, they keep their sense of being horses whereas our cats, most raised by us from the time we could hold them in the palms of our hands and as their only parents, seem to us to have some of the same feelings and thoughts we have. Even the 65 pound dog, whom we have had since he was 18 months old and was never small enough to be in our palms, shows signs of knowing what we want, where we are going and decides what he will do about that. And the cats and dog cuddle and climb up into our laps. We love it when Gemini crawls up into Jim’s lap and put his arms around him. Just as it’s endearing to me to have Koufax walk up my reclining body to my chest, put his front paws on either side of my neck and start hugging. The closest the horses come to cuddling is putting down their heads and nuzzling. Also very sweet and makes me think of Sandy, the horse upon which I did learn to ride on the beach in Atlantic City a million years ago when I was a five, six and seven year old and would spend winter and spring vacations with my grandparents in what was then a Victorian style resort. The hotel we always stayed in – the Chalfonte/Haddon Hall - is now Resorts Casino. Then, it was a wonderful smelling beachfront palace with vast marble vestibules filled with wicker seating arrangements and palm trees and leading to the boardwalk or the mezzanine where, every day, we had tea. On the beach was a horse-riding concession. Even though I could not take a horse home with me and fall asleep with him curled up into my body, I fell instantly in love with the horse, the boy who led her around, the feeling and scent of chill ocean air on my face and the high, curling sound of the seagulls above my head as I rode along the water’s edge. I could lean forward and hug Sandy’s neck, whisper in his ear. I could stand with him at the end of a ride and look up into those big soulful eyes. I could swear he cried on the day, every vacation’s end, when we had to part.

Growing up, we weren’t allowed to have anything four-footed in our home, a rule set down by my mother and grandmother. My grandfather, who loved animals as much as I and who would routinely load up my baby carriage with stray cats in our Brooklyn neighborhood treks, got around the rule by bringing home chicks, ducks and, once, even a turkey. Plus those exotic farm animals, I had fish, a turtle (four feet but slow and usually remaining in place in the flat round bowl so, therefore, acceptable) and parakeets. The love for that first horse in my life was pent up affection for running and jumping creatures. And as soon as I got married and moved out into my own home, I got a dog. Cats came later and never as many at one time as in this current, joyous household.

    I’ve lost dogs and cats and have felt very sad. And now a horse is gone, leaving

a big sweet empty presence. It is no wonder to me that, in my dream, I was trying

to fight off this ineluctable loss.