Thursday, August 18, 2011

Flashbacks

I'm watching a rerun of Glee, the Madonna episode. It's part hysterically funny, part really, really sad and part moving. Moving because you know how it is when some music stirs up memories. When Finn and Rachel started singing "Open Your Heart" I thought immediately of youth group. "Open Your Heart" was the song they played every Wednesday night before starting. My best friend at the time was a Madonna fan, fanatic really, but what 15 year old girl wasn't back then.

It is sobering to remember the mundane things we did together, listening to music, watching "Nightmare on Elm Street," and talking about boys. It's sobering because I recently found out that she finally succeeded in committing suicide.

Life was a long road for her. I was the friend on the sidelines of her drama. She had a tumultuous family life. I can hardly wrap my head around it now, all these years later.

So many memories wrapped up in that friendship. Her name was Mary. She was beautiful and talked of being discovered. She wanted to model. She even took head shots and sent them to agencies. It never happened for her.

She dated before I did, way before I did. We did a Science fair project on statistics together in 7th grade. Her mother made the best meatloaf and mashed potatoes. We paged through volumes of YM, Teen and Bride - picking out wedding dresses, prom dresses, hair styles. Hot pink was in and so were black lace gloves without fingers. She had all the stylish clothes - like the monokini my mom said was indecent - and so did her mom. They both wore makeup. My mom and I didn't. Mary was glamorous and fun-loving. She was carefree and reckless. I was the cautious, anxious, worry-wart.

Mary's mother divorced Mary's father when Mary was a baby. Mary told me that her dad had once kidnapped her. What an incredible life. Mary's mom smoked. She worked late. She dated guys that were the kind of guys you don't necessarily want your teenage daughter around. I remember once, at the house with the pool, Mary poured marbles all over her floor and her bed before we left. She told me she did it because she had told her mom to stay out of the room with her "stupid boyfriend." She called all of her mom's boyfriends that. She said they liked to sneak up to her room to lay on her bed and look out the skylight.

It was strange. Things like that didn't happen in my world. I never had to break my mother's cigarettes and flush them down the toilet. My mom never had more than a sip of alcohol until she was 65 years old. My mom and dad are still married. I never owned designer clothes or lived in a house with a pool. I never had my own bathroom. Mary had all of that and yet, she had so little.

Mary's life was different. The first time she tried to take her life she was 15, I think. She spent time in the psych ward of the hospital. They released her and a few months later she tried again. In the midst of all of this, she would call me crying, sometimes drunk, just wanted me to listen to her and tell her that I loved her, that I cared about her.

When she got pregnant on purpose, I felt hope for her for the first time. I thought, as she did, that a baby would give her meaning and purpose in life. She was overjoyed when she called me with the news. I was sad that she had made the decision to get pregnant but I was only 15 too and I was so happy that she was happy. All of that joy was swept quietly, brutally away with a quick trip to the clinic housed, ironically, in an old school. Her mother, you see, had gotten pregnant too and her mother was too young to be a grandmother. Mary's baby, her very wanted baby, was erased.

Mary changed after that. She became sadder and quieter. We never talked about what had happened but the reality was that we really only talked a few more times. She told me she was too tired. That life was too hard. She stopped returning my calls and dropped off the face of the earth. I prayed for her every night. I prayed that she would have peace and be reconciled with her mother. One night,after praying a rosary every night for her for a year, I had a sense that my prayers were answered. It wasn't until a few years later that I saw proof in a newspaper article. There was a picture showing Mary, smiling that beautiful smile, resting her head on her mother's shoulder.

I was sad to learn recently that Mary had succeeded in taking her own life. My parents ran into her mom who shared the news with them. I have no details of when it happened, only that it did. It was a shock because I had hoped she was out of the woods. I have no idea where she is buried. I wish I did because I would like to say goodbye. I would like to place a flower by her name and tell her that I miss her and that I wish life had been better for her. I think about her every time I hear a Madonna song and I pray for her and her family.

May God have mercy on her soul.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Never Say Never

Things continue to turn on their ear this Summer. I'm writing this while watching black and white reruns of The Twilight Zone so having life turned on its ear seems... well, normal.

Our goats are out in their new pasture. They got too rambunctious to keep taking on walks with the kids and we couldn't keep them in their small pen indefinitely. Dh and Will with some help from Mr. Cubby fixed the fencing in our back pasture. There were some post fences that they goats could easily slip through and DH stapled heavy gauge wire fencing to it.

Alas, it didn't contain them. When you read that goats are difficult to contain, let me tell you, believe it. We think they were slithering under one of our gates.

The first call from our neighbor went unnoticed since DH doesn't always check his voice mail. Apparently the goats escaped on Sunday evening and went over to visit the cows in his pasture. Our neighbor led them back with a dog leash and we were none the wiser, until DH checked his voice mail two days later.

The following day, there was another call. The neighbor (again, though for us it was the first time we had heard there was a problem) said our tiny goat herd was headed for the main road.

And, yes, it was raining.

I took off running, shouting at my oldest over my shoulder, who unfortunately suffers from real occasional hearing loss. His response to me was, "WHAT??" Fortunately Mr. Cubby, second in command, heard me and repeated the instructions.

I ran as I have not ran since my first and only 5K some 12 years ago. I ran through the ten acre field next door with grass so high it brushed my shoulder in some places. The rain picked up, of course. I sloshed on through the field watching the main road though the trees on my left. No flashes of white. No bleating. No goats. The field ended abruptly at a gravel road. Still no goats.

Water dripped into my face. My shirt was heavy and clung to me but not in the way wet t-shirts hang on co-eds in Florida bars. I yelled, "Daisy,' feeling like a complete idiot. What does one normally do when one loses a goat? How does a goatherd deal with this problem. I have no staff. I have no goat whistle. No electric goat prod (but wow I should totally get one of those!)

I ran down the gravel road past our neighbors who called. I ran past more houses. Nothing. Not a goat in sight. Normally, when they're wet and feeling put upon by the weather, they complain. They bleat and bleat and you can hear them from far off. The silence made me wonder if they had become part of someone's plans for shashlik.

Then, as I jogged back toward the main road, my neighbor popped her head out of her front door. "They're in my garage."

Embarrassment.

Our goats were in our neighbor's garage. I ran down her long driveway and the automatic door slowly opened to reveal a pristine SUV and three wet goats calmly chewing their cud. They were not happy to see me. Rather impressed by their new digs, they, well, dug in. Lacking hooks, crooks, and electric goat prods, I tried to lure Luke out into the open with some goat pellets but they quickly dissolved in the rain. Even if they hadn't dissolved, I doubt he would have been tempted to leave the confines of his comfortable shelter.

So I did what any suburban mom turned farm girl would do; I grabbed Luke's head where his jawbone connects to his skull and I pulled. He planted. I pulled harder. He tried to shake me off. I held fast and pulled him forward slowly out of the garage. Luke reacted to the rain like it carried an electric current. He bucked. When that didn't work, lowered his head to butt me. But I had lucked into a superb goat wrestling hold that he could not break.

Daisy and Bo followed us curiously toward the garage opening. They eyed the gray sky and then the warm, dry garage and then their unfortunate brother, Luke. They seemed content to watch the show and showed no interest in getting involved in our little parade.

Anxiety set in. What if I could only get one goat out at a time? What if I had to lead each goat to the pasture walking backwards through a driveway, a 10 acre field and then through my own lot into the goat pen? What if my neighbor shut her garage in the meantime and I had to go back, ring her doorbell and tell her what a completely hopeless city girl I am and ask her if I could please get my other two goats?

I backed half-way down the driveway before the two ladies decided to follow us. It was slow and tedious but once the goats were all together the pace picked up. Luke continued to try to buck my hold. Finally, after we had put enough distance between us and the garage, I let him go. The herd went back to their pen.

Goats can escape through much smaller spaces than you might think. And they really don't like rain.

Speaking of small spaces and things being turned on ear, I'm homeschooling again this year. It does feel a little like I'm heading back into the Twilight Zone. We shall see.